ApocalypseThen

It's unfortunate that there are so many "one issue voters" who would vote against any politician that proposes any type of gun control legislation, but there are very few people like that on the other side. The NRA and the Republican Party must be really proud that they somehow managed to shift the Overton window to the point where even a lot of liberals start with "Well, we just have to accept that America will always have a shitload of guns and there isn't much we can do about that."

While it was nice that he didn't do another rant about the "woke mind virus" for a change, I agree that most of the atheist rant seemed recycled. Let's hope the 2-week break has a positive effect on the comedic aspects of the show.

Regarding Bill's point about overpopulation, I agree that society needs to think of a way to change a lot of its structures so that it doesn't rely on neverending population growth and GDP growth. While Galloway may be right that people should be incentivized to have kids and an extremely old population can be catastrophic, we should really be thinking about what the ceiling of our global and national populations should be and try to adjust accordingly. That doesn't mean having China's one-child policy but I hope people can come up with other solutions that aren't so draconian.

Agreed. There isn't enough data to show that the current cohort of "young people" is any dumber or less educated than previous generations. There are definitely worrying trends regarding the excessive use of social media, lack of sex people are having, protesting speakers at universities, etc. But Bill extrapolates that to "All young people are morons and a bunch of losers". I can imagine he's being hyperbolic to make his point but it's getting tiresome. He should realize that previous generations were probably saying the same thing about his generation after the invention of color TV, blockbuster movies, etc.

Wasn't the payment for her to keep quiet about the affair? I'm not sure if they're alleging other payments were made beyond that. From my understanding, the core legal issue is that the payment was not officially disclosed as a campaign expense. Trump's lawyer paid Daniels directly from his own money, which Trump later reimbursed him for. That said, I think Bill realized he messed up by going off on that "debate". It completely derailed the conversation.

I really enjoyed this episode. Even though I like Andrew Yang, Bill's mocking of his "Forward" party's fluff was the best part of the episode for me. Yang has really dropped the ball with his "party about nothing" that has no clear ideology or policies. I'm not against third parties but if this is the best anyone can come up with then there's no point in having them. I don't know if anyone else picked up on this but it seemed that Bill's attitude toward Yang changed the moment Yang made a joke about Bill being the only one on the panel who could remember stuff that happened in the 70s. You could see Bill was fuming about that and it was shortly after that he started referring to all that fluff from Yang's website. Bill's battle against "ageism" continues. Either way, credit to Bill for highlighting that! On the other hand, I wish more time had been devoted to Bill's claims regarding poverty. Bill was spewing the typical Reason Magazine libertarian nonsense akin to "Why are poor people complaining if they have a cell phone and can buy all this cheap stuff nowadays?". It's true that a lot of progress has been made in terms of how poor people live these days compared to the 20th century and before that, but that does not mean that the decline of the middle class and the current rate of poverty in the US is acceptable.

Agreed. I can accept that Bill has made this his main battle. There's no way around it. It reminds me of when Bill was talking about the "Islamic threat" in our society. He seemed to be overly obsessed with it. But given everything that is going on around the world and in the US, is it so difficult to have a wider variety of themes for New Rules at least? He should realize that this would also be a smart decision from a comedic standpoint. New Rules just feel stale when they're so repetitive.

As someone who likes to follow a wide variety of news sources and political podcasts, I would say that Brand's views are a lot more widespread in our society than people think. And it's not just "fringe nutcases" who have these beliefs. I agree with some of the core arguments that he makes, but his delivery is just not ideal for a show like Bill's (and I also find Brand insufferable at times). In a long-form podcast like Joe Rogan's or Sam Harris', there could actually be more of a back-and-forth that would allow one to flesh out those arguments properly. This would help to highlight their strengths while exposing their weaknesses. Taking Brand's claims regarding Fox News and MSNBC as an example, his core argument that they're both heavily biased and are essentially owned by big corporations is correct. However, MSNBC is NOT a propaganda machine the same way that Fox News is. Fox News goes a lot further in providing an alternative reality for its viewers and in being an unofficial mouthpiece for a political party. I think Bill made a mistake in moving on from the topic in order to have a superficial 5-minute discussion about Brexit. John Heilemann didn't really get a chance to respond to Brand's claims after giving the examples of Ivermectin/Joe Rogan and Rachel Maddow/vaccine transmission. While these were false equivalencies when compared to what Fox News did with Dominion and the election, they were good examples for highlighting the issues with groupthink and corporate influence that liberal news organizations also suffer from. Not surprisingly, when I found this part of the discussion posted on online platforms, you just get the two extremes - one side claiming it shows what an unhinged lunatic Russell Brand is and the other side claiming that Brand "schooled" Heilemann. Nothing even remotely nuanced. Overall, I prefer episodes like today's, which are more adversarial in nature. I think recently Bill has had too many episodes with guests who just sit there and agree 90%+ of the time. However, Bill needs to do a better job of moderating the discussions and allocating enough time to each segment.

