Steve Bannon | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

[Applause] all right but first up look i know you're not a fan of this guy but be nice he is one of the most influential person around today he is the former white house chief strategist for president trump steve bannon is over here steve bannon hey that's not so bad [Applause] [Music] thank you steve all right steve well it took a lot of prepping to get the audience to be that nice to you yeah yeah but i'm gonna say to you what i always say to conservatives when they come here first of all thank you i appreciate it and it says volumes why the republicans are in power and we have none hillary clinton never came here maybe she'd be president if she were more confident big time yeah so and and i know that uh you know you had a little event there at the new yorker they had a festival in fact i want to read malcolm gladwell's quote because they were going to interview you yep and then you were disinvited i've been disinvited many times by the way it's a good club and malcolm gladwell said call me old-fashioned but i would have thought that the point of a festival of ideas was to expose the audience to ideas if you only invite your friends over it's called a dinner party yeah what are your thoughts on that well they chased me for uh you know david remnick chased me for a year to be on his podcast and he came to me and said hey we'd be honored if you were in this festival ideas i said fine i don't want compensation but i like going into hostile audiences with tough interviewers i mean you know i do very little conservative media now i do cnn bbc you know the economist i go to the toughest places toughest toughest interviewers and say hey no holds barred hostile audiences let's get it on and again that's why the republicans are in power so let me ask you about i think it does sharpen it sharpens the blade it does um let me pick your brain about the democrats because you're a strategist and you got your boy elected but no one said that could happen donald trump got himself elected um i was just i just i just showed up and steve realigned i i don't want to get on this but first you were crazy about sarah palin and then you were crazy about donald trump i think you look for morons who are empty vessels that you could put more ideas you you steve every single person in administration has called him an idiot that's what you look for i get it no no you're not by the way by the way we'll get into it as you get into his uh economic war china do you see what he's doing to realign the world's economy look did he go to uh harvard kennedy school does he speak in the vernacular of the elites of this world no he speaks in a very plain spoken vernacular but he's incredibly smart he is i'm not it's not his syntax that i'm worried about it's did you did you see his press conference this week he says crazy that no one thinks is true you don't think it's but no but here's the power of the press conference no other gutless republican would go into that lions den for an hour and 20 minutes and take all the incoming he he stood up for kavanaugh more than any of these guys did and i think it's one of the things that empowered kavanaugh to go into on on thursday and and to take on the democrats if trump had not done that you know and by the way he did have some ques he did have some answers that were not the standard answers but look he's got his he's got his own absolutely not true he's actually more grounded and that speech to the u.n no the speed he said china loves me because i have a big big brain steve a very big brain whatever it is now let me ask you this if any other president just one day got up and talked like that the markets would crash and you'd have a heart attack it's just that we're a frog in the pot and we see it every day so we built bill he's created 10 trillion remember when he's got elected what nobody thought he was the market is going to crash okay he's created 10 trillion dollars the market was going to crash remember when he won everybody said the market's going to crash it's armageddon that's the one i got wrong no but it will though my point is he's got it will my point is he's got a very fundamental plan of how he's turning around this economy he's actually i think i think you guys missed the point when you you you separate the signal from the noise watch the signal there's a flashbang grenade every day as far as the noise goes right but just watch the signal he's very consistent that speech at the u.n well you know what the signal that was sent with the tax cut didn't reach your base they either reality one bill reality won once because wait a second they know that that tax cut 83 of it went to the top one percent they know that and they don't like it okay and what happens i was the guy in the oval office that was pushing uh you know a 44 tax rate for those over five million bucks and to take the three trillion dollars that were repatriated and make sure hold it make sure there were different tax structures so it would be invested in uh plant equipment in inner cities now the overall tax plan i think works for workers and here's why you've got to look at it in context of our economic war china you can't separate the tariffs and what he's doing on the 301s what he's doing on trying to stop intellectual property theft and appropriation from the taxes the taxes principally were to make our companies competitive with german germany and china the the the personal tax rates which i didn't totally agree with right because it's more of the trickle down uh is something that had to be used to get this thing passed but the central part of it was the corporate taxes isn't that what a con man does he said i'm going to look out for you the common man the forgotten americans and then he gets in there and tries to steal their health care to pay for the tax cut for them how is that [Applause] the central part of this bill was bringing manufacturing jobs back from east asia and that's what he's doing the tax cuts for corporations make him competitive with china and germany the tariffs are part of an economic war that china has forced it upon us for the last 25 years and this is all of whole cloth and that's why it's working he's reorienting bill the world supply chain right now with china on as far as i can to get you on this next question okay i want to eventually i want to pick your brain on the democrats okay because i you of all people i want the answer to this who scares you who do you think could do good how do you handicap the people what do you think about uh elizabeth warren what do you think about bernie sanders what do you think about kamala harris do you think about gavin newsom what do you okay i know you like them all what eric holder what do you think about all these people and then i say michael avenatti i saw that tweeties wrote the other day and i said he could be the trump of 2020 the guy who's the outsider who like blows through the regular politician because he looks different in his game if bernie sanders had an ounce of avenetti's fearlessness he would have been the democratic nominee and we would have a much tougher time bernie doesn't have fearlessness not not like avenatti avenatti and i i've not done any due diligence on this game right he's got a fearlessness right and he's a fighter he's a fighter he's right i think he'll go through a lot of this