The Ben Shapiro Show - Dennis Miller | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 47

00:00:00.000 I look at people in Hollywood and I think they're a little haunted by their good fortune.

00:00:03.000 So they're trying to legitimize themselves now by being, you know, professorial and I've got some wisdom here and you're thinking you're the fifth lead on Full House.

00:00:13.000 You know?

00:00:24.000 Hey, hey, and welcome.

00:00:25.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special with our guest, Dennis Miller.

00:00:28.000 Dennis, by the way, is the host of the Dennis Miller Option, which is available for free.

00:00:32.000 You can listen or subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts on the Westwood One Podcast Network.

00:00:38.000 We'll start talking with Dennis in just one second.

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00:01:58.000 Well, Dennis Miller, thanks so much for showing up to the Sunday special.

00:02:00.000 You look surprised to be here a little bit.

00:02:01.000 I watched the Matt Walsh episode and... Why?

00:02:05.000 Well, I didn't know enough about him.

00:02:07.000 I hear his name come up, but I also wanted to see the lay of the land.

00:02:10.000 And it was beautiful because he was so heartfelt about his religious beliefs.

00:02:14.000 And when he would lean in to make a point to you, one of these heat lamps over his head would perfectly frame his head like a halo.

00:02:20.000 And I said, this is Walsh speaking in encyclical.

00:02:24.000 That laugh right there would just frame his head perfectly.

00:02:28.000 So for people who have fallen out of touch with you, what have you been doing lately?

00:02:31.000 I want to go back all the way in a second to the beginnings of your career, from birth to now, to get the whole life story.

00:02:36.000 But what are you up to these days?

00:02:38.000 Um, I go out on the road and do my stand-up.

00:02:41.000 I just did a special, um, called, uh, Fake News, Real Jokes.

00:02:47.000 That was my ninth special.

00:02:48.000 I go out with Mark Stein periodically.

00:02:50.000 We go out and have, uh, it's a little less comedy, but it doesn't turn into a think piece either.

00:02:55.000 It's kind of funny, but, uh, we take questions from the audience and that.

00:02:58.000 But as far as a television show, I, I, I live up north and I'm not exactly into man now anyway, so it sort of dovetails.

00:03:07.000 At 65 years old, I'm not one of these people who always wanted to hustle it into the barn.

00:03:12.000 I worked hard my whole life.

00:03:14.000 I'd like to travel a little.

00:03:15.000 I'm trying to read everything that P.G.

00:03:17.000 Woodhouse wrote.

00:03:20.000 That's a task in itself.

00:03:22.000 And I like to go hiking and that.

00:03:24.000 So when people say to me, now, what are you doing now?

00:03:26.000 It's enjoying the fruits of busting my tail in the mining town that is Hollywood for the last 35 years.

00:03:33.000 So quick question about that special.

00:03:35.000 So the special is great.

00:03:35.000 I watched it last night, actually.

00:03:37.000 And you know, it didn't get distribution at someplace like Netflix.

00:03:41.000 You said you're not in demand.

00:03:42.000 Why do you think that is, that you're not in demand?

00:03:45.000 Well, you know what?

00:03:46.000 You can do the thing about your political beliefs, but I don't.

00:03:50.000 I think that sounds whiny.

00:03:52.000 You make a choice to talk out loud and let the chips fall where they may.

00:03:56.000 If I had to say, I'm 65, I don't want to bang that drum again, but did you, I mean, who gets really infrequently, you know, do you get super hot when you're 65 years old?

00:04:08.000 I've had a beautiful run.

00:04:09.000 I think things are in a suitable denouement.

00:04:11.000 It's not like, it's not like I can't do anything, but I, my choices are limited to some degree, but it seems to me that it's completely where it should be.

00:04:22.000 Like I said, what do I have in common with a 65 or with a 25-year-old kid?

00:04:27.000 You know, if I sit down with many 25-year-old kids who are friends of my son's, then they're also nice.

