“First up, we have a podcaster.” That’s something of an understatement. It’s how Bill Maher introduced the first guest on this week’s episode of Real Time; the guest in question was California governor Gavin Newsom, whose recent foray into podcasting has gotten mixed reviews. If nothing else, though, Maher seemed to be an enthusiastic fan — even if he did open his interview with Newsom by asking why he needed multiple inspections for his new roof.
Newsom brought up one of last week’s guests in recommending Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance. He also nodded to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s recent Real Time interview, discussing the challenges of public works projects. “When we have an emergency mindset, it goes extremely well,” Newsome said. The question, then, was this: “How do you apply that in between emergencies?”
Newsom seemed aware of some of the criticism his new podcast had received. “Democrats — we tend to be a little more judgmental than we should be,” he told Maher.
Maher was interested in congratulating Newsom on some of the political positions he’d taken on the podcast thus far and his willingness to interview his ideological opponents, but he was also curious about something else: was Newsom laying the groundwork for a presidential run? “We don’t have time for the bullshit,” Maher said. Newsom declined to answer one way or another. “I don’t have any grand plans,” he told Maher — which you can interpret in a myriad number of ways.
Another podcaster, writer Rikki Schlott, joined Pronoun Trouble author John McWhorter for the evening’s panel. Maher offered a concise endorsement of McWhorter’s book, calling it “Timely, witty and tiny.”
McWhorter made a few memorable critiques of the recent national security leak on Signal. “Emojis on the page — it’s like the written equivalent of Lucky Charms,” he said. And later, he found an equally evocative image: “It’s like 12-year-olds doing Shakespeare.”
Maher raised the use of “they” as a singular pronoun and asked McWhorter his opinion. McWhorter pointed out that language evolves. He mentioned that he would prefer to see an entirely new gender-neutral personal pronoun, but argued that language itself made that difficult. “Pronouns are not really words. They’re like screws, nails,” he told Maher. “You have to use what you’ve got.”
A different type of linguistic discussion came up in the episode’s final segment, as Maher addressed the Republican Party’s overall mood of deference to Donald Trump — something Maher compared to the general mood in North Korea. “Can we see how it turns out before we put [Trump] on a stamp?” he asked at one point.
There was a larger component to that as well. “At the end of Trump’s first term, there were still some people who would occasionally correct him on little details, like, ‘You lost that last election,’” Maher said. Given that Maher is scheduled to visit the White House next week — at the behest of Kid Rock, no less — one can only imagine where the conversations might go.
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Plus political debate from Ezra Klein and Andrew SullivanOther notable moments from this episode:
- Things took an odd turn during Maher’s opening monologue, when he paused to remind one member of the audience that taking photos during the monologue is a party foul.
- Maher on the addition of corporate sponsors for the White House’s annual Easter egg roll: “Can you imagine how happy Elon would be if he got to fire the Easter Bunny?”
- Maher on the U.S. government’s upcoming automotive tariffs: “Kind of puts the whole ‘eggs are too expensive’ thing in perspective, doesn’t it?”
- There will be no new Real Time next week; the show will return on April 11.
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