Traveling with the trump campaign and this is cnn tonight. And now the hbo original series real time with bill maher start the clock i, everybody. How you doing? hi thank you. People thank you. How are you everybody hi. Thank you. Hi. All right i know exciting time of year. Thank you very much. You're very kind. Okay. Sit down. We got a big show. There's a lot to talk about. The election is only two months away. And, of course happens every time it's tied does it even matter who runs? every year? we do this. It's tied. It always comes down to a few thousand people in three states who can't make up their mind between two items on the menu you know the best thing, the best thing about living in california is that we're not a swing state. So they leave us alone. Really? i mean all year in l. A. i think i've seen one trump sign and scott baio was sleeping under it just a joke. We kid all in good fun. No, we have we have much bigger problems out here. It was 104 today. Here. It was 118 in the valley. Okay. I was sweating like j. D. Vance in a donut shop. I wow oh, it was hot kanye's wife asked him if she could put something on so she could take something off. I mean, it was but if you're a political watcher, it is getting exciting. Because the debate is tuesday a few days away. Are you excited about that 00, i cannot wait to see this thing trump and kamala. Trump says he doesn't know whether kamala's indian or she'll be black that night so he's preparing two sets of slurs oh, and this is great. They finally resolved the microphone issue of the debate. They've been arguing about this for weeks now. Kamala wanted the mics on when the other guy was talking so he could find out what a nut trump is. You know, like, not like we don't know. And trump wanted them off and trump won. The microphones will be off. And this is weird he also asked that my microphone be turned off i but very, very strict rules during this debate. No huddling with your advisers during the commercial breaks you only get when you're out there a pad paper and water and a kamala asked for tim walz. But other than that but look the democrats switched their strategy. You know, they used to be about democracy. Trump is threatening democracy, which he is but that shit didn't sell and democracy whatever. So they went to he's weird people love this this is selling. People are buying this one. And it's really upsetting. Trump because he was doing an interview with sean hannity and he's kind of obsessed with this weird thing he said, no walls is the one that's weird he didn't. He said he said j. D. Vance is a solid rock and then he said, and you know what? i'm a very solid rock. That's so trump. He always has to be better, even when he's calling you a rock, he has to be a better rock. I mean it's almost like it's weird, but but here's the other thing that we've seen this many times. We see it every election cycle. They're going through it again. The music that the republican plays at their rallies is not the beat of the people. They're playing to want. Don't play our music we hate you and bruce springsteen went through it. You two went through this. Jackson brown rage against the machine. Had to tell the guy look, we hate you. We think you are the machine that's why we're raging so now now, i think the isaac hayes estate is upset because trump has been playing. Hold on, i'm coming. And he said, no, you can't play. Hold on. I'm coming. And trump said, oh, what else am i ever going to hear that? come on and okay so two months of the election and again something we've seen before and now we see it every time russia is at it again interfering with our elections. We saw it when they got involved with facebook putting shit up there. Remember 2016. We saw it again in 2020. All social media now this time they're big on influencers, gamers. Any any place where real people are online. 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Save up to 25% on moving and storage for a limited time, and see why pods has been trusted. With over 6 million moves. But don't wait use promo code big 25 to save. Visit pods. Com today. Have i got news for you premieres next saturday at nine on cnn first up, he is a retired lieutenant general and the former white house national security adviser under president trump, whose new book is at war with ourselves. My tour of duty in the white house are h. R. Mcmaster is here hey general, how are you? great to see you. Great to meet you. Thanks for having me. Sure okay. Well, i never saw you smile like that when you were in the trump white house. I didn't know you. And first off, thank you for your service. Truly, i mean, that you have been. You were in pretty much every war in my lifetime. Well, not in vietnam. We were both too young for that. But desert storm back in the early 90s. Then you went back to iraq for the iraq war, and then afghanistan. Wow. Three wars in one lifetime. Do you think america gets in so many wars, or is that just part of that comes with the territory when you're a superpower? should we have been in all those or any of them answer any of these questions. Yeah well, i'll tell you, i think one of the themes that goes through the book is really what a privilege it is to serve and defend the country. And i got to i really you know you know, i got to be i got to be part of teams where the man or woman next to you is willing to give everything, including their own lives, for you. And what people don't understand a lot of times, bill is a good military unit. A good army unit takes on the character of a family, you know, and you're bound together by common trust purpose, and and really, you know, the willingness to sacrifice