00:04:35.000 But when I watch somebody like AOC, I'll abbreviate the, I guess that's the new lexicon, But when I watch her, I think, well, this is so obviously ill-informed.

00:04:47.000 But they're enamored of her vivacity, the fact she'll use social media.

00:04:54.000 It's not a fact-based exchange they have with her.

00:04:57.000 They just like the fact that she's flipping the table on the old school.

00:05:01.000 So I get all that, and I think, well, why would I appeal to them?

00:05:05.000 I don't want to be the buzzkill that comes in and, you know, does that, you know, Falcon and the Snowman discussion, you know, between the dad and the kid at lunch where you're I don't want to turn this into sort of a nostalgia play, are you grousing about the young, but I look at AOC in the same way that I look at some of the comedians that I see working today, and that is enthusiasm over skill.

00:05:31.000 Do you get that impression also, that there's a real draw toward the enthusiastic and the authentic as opposed to the craft, like actually working through things?

00:05:42.000 Well, the craft, I think, is... Listen, there's some guys who are beautiful technicians, and they literally would do syllable counts and peel it back.

00:05:50.000 But the main directive, obviously, with comedy has always been getting laughs.

00:05:55.000 Now, you can go out and do it in a myriad of ways.

00:05:58.000 There are physical comedians, there are, you know, intellectual comedians.

00:06:01.000 You see some guys and you think, wow, that's so smart.

00:06:04.000 But for the most part, it's all about the prime directive of getting laughs.

00:06:08.000 I've noticed the change is more tectonic In that it's turned everybody's comedy act almost into an impersonator act.

00:06:17.000 Like impressionists used to do, they'd go, what if Jack Nicholson was working at the Burger King?

00:06:23.000 And I was always bridal, I had that, I lacked that gene where I could go with that, where I'd say, time out, he's one of the highest paid actors in the world, why is he working at a fast food place?

00:06:32.000 You know, I could even go there.

00:06:34.000 But they do it and then at the end people applaud.

00:06:37.000 And that's sort of what humor is now.

00:06:39.000 Like people will make a bold statement and get applause instead of big laughs.

00:06:44.000 That's weird to me.

00:06:44.000 It's sort of a short-circuited the primal thing that it's an involuntary gesture where somebody says something funny and you don't have to intellectualize it.

00:06:53.000 You just find yourself.

00:06:55.000 And that's the cool part of it.

00:06:57.000 Now it's people going, Hmm.

00:06:59.000 And so that's a big change for comedy.

00:07:02.000 The term that I've heard used about this is claptor, that people are not actually laughing anymore, they're just, they're clapping and this is the Hannah Gadsby version of comedy where you have think pieces now about why for thousands of years we've actually been getting the entire concept of comedy wrong.

00:07:15.000 It's not that we're supposed to laugh at things, it's supposed to, if we laugh at things it's actually bad.

00:07:19.000 We're supposed to think about things and then the thinking is the humor.

00:07:23.000 It seems to me that we are reshifting the entire nature of humanity around what a bunch of very politically driven people want it to be because I mean I'm old enough to remember when Jay Leno was on television and trying to be funny and now you've got people on TV in late night who I don't even know if they're trying to be funny anymore.

00:07:39.000 I mean legitimately.

00:07:40.000 I think that Fallon may be the only late night host who's even making an occasional attempt to be funny.

00:07:44.000 I don't know what your opinion is of the Well, I think Jimmy's a great entertainer, and I like that about him.

00:07:51.000 I think that you have to understand, if you want to... At some point, you would lose those jobs if you... Look, look how good Jimmy is at it.

00:07:59.000 Jimmy Fallon.

00:08:01.000 I've been on Jimmy Kimmel.

00:08:02.000 He was nice to me, so I don't have an axe to grind there.

00:08:05.000 I disagree with him on many things, but he's also great at it in his own way.

00:08:09.000 But Jimmy's the entertainer to me.

00:08:11.000 Look how much trouble he got in for a simple...