Did anyone watch the Overtime segment? Sarah Isgur made a reference to Don Lemon's comments about "women's prime" that got him in hot water at CNN. Bill was squirming a bit and changed the subject. It almost looked like someone behind the camera gave him the signal to move on. 😂

To be fair to Bill, he's made this point more clearly in the past. This time it seems he rushed through it. From what I remember, Bill has mentioned that modern porn is much more "rapey" in nature, as it contains a lot more choking, violence, etc. He's probably right about that, though I haven't seen any authoritative studies about its impact on people. Regarding dating apps, I think he definitely goes overboard there. I know a lot of married couples who initially matched on a dating app. There are people who actually use those apps as a dating tool to meet people since they don't have the energy to "go hunting" in clubs or approach so many women in public places to ask them for their phone number. Of course, you have people who just use it for hookups, cat fishing scams, grooming, etc. But that's something that is difficult to avoid and at least when it comes to consensual hookups, I don't think anyone should be passing moral judgments. Especially Bill lol.

I enjoyed the episode as well, even though I'm skeptical about Malcolm Nance's portrayal of himself as some kind of middle-aged Rambo in Ukraine. Nance is the typical MSNBC war hawk who's always spewing jingoistic nonsense. If he did fight with Ukrainians in the front lines then credit to him, but I'd be inclined to believe he just had a desk job. Although the conversations in this episode were interesting, I feel Bill keeps missing out on some of the most interesting stories out there each week. This would have been a good week to invite someone like Matt Taibbi, given the Seymour Hersh story about the US and the Norwegians teaming up to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline. Most of the mainstream media isn't touching that story with a ten-foot pole. Finally, I find it hard to believe that Bill has completely flipped on DeSantis running for president. He's ALWAYS advocated for candidates to run whenever they're popular since they never know if they'll truly have a good chance in the future. He often gives the Obama example for that and juxtaposes it with Chris Christie not running in 2012.

So Bill calls millennials and Gen Z'ers a bunch of woke, lazy, and spoiled brats. He claims that Americans in general are a bunch of idiots who don't know anything. "America is a stupid country" as he always says. Yet somehow, we need to watch what we say about Trump voters and not insult them? We somehow need to get along? If anyone deserves the type of scorn that Bill gives to the woke mob, it's actually Trump voters. Bill really needs to try harder to find more consistency within all the claims he makes on his show. That being said I enjoyed this episode. My favorite part was Ioffe calling out Adkins during Overtime and he had no response. You can see he was really trying to hold back whatever he wanted to say. And credit to Bill for at least calling out Adkins with his "Well, Trump was nice to me" nonsense by comparing that to people saying OJ was nice to them back in the 90s.

I disagree about Welch. I'm a big fan of his "Fifth Column" podcast. He's more of a process libertarian rather than one of those "the government is evil and all government institutions need to be shut down" libertarian. Totally agree about Galloway. It's like he wanted to upstage Bill with his "bitter old man" routine. He was really condescending with his "I know better than these young lazy kids about what's best for them."

So Bill goes after Welch (rightfully) for his whataboutism regarding the election fraud issue, but then his advice to Biden is to do exactly the same with the MAGA crowd and the left? "Hey guys, these horrible MAGA people wanna destroy our democratic institutions and cause all sorts of chaos in the country. But let's not forget about those annoying woke leftists who are always fighting pronoun wars and canceling Jamie Foxx movies". That certainly wasn't one of Bill's brightest moments. I did enjoy Bill's closing monologue. Going after military spending and the military industrial complex is an issue that Bill has always been consistent on thankfully. And I'll admit that I always crack up when he makes gay jokes about Lindsay Graham. His anal probe joke was hilarious. I think that making gay jokes about Republican closet homosexuals who advocate against gay rights is totally justifiable.