for one another, a sense of honor. And so it was a privilege to serve every day, i think, in the gulf war, you know it was obviously a just war in terms of saddam hussein's illegal annexation of of kuwait. I remember right after the wall fell, this was in in 1989, our our troop, our cavalry troop had been patrolling the east west german border when it happened. I remember i had like a silly argument with my wife right after she said you're just mad because you don't have an enemy anymore. Well, you know, thanks to saddam hussein you know, invading but he wasn't invading. It wasn't really our enemy, certainly not for the iraq war. Well, but if you if you think about like, what would be had nothing to do with nine over 11, well, no, i'm talking about the gulf war. I know, but what about when you go when you go to when you fast forward now to 2003. I think there's a consensus now that if it wasn't a big mistake, if it wasn't unjust to, to, to to wage that war, which i think it's important to understand saddam hussein was trying to convince all of us he had nuclear weapons because he thought that was the best way for him to prevent an attack. Of course, after nine over 11, that's the way to actually incite an attack against you so and then, of course, in afghanistan, the war in afghanistan followed, you know, the most murderous terrorist attack in history, where we lost 3000 people on nine over 11. Yeah but not by the country of afghanistan one guy who by the time we got to afghanistan was already in pakistan. But it was it was the taliban who played host to to the to al qaeda all through the 90s. Bill. Like, you know, remember, they you know, they had declared war on us in early 90s. We didn't take it seriously. Then there was the first world trade center bombing with the trucks underneath the world trade center. We fired a few cruise missiles called it a day. And so it is really necessary to defeat these enemies of all civilized people to take away their their safe havens. I couldn't i couldn't agree more. It's how we do it that we're arguing about. Do we need to occupy whole countries? i mean, what i read about your background and in your book, like when you were in afghanistan, a lot of what you were doing, if i could just sum it, maybe i'm summing it or summarizing it wrong, but sort of monitoring the bribery we were giving out. Is that is that wrong? i ran a counter corruption organized crime task force there that stood up way late. Yeah well, a friend of mine, a friend of mine general tony zinni, who's a fantastic person. Yeah. He called me up and said, hey congratulations on commanding the antigravity task force, you know, but but, you know but but really, what happened in afghanistan? i think bill, and, you know, i wrote my last book battlegrounds in large measure to explain this. What went wrong there? by the time i was confronting the problem of afghanistan, that i cover in detail in at war with ourselves, it hadn't been a 16 year war at that point in 2017, it had been a one year war fought 16 times over. And what happened is, i think, bill, our our short term approach to what was a long term problem actually lengthened that war and made it a heck of a lot more costly. And then the abandonment of the afghan people is such a tragedy. I mean it's still it causes heartbreak for me. I mean, let alone the afghans who are now thrust back. I see now women are not allowed to make any sounds in public women's voices are now outlawed. And i see all the college kids are upset and protesting that, oh no they're not. No, they're not fucking stupid anyway what i would say to the american soldiers and and servicemen and women who served in afghanistan who were heartbroken, disheartened by the disastrous withdrawal in august of 2021. I would say to them, look at what afghanistan is now and be proud of what you prevented and be proud of how you helped the afghan people enjoy that period of freedom from the taliban from 2001 to 2021. Remember the people in afghanistan lived under the hell of taliban rule from 96 to 2001. After the civil war. Now they got it again. They have it again. So you lasted 13 months under trump, which is pretty good, right? yeah, exactly. You know, you know, one of the many one of the many national security. I mean he had a lot of generals around him. I thought among the generals that was one of the smarter things he did. I mean, i look, i don't agree with everything. Probably you say or mattis or general kelly, they're probably a little more conservative than i am but i don't doubt that they're patriots. And smart people, good people, people who have america in mind first, they're not corrupt okay um i worry if trump wins again because i feel like there's two kinds of generals in the world. The kind i just described. Eisenhower would be another one. Petraeus really good people. I mean, smart people who sacrifice more before 9 a. M. Than most people ever do in their whole life. And then there's general flynn. Yeah or in another era, you know, general curtis lemay the one in the the guy i wrote about him in dereliction of duty, you know. Yeah. I mean, there's crazy ones during the cuban missile crisis, a lot of them wanted to start a nuclear war. What do you see for the next term? and who are the generals going to be around trump, then? well, you know i know all these guys and gals. You know, across our armed forces know i knew general flynn for many years. He was i'll tell you, bill, he was a full on qanon. I write about it in the book. I don't know what happened to him. I really don't, but i do know i do know that he was treated unfairly at the outset as national security adviser. He was kin