00:08:14.000 hair fluff with Donald Trump.

00:08:16.000 It's almost over for him at that point.

00:08:19.000 Really, he's had the rally.

00:08:22.000 There is an individual's choice at some point to keep a great job.

00:08:26.000 Now, listen, you can say you should make your statement, you should speak your mind.

00:08:30.000 If you're a 45-year-old Jimmy Fallon, who seems like a delightful guy, the times I've met him over the years, good kid, makes me laugh offstage, deadly funny.

00:08:39.000 He's got the catbird seed.

00:08:40.000 He hosts what Johnny Carson used to do.

00:08:42.000 They didn't even make him leave from New York.

00:08:44.000 He loves New York.

00:08:46.000 He's probably knocking off $30 million a year all in.

00:08:50.000 And they say to you, well, listen, no more pro-Trump stuff.

00:08:56.000 They won't even state it, but it's like the old mob hit movies where they compartmentalize it.

00:09:01.000 They'll have to deal with you with extreme prejudice.

00:09:03.000 You would eventually not have that gig.

00:09:06.000 It's just the truth.

00:09:08.000 Jimmy could not go out there now and espouse anything on that side.

00:09:12.000 I think at that point it's – with Deion Sanders, whenever he does NFL football, somebody won't, like, stretch out for a pass.

00:09:20.000 They'll, like, short-arm it so they don't get lit up, and Deion Sanders will go, business decision!

00:09:26.000 And that's the purest thing of – at some point you have to understand the hierarchy would whack you if you went out every night and did a – And this is where I feel like contrary to your own perception of yourself, I think that there probably is a growing market for somebody like you actually saying things that are both funny and somewhat conservative simply because if you look at Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy, like I remember when he used to do the sports thing on Kevin and Bean on 106.7 like I remember when he used to do the sports thing on Kevin and Bean on 106.7 out here

00:09:55.000 And when he was doing his show with Adam Carolla on Comedy Central and the humor came first and now he's the Pope of late night, right?

00:10:00.000 He gets up there and he's going to rail about Obamacare and cry on TV about Obamacare.

00:10:06.000 And I just think to myself, well, isn't like, where's the other side of this equation?

00:10:10.000 Where are the, every funny comedian seems to be He has to check that box for a cloaking mechanism.

00:10:14.000 it, that's not enough.

00:10:15.000 You have to at least make overtures toward being politically woke if you're going to survive in this.

00:10:19.000 Even guys I like, like I think John Mulaney is really funny.

00:10:23.000 I think Mulaney, he will have to at some point in his show just dump on a certain portion of the country so that he can get his woke cred in order so that he can go about doing his normal business.

00:10:34.000 I mean, isn't that leaving half the country out of the equation?

00:10:36.000 He has to check that box for a cloaking mechanism.

00:10:38.000 If he doesn't, everything else in his act will be shot through the prism of, is he not woken up?

00:10:43.000 It's So yeah, is it easier to strew it throughout so you look woke for an hour and you're doing some type of jokes?

00:10:50.000 Or is it better just in the middle like a sorbet you cleanse your palate with, just come out with a thing and hold up a picture of Trump with horns and a trident?

00:11:00.000 You know, you can work both ends of that, but in the middle you've laid... It's odd to me how it's demanded that you establish that.

00:11:12.000 I won't do that. 0.99

00:11:13.000 There are times I think Trump's a buffoon. 0.94

00:11:15.000 There are other times I think Trump's great at what he does. 0.96

00:11:19.000 He's an infinitely better president in my eyes than he was a host of The Apprentice.

00:11:23.000 There were times I'd watch him on The Apprentice and say, This is so stilted and weird and awkward and ego-driven.

00:11:31.000 But there are days I watch him as the president, and I think, you know, when I see those union guys being let into the Oval Office and him just saying, God, take some pictures.

00:11:42.000 And the guy starts crying, thinking about his dad, who's the, you know, the boilermaker who never got anywhere near that.