I’m often one of the viewers in this forum defending the show, but I have no problem with admitting that this episode was horrendous. As others mentioned, Bill’s refusal to engage with Rampbell’s examples about the threats from the right made him look really bad. Bill came off as incoherent and idiotic, which I don’t think he often does despite his flaws. Rothman easily ranks among the worst guests that Bill has on. He’s “Rick Santorum” awful. I don’t remember even 5 minutes in which there was a meaningful discussion about any topic. Novak’s interview was fine, but his main point about “Let’s try to understand rednecks and get along” has been covered ad nauseam on the show.

While one could make the claim that Democrats tend to overemphasize the need for people to go to college, the reality is that employers will look at college degrees as a plus even if they're not necessarily needed for the specific job they're recruiting for. That's the reality of today's job market. Jobs that used to require only a BA degree are now asking for a Master's degree and so on. That puts people in a tough situation and under a lot more pressure to take on loans to complete degrees that they don't necessarily need. It would be great if the US had a system with stronger pathways to success in the job market with vocational training degrees like Germany does for example, but that won't be happening in the near future. Regarding that whole discussion about the lack of knowledge in the medical industry, Bill really takes it too far by implying that the science isn't settled on any medical issue. I think this is a slippery slope similar to the "alternative facts" people in politics like Alex Jones or the flat Earthers in Science. I know that health science tends to be more unreliable than other types, as so many of its claims have been debunked in a relatively short time period - the food pyramid, the supposed dangers of eating eggs, pharmaceutical products, etc. But Bill extrapolates that to dangerous levels. At times he sounds like Steve Jobs at his worst with his holistic medicine nonsense. I wonder what Bill would do if he actually gets a disease like cancer - fruit juice therapy and acupuncture?

I guess I'm in the minority yet again but I really enjoyed this episode. I also disagree that Bill is a misogynist. He's just prone to be an asshole from time to time (some would say all the time). This show I thought he handled Lis Smith quite well. She was being condescending (possibly without realizing it) after Bill called her out on Glenn Youngkin, he mocked her for always wanting to speak first even in a topic that she acknowledged she knew little about, and he gave her a bit of a look when she threw in a comment during New Rules (Bill hates when guests do that, regardless of who they are). That's just who Bill is. I've seen him do the same thing to guests that are meant to be close friends of his like Andrew Sullivan (he once mocked him coz he kept talking about his dead mom). I thought today's bit about Republican books about being macho was very funny. Bill has had a lot of misses with those lately. But with New Rules, it just feels too repetitive to come back to the obesity issue again. I actually tend to agree with most of what he says about it, but I'd prefer if he had a wider variety of topics for his closing monologue. It feels like cancel culture and obesity have been present in more than 70% of them. I felt that the topics had more of a focus this week, which made the show better. They were basically all about the midterm elections and how the population is perceiving Democrats and Republicans. Yet, it was a shame that two interesting topics were brought up at the very end and neither got much time - Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and the Democratic strategy to elevate fringe Republican candidates. They could have an entire show about these two topics alone and the major implications surrounding them. Finally, I hope Bill keeps inviting Matt Taibbi back to the show. He's definitely one of the best guests. It's a shame he didn't get more time to speak in this show.

I’m not sure if the two are directly connected, but I think these drag queen interactions with kids have gotten bad press lately due to drag queens doing stripper dances and catwalk shows in front of young kids. I saw some posts about that on Twitter and there was a lot of “internet outrage”. They didn’t really explain what the outrage was properly on the show. Regarding the trans/woke issues, I really wish Bill would bring someone on who could argue the opposing side. What’s the point of having both Sullivan and Herzog if they’re both going to say the exact same thing? And guess what? So is Bill! While Crossfire style discussions can be unbearable if both sides argue in bad faith, this is the type of wedge issue (like CRT) where Bill would really benefit from having opposing views in the panel to make the discussion more interesting.

Exactly. I don’t think Emba stated the main thesis of the book at any point. I’m not sure if it was because Bill didn’t let her talk for long enough or because Emba herself is a bad communicator. Bill made a point he’s made in the past regarding how porn has gottten a lot “rapier” over the last couple of decades and Emba agreed by using an anecdote from her book. Then she moved on to something completely different that was somewhat contradictory. The interview had a really strange flow.

That was embarrassing to watch. Bill didn't even have the decency to pull a Joe Rogan and go "Hey Jamie, could you look this up? Oh here it is, '2020 Stock Market Crash', my bad Krystal".