field if he decides to stick with it like assisted grass now i don't happen to think a professional politician because i think we're in a new age i don't think a professional politician is going to be there at the end of the day i've always said it's going to be something like oprah or an avenetti or somebody that's more media savvy is going to be there but i think one thing people you think that's good i think it's i think it's just a reality of today i think you need to know how to handle mascara first if i can say one thing i do think this campaign after november 6 which is really trump's first reelect if we lose the house he's going to get impeached this is a referendum on him if we get past that if we get well if if if if we get past that i think in in 2020 you're going to have trump on the right uh a politician maybe a camilla harrison somebody on the left and i think you'll have a bloomberg or romney or somebody in the center i think it'll be a three-way round i hope so because if it's a three-way they will take away enough votes to make sure donald trump never wins again but let now now that we're talking about by the way his first term is going to be so successful look it's four percent growth we're so tired of winning steve economy's on i'll come back here i'll come back here during 2020 we'll talk about okay um but speaking of elections i would love to know what advice you would give to donald trump if he didn't leave even after he lost because i saw hillary clinton you're obsessed with this i am obsessed you're obsessed with this wait do you think he's not going to leave wait a second just because i know he's having the time because he's an insane narcissist who talks all the time about how we should have a president for life let me read what hillary said because you're right people have been saying i'm an alarmist and i'm crazy because i keep saying he's not going to leave even if he loses now crooked hillary is saying she said this she said you remember the moment in the third debate when trump refused to pledge that he would accept the result of the vote that's where it started he said it took my breath away even the moderator from fox news couldn't believe it i felt the foundations of our democracy tremble imagine if trump does the same thing in 2020 what happens now this is this is the reason she's not president i mean this is the kind of this is this is the kind of gobbledygook so you're saying he will go if he loses oh i don't think it's a question absolutely i mean it's not even i mean that's that's absurd but you didn't think you'd get fired well i remember remember remember you've got i'm just i'm just saying i only gave it one year i only gave it i only gave it one year i only gave him one read read the book i quote i will read the book but why why i mean he was mean to you he fired you he said mean things he does by everybody i've been working on this project i've worked on the populist movement for nine years i was on your show five years ago making a film about sarah palin yeah we were trying to drive this populist movement yeah you know donald trump came along at a time that this populist movement was starting to get going and he really took it ten years into the future i mean he was he was a guy that got it right away that had this populist tendencies understood economic nationalism and cut through an entire cut through the bush apparatus cut through the entire republican field and then took on the clintons and if bernie had had the type of fight and fearlessness that trump had he would won the democratic primary and then we would have had left-wing populism and right-wing populism fight it out in 2016. but you're a guy who is again the thing i've been saying that people were criticizing me for using the word treason and now i hear it more but you said the same thing you said the trump tower meeting was treason i said i said for paul manafort i corrected myself or whatever the the book had okay no no no look i and people people other people in the republican party disagree with me i don't think i don't think that meaning was appropriate i don't think you reach out to appropriate foreign sources i don't think you reach out to foreign appropriate is quite a bit less than true all you need it by the way all you needed was clinton cash we had done all the research we've created the book and done done the uh done the film to to show that clinton's corruption all you need to do is go into clinton cast the foundation when you see these people with those t-shirts that say i'd rather be with russia than a democrat what do you think about it here's what i think you see that can't be a positive no no no people would rather side with another country than america and and it can't be a positive development when when our own president attacks our own fbi can it look on the on the first thing is that the country's divided i mean the country's been divided before you're not going to hug this one divided i never remember lincoln going after the fbi i know there was no fbi lincoln went after some guys to to win no i think the president what the president you know is said and what these people are saying is that you know we're very divided now and it's not appropriate to say i'd rather be with russia than democrats but i think it shows you the vitra this film i just made trump at war i start with five minutes with don lemon kind of lecturing trump supporters why trump's not the racist why they're the racist okay and we intercut we intercut by the way because it's upping people's girls we intercut it with antifa kicking the out of guys in red ball cap oh steve i you know i know you i know you can put that idea in people's heads but just between me and you you don't believe it i know you don't i don't you i don't think you really think they're the racists and not your people you i don't think i do you don't think poppy some of populism isn't some of that really isn't that racist look at look in italy right now you got the five-star movement yeah you got the league the five-star movement is is is is so green they don't want a bullet train okay they're the populist movement and they're even saying hey we gotta stop the migrant issue because they're the ones who want to give a guaranteed income i don't populism populism is not based on racism right it's based on the little guy the little guy having a voice who you are always saying should have a voice yes you're actually a populist okay come back and let's talk just about that issue because i want to get into that with you and i know for both sort of students of history and you know you're good to come here but history not going to be kind steve thank you we'll see though huh all right i'll see you later steve madden

Channel: Real Time with Bill Maher

Views: 3,559,623

Rating: 4.3358984 out of 5

Keywords: Stephen K. Bannon, Trump @War, April Ryan, American Urban Radio Network, White House Correspondent, Under Fire, Reporting From the Front Lines of the Trump White House, Evelyn Farkas, NBC, MSNBC, President Obama, Max Brooks, Modern War Institute at West Point, Strategy Strikes Back, How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict, Neil deGrasse Tyson, National Geographic, StarTalk, Hayden Planetarium, Accessory to War, The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military

Id: egVlN-kBjZg

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 28 2018