00:11:49.000 I always think, wow, in an odd way, The most patrician of these guys.

00:11:54.000 I shouldn't say patrician, but the billionaire guy comes in and he has a stranglehold on what the hoi polloi mean.

00:12:00.000 I'm fascinated by that.

00:12:02.000 I think it was all those years of him in a hard hat walking through construction sites with the power tie on, but he also has to cohabitate with all these cats who are throwing the building up where he has nothing.

00:12:13.000 Something gave him these proletariat chops, which I admire about him. 1.00

00:12:17.000 You know, whenever they say, just this morning, Ben, well I shouldn't let you ask questions, Bob wants to rant here, but I saw again this morning that a couple of Democratic candidates, Castro, I forget his name, is it Julian?

00:12:31.000 Yeah, Julian Castro.

00:12:32.000 Julian Castro.

00:12:34.000 Somebody else that Trump reminds him of the Third Reich.

00:12:36.000 Yeah, Beto.

00:12:37.000 Yeah, Beto.

00:12:38.000 And I always look at this stuff and I think, oh, for God's sakes, do you not see that you're not being clever about how you're playing this guy?

00:12:44.000 If you do hate him, if you do hate what he wants, if you want him out, to throw down the Hitler thing.

00:12:50.000 And then here's even the backup plan on that.

00:12:52.000 If you say, Well, listen, when you say he's Hitler-like, obviously my flash card in my head is the systematic liquidation of six million of his fellow human beings.

00:13:03.000 I haven't seen anything like that from Trump.

00:13:04.000 And they'll say, oh, of course I didn't mean that.

00:13:07.000 And you'll say, well, what other Hitler peccadillo were you seizing on? 0.98

00:13:11.000 You know, the shitty mustache, the bad house painter reviews on Angie's List, of course when you sing. 0.98

00:13:19.000 So again, this morning, even today, you've got Beto O'Rourke positing himself as a young hipster. 0.98

00:13:26.000 A young hipster does not come in and say the man in the Oval Office right now, to me, it's such an awkward, clumsy overplay, is like Adolf Hitler. 1.00

00:13:36.000 It's so stupid to me. 0.98

00:13:38.000 I think when you say eventually people will come around, I think that they might have to, because I always think they have to come out of this fevered state where they go, wait, if I want to beat this guy, I've got to stop giving him freebies by calling him Adolf Hitler. 0.99

00:13:54.000 And then he proves himself not Hitler and other people are going, I'll vote for him. 0.99

00:13:57.000 I mean, this has been kind of my view of what this political moment originally was in the first place, which is they called Mitt Romney Hitler. 0.87

00:14:02.000 I mean, Joe Biden went out there and suggested that Mitt Romney, the most anodyne human being who has yet to walk the earth, was going to put black people back in chains.

00:14:11.000 And then I think the Republican Party and a lot of people in the middle of the country, they just said, you know what?

00:14:15.000 Giant middle finger.

00:14:16.000 Giant middle finger with orange hair.

00:14:17.000 Let's do this thing, man.

00:14:18.000 And they just voted for Trump in the primaries as that.

00:14:21.000 And that's the moment we live in.

00:14:23.000 Mitt wouldn't step up.

00:14:24.000 How unrequited people felt.

00:14:26.000 Even if they liked him, they thought, well, listen, I have this guy over for a toddy, but for God's sakes, you're going to need a dock fighter in there. 0.96

00:14:35.000 You remember, I look back at Mitt Romney and I think, I remember him saying that our biggest geopolitical threat was Russia.

00:14:45.000 It's so funny to me that Obama did the hipster thing, attention, 1998, you know, and I thought they're just ridiculing this man.

00:14:58.000 And then the moment, five minutes after Trump won that election, and they're up in that, they can't believe it, up in Hillary land.

00:15:06.000 They immediately trigger the doomsday machine, which is Russia's back. 0.97

00:15:11.000 Blame him for Russia.