I listened to their podcast episode from a few days ago where they mention that Krystal Ball would be on Real Time on Friday. I was surprised to hear Kyle say that Bill's guests are asked for their take on a variety of issues ahead of the show. Krystal confirmed it to be true. I would have expected that from cable news shows but not Real Time. That's really inauthentic. I wonder if that's a recent development or if Real Time has been doing that from the start. I enjoyed the show overall. I think Bill needed a guest like Krystal Ball who can articulate clearly why the left is really annoyed at Biden. The Republican talking point that Biden is a crazy socialist is beyond ridiculous. I see Krystall Ball as one of the few "reliable lefties", like Thomas Frank as another example, who Bill invites somewhat frequently and can hold their own against him and the other guests. This Kirchik guy complaining that Biden had antagonized the Saudis and the oil industry was laughable. The US still gives huge subsidies to the oil industry and sells an endless amount of weapons to the Saudis. Bill chose a good news story for the new rules segment, but then he had to ruin it with his millennials rant. He had to go back to his "nobody wants to hire millennials because they're whiny and lazy" schtick. At least he didn't use the term "cancel culture" this time. Yay!

I don't think Bill's point about "manly men" last week and his point about Will Smith being a dick this week are contradictory. Will Smith behaved like an entitled idiot engaging in violence for a stupid reason, as opposed to a "manly man" like Zelenskyy who has displayed bravery when leading his country during a crisis. Yet, to connect that incident to "cancel culture" by liberals to the extent that Bill did seemed somewhat desperate. Is being an entitled Hollywood asshole equivalent to the cancel culture mob? Bill was really reaching there... I agree with other posters that this has been the best New Rules segment for quite a while. It's a reminder that no matter how bad Democrats may get, the Republican Party is a cesspool of creeps and nutcases that does a hell of a lot more damage to the country. It's depressing to think that a lot of those people Bill highlighted are likely to get elected to Congress in November.

It looks like I'm in the minority here but I really enjoyed this episode. Whatever you may think of Vivek Ramaswamy and Marianne Williamson, they at least have some interesting points of view IMO. They had some pretty good discussions, which forced Bill to take the back seat for a change. I prefer this type of panel, in which the guests have heated discussions about some topics but manage to find some common ground. As opposed to the panels in which guests agree with each other on everything or are polar opposites on every issue. Those figures regarding the relief money were insane - 72% going to the top 20%. I think Bill does have a point regarding Americans' reluctance to pay more taxes. While some people are just greedy assholes, others do care a lot about the fact that the money goes to the wrong people. Partly why people in Scandinavian countries accept the higher tax rates is because they trust the government to allocate the money the right way. US federal and state institutions have a big trust deficit with the American people in this regard.

Just caught up with this episode today. I have to say it's a weak start to the season. Ritchie Torres looks like the Democrat version of Marco Rubio, just speaking in robotic soundbites without saying anything interesting. Was this guy elected because he resembles Obama? I don't think Bari Weiss's rant about "getting over COVID" deserved the level of backlash it got in the news, but I agree that she rarely ever says anything interesting. She's very effective at self-promotion. She's making bank now being in the top 10 political newsletters from Substack. She created that fake narrative that she was cancelled from the NY times and it worked for her. I hope more interesting topics are discussed in future episodes. The Academy museum and West Side Story discussions were a waste of time.

I'll give Ralph Reed some credit for being a "good sport" in going along with a lot of Bill's jokes, but he's still just a pathetic hypocrite for the most part. I remember him as a guest a few years ago justifying the religious right's support for Trump, with the typical "We know he's a flawed man...". Yeah the same people who kept saying that Bill Clinton should be impeached because he wasn't a "moral person" for having an affair. Reed did seem to get the cliff notes about what was actually written in the Afghanistan deal, but no one pushed back on the implications of his arguments. I really wish someone would have asked him "Ok Ralph, so the Taliban broke the deal, how long do you think we should stay in Afghanistan based on that?" Also, as far as we know, the Taliban had nothing to do with the attack at the airport. So they did stick to the main parts of the deal. Yet, like Bill said, they are THE TALIBAN after all. Did anyone really have a Homer Simpson approach to this thinking they were trustworthy? "Oh Mr. Burns, I think we can trust the president of Cuba." While I've never watched late night talk shows beyond YouTube clips, I wonder if they've ever been much different. These guys tend to play it safe and they know they have an older, liberal audience. Gutfeld is a moron and I doubt his show has any clever takes on making fun of liberals. I'm guessing partly why it's doing well with ratings is that he has no competition from the right wing, whereas the others have to compete against each other.