00:15:12.000 And I thought, it is so crazy how they shift those things.

00:15:15.000 I keep waiting for a younger candidate on the Democratic side to be hip enough to come out and deny all the overplays and establish himself somewhere in the middle.

00:15:25.000 It's such an easy sister soldier moment to come out on a couple of these things, for Beto O'Rourke to just step up and say, obviously he's not Adolf Hitler.

00:15:33.000 Here's what he is.

00:15:34.000 And, you know, lay out a few things that they have problems with.

00:15:37.000 I can't believe, that shows me how threatened they are on that side, that nobody can see that play.

00:15:42.000 Maybe this, I don't even know how to say his name.

00:15:44.000 Buttigieg? 0.60

00:15:44.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.60

00:15:45.000 He's been the only one who's made any sort of, yeah.

00:15:47.000 Maybe he sees it and thinks, geez, I can go for mayor, president, because there's a whole big, probably 45 percent that are predisposed to go directly against Trump in this next election.

00:15:58.000 I don't even know if there'll be a third party.

00:16:00.000 There probably will be, but you probably have to nibble at 6% max or 5.1% max.

00:16:08.000 Or if there's a third candidate, you might not even have to get the 50.

00:16:11.000 Somebody should be smart enough two years out to say, I got to disengage myself from this pack that is overplaying their hand with Trump and look like the person that the moderates will vote for.

00:16:21.000 Because I do think 45 are voting for him, 45 are not voting for him, and you've got to start making sense to those 10, and I don't think you're making sense to them over playing your hand with Trump, especially when the jobless claims are down to, what, 49-year lows?

00:16:36.000 But, you know, for me a big thing, and I always hear it, or I don't hear it hit enough, is there were missiles flying over Japan from that nutcase around two years ago, testing them. 0.90

00:16:47.000 At any point has he lobbed those missiles?

00:16:50.000 One could have blown up over Japan, you've got World War III.

00:16:53.000 Yeah, almost have to start it.

00:16:55.000 The fact he's not testing him anymore is a huge thing.

00:16:57.000 Those are sitters at the net that a wise, moderate Democrat would step in and start a sentence by saying, here's what I like about Trump.

00:17:04.000 And then, and this is the shorter part of the sentence, that's all you'd have to do if you were a moderate Democrat.

00:17:10.000 But do that, and boy, I'm telling you, it would be an intoxicant to a lot of undecided voters.

00:17:15.000 So in a second I want to ask you about the future of the Republican Party and then I want to get back into your history and how you got into all this stuff for folks who don't know your story.

00:17:22.000 But first, what helps you fall asleep?

00:17:24.000 Noise machines?

00:17:24.000 Essential oils?

00:17:25.000 Some silly device attached to your mouth? 0.99

00:17:27.000 What if the reason that you're actually not sleeping is that your mattress sucks because it wasn't designed for that? 1.00

00:17:32.000 For you. 0.93

00:17:32.000 You just got a generic mattress, but you're not a generic human. 0.93

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00:18:46.000 All righty, so I want to ask you about the future of the Republican Party.

00:18:49.000 We're talking about the Democrats who are off the track.

00:18:51.000 They seem to be disconnected from at least a huge percentage of the American public.

00:18:55.000 Where do you think the future of the Republican Party lies?

00:18:57.000 Because I do think that there is a certain mythos that's been built up about President Trump as sort of great political figure when, in fact, statistically, he performs basically in line with how George W. Bush performed in a lot of the swing states, how Mitt Romney performed actually in a lot of the swing states.

00:19:11.000 What do you think the future of the Republican Party is?

00:19:13.000 You were always saying that you were socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

00:19:16.000 Do you think that we're moving in a more libertarian direction or a more populist direction?

00:19:19.000 Where do you think the future of the conservative movement lies?

00:19:21.000 Real quickly, just let me put a button on the Dem side of this.

00:19:25.000 I think Hillary is going to be the unlikeliest cavalry riding over the hill. 1.00

00:19:29.000 You think she's coming back?

00:19:32.000 I'm looking at her relative silence, not all the time, and I think somebody has told her, listen, the less they see you, the better you play.

00:19:43.000 You should stay out of the way.

00:19:44.000 We've got a circular shooting range here.

00:19:47.000 You've got 18 guys, 14 of them shouldn't have driver's licenses for God's sake.

00:19:53.000 They could not pass the ACT test, half these people. 1.00

00:19:57.000 You should shut up, come in at the end and say, and when they say, you said you weren't going to run, say, they demanded it.

00:20:04.000 I don't want to. 0.93

00:20:05.000 I'm doing this for the good of the country.

00:20:06.000 That's where I think the Democrats are going.

00:20:08.000 I would not be surprised.

00:20:09.000 Especially with Biden falling apart.

00:20:11.000 I mean, what do you make of all the accusations about Biden and his candidacy, which seems to be on the ropes this early?

00:20:15.000 Biden should get back to his actual job, which is being the third guy in the car on a Sonic commercial.

00:20:20.000 You know, for years, I've been hearing about what a genius Joe Biden is.

00:20:25.000 And to me, he's one of those big, glad-handing doofuses who went into the bubble when he's 29, he's 75, and every time I see him, he's there, I don't want, drawn to this reluctantly, but I have to help.

00:20:37.000 And Joe, if you're out there and you watch Ben, and you know, probably you do, I want to tell you, stop helping me.

00:20:44.000 I let you free.

00:20:45.000 Go out and help yourself.

00:20:47.000 At age 75, because at this point, to me he's more unhinged, shakier than a rescue dog in Phil Spector's house.

00:20:55.000 And when they always act like he's avuncular, I think, I guess I'm missing that.

00:20:59.000 Because to me he's the sort of guy who looks like he thinks bottled water tastes better after you shake it.

00:21:05.000 So I think Biden is going to go in, he's going to get eaten for the reason that they created.

00:21:10.000 They birthed this monster, this whole thing about.

00:21:14.000 Now, do I find it weird that Joe Biden's leaning in on strangers and smelling their hair?

00:21:20.000 I guess it's fetishistic or something.

00:21:22.000 I don't know.

00:21:22.000 I don't know what that is.

00:21:23.000 Do I think that should be a reason he doesn't run for president?

00:21:26.000 No.

00:21:27.000 Do I think that might end up being a reason?

00:21:29.000 Yeah.

00:21:29.000 I mean, that's where it's at right now.

00:21:31.000 But they started this stuff.

00:21:33.000 You know, if anybody out there, that's one thing we should be able to agree to in this culture.

00:21:36.000 If you said, which way is political correctness coming from, the left or the right?

00:21:41.000 I think anybody would have to concede between college professors and Hollywood social media doyens that mostly the left demands that you walk in a very tight lockstep. 0.90

00:21:52.000 I've been on both sides of this issue over the years, and I can tell you the people on the right side-o up to their ass-kicking a lot easier than the left does. 0.92

00:22:01.000 Christians are almost used to it. 0.99

00:22:03.000 Are they calling for anybody's heads?

00:22:05.000 You know what I mean?

00:22:07.000 They regularly get poke fun at, and they kind of move on with it.

00:22:10.000 The left's the one who have gotten so PC now that Biden probably will be done in by the same thing that he now has to cater to.

00:22:18.000 It's weird to watch him walk this Walenda thing, and the same week he has to go back and apologize for his performance at the Anita Hill thing.

00:22:27.000 He also has to say that I didn't really mean it when I lean in, but now he has to qualify that and say, I see that the space is different now.

00:22:37.000 I'll try to modulate.

00:22:38.000 And I think, wow, it is a hard job over there keeping up on the daily PC casting list, which they know.

00:22:46.000 And that's exactly right, especially because the same week that Joe Biden is doing all of this stuff, the entire Democratic Party descended and paid homage to Al Sharpton.

00:22:54.000 Right, who's like one of the worst people in human history.

00:22:57.000 And they're all going to the National Action Network and they're pretending like he's some sort of great political kingmaker, you know, three decades after he pulled the Jussie Smollett with Tawana Browley.

00:23:07.000 I, you know, I met him once and I couldn't call him Reverend.

00:23:10.000 You know, I interviewed him once.

00:23:12.000 I said, listen, I can't do the Reverend thing.

00:23:14.000 You know, I must admit, it was pretty, it was pretty easy about it.

00:23:18.000 I just said, there's too much, you know, there's too much You know, you read about that haberdasher up in Harlem who ended up getting killed?

00:23:27.000 I mean, this is rough stuff when you make these accusations that are false.

00:23:32.000 So I don't respect Al Sharpton at all.

00:23:36.000 And by the way, that weight loss, I think he just got to a point where he had so violated the sacrosanct promise of not overusing the minibar on speaking engagements that he actually had to cut it out of his rider, and that's when he got thin.

00:23:50.000 I think that man was entirely filled with a gray goose and Toblerone.

00:23:54.000 It just turned into a Macy's balloon.

00:23:56.000 Everybody sees him now.

00:23:58.000 What are you doing?

00:23:58.000 Did you cut out carves?

00:23:59.000 No, I f***ed up on the minibar so much they had to take it out of my ride.

00:24:03.000 But now all of a sudden, to watch them kiss his ring is just unbelievable to me.

00:24:10.000 And that's what I mean about that 10% in the middle.

00:24:13.000 45, 45 are going to go against him or for him.

00:24:17.000 That 10 in the middle, I think, sees stuff like that and says, oh, really?

00:24:20.000 Is he the gatekeeper now on all this?

00:24:22.000 He's not even a good guy.

00:24:24.000 Now, you had asked me before about where do I think the Republicans are going.

00:24:28.000 I don't know.

00:24:28.000 I haven't paid attention to the Republicans.

00:24:30.000 It's not Republican.

00:24:31.000 It's Trump.

00:24:32.000 And in an odd way, he has turned out to be very conservative.

00:24:36.000 I mean, he's led, I would say, on most big issues.

00:24:40.000 You're more conservative than me.

00:24:41.000 I'm pretty conservative.

00:24:43.000 He's done pretty well as far as checking conservative boxes, hasn't he?

00:24:47.000 Well, certainly with regard to tax cuts, with cutting regulation, with appointing conservative judges, moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

00:24:53.000 He's done a lot of great stuff.

00:24:55.000 I mean, the one area where I think the Republican Party continues to be a giant fail is, of course, on spending and entitlements.

00:25:00.000 And they will be a fail for as long as any party can be a fail.

00:25:03.000 Yeah, he has failed on that.

00:25:04.000 This is the reason stuff that I think he can talk about, where they should talk about it with him.

00:25:09.000 Yeah, we're spending our ass off.

00:25:10.000 I don't think we're spending At the same speed that we did under Obama, but certainly it's not enough of a thing where you go, oh, he's notched back on that.

00:25:21.000 I think that I can't judge Republicans because I don't feel Republicans been in there.

00:25:26.000 I feel an unlikely conservative guy.

00:25:28.000 I view Trump as the guy.

00:25:31.000 We got to the place where this whole thing, if they had had another eight years to sort of cement, solidify, smooth over, appease, tamp down problems with Hillary's dossier and all that.

00:25:48.000 If they'd had another eight years to do that, I don't think this country was coming back.

00:25:52.000 And when people say, well, what do you mean coming back?

00:25:53.000 That sounds apocalyptic.

00:25:55.000 I just mean it would have turned into some huge sort of Scandinavian country.

00:26:00.000 And it would have been, you know, people over here are such hustlers, it would have been Scandinavia because everybody would have been beating the system and you wouldn't have shot for the moon anymore.

00:26:08.000 All that stuff.

00:26:09.000 Trump, I think, is what would have changed if Hillary got in. 1.00

00:26:11.000 I think it would have become a single-payer health care system.

00:26:14.000 I think all these things kind of are not the country I grew up excited about where you went for it.

00:26:19.000 So that's all I'm saying.

00:26:20.000 What happened?

00:26:21.000 Do I think it would turn into a roundup for everybody?

00:26:24.000 No, I don't want to be apocalyptic about it.

00:26:26.000 Trump actually turned around and said, now what about self-determinism?

00:26:29.000 What about we go for it as individuals?

00:26:34.000 And then that makes the yield curve go up.

00:26:36.000 So I admire him for that.

00:26:38.000 That's what I like about the country.

00:26:40.000 I like a can-do attitude, and I was always puzzled.

00:26:44.000 The most enamored I ever was of Michelle Obama as I saw her speaking one night on TV, and she was talking about how her father, who she adored beyond all others, would come home in between shifts and take an hour at home.

00:26:58.000 and bounce her on her lap as a young girl, and then he'd go back out, leave.

00:27:04.000 You know, it's almost like caveman stuff.

00:27:06.000 You leave the cave to procure meat for the young ones.

00:27:09.000 And imagine, you have your dad, he's smiling at you, he's come from a busted-ass job, he's going to another.

00:27:15.000 Imagine a young girl sitting there, "Wow, there's a man for you." And then later in life, I thought, "Why do you want to turn this stuff over to Chuck Schumer?" You know what I mean?

00:27:23.000 Why do you want your old man's government to be in charge of what was the most important moment in your life? 0.87

00:27:30.000 I've never understood that part of it.

00:27:33.000 When people say to you, why are you conservative?

00:27:35.000 Stuff like that.

00:27:36.000 I always loved the American dream.

00:27:38.000 I always loved the going for it.

00:27:40.000 No guarantees.

00:27:41.000 I always work well when my cat's paws heels are backed over the abyss.

00:27:45.000 You know what I mean?

00:27:45.000 I hustle then.

00:27:47.000 And I think if it's all soft landing, it's like I defy people to tell me they didn't used to dig the Willendas more when there was no net.

00:27:55.000 You know what I mean?

00:27:56.000 You put the net in, you're still there, but it's, well, they fall, and that's, I don't know, that's my big protestation with an entitlement state.

00:28:06.000 So where did this view come from?

00:28:07.000 When did you actually become, or realize that you were politically conservative?

00:28:11.000 Well, listen, I grew up in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh's an OBS town, so you work hard for your money, so that's in my hard drive.

00:28:20.000 I remember as I got older, it was important, and this was pretty late in life, comparatively, it wasn't a childhood thing.

00:28:29.000 Admiral Stockdale was a big thing for me, because I remember thinking, I remember Stockdale was picked, when's Perot, is that a, what year?

00:28:37.000 Perot is 92.

00:28:38.000 Okay, so we're now going on 17 years, and I remember... 27 years.

00:28:46.000 Jesus, I can't believe life's moving by like that.

00:28:50.000 But he picks Stockdale, and Stockdale goes on TV, and he's This is a man who was in the Hanoi Hilton, for God's sakes, tapping out codes of prayers to young men who, you know, they'd say, Jimmy in cell 8 wants to die, you know, and he would pray with them through the night.

00:29:08.000 Can you imagine a more... I don't know, I always hear that and it makes me cry thinking about the kid who wants to just die.

00:29:15.000 You know, just stop trying to live and die.

00:29:18.000 And this man getting on and praying with him and code through the pipes, it just boggles my mind at the nobility of that.

00:29:24.000 He goes on TV and says, I don't even know what I'm doing here. 0.98

00:29:27.000 They naturally excise that clip and make him look like some doddering fool. 0.96

00:29:32.000 And I'm thinking, for God's sakes, the vice presidents we've had over the years, Quayle was a vice president. 0.98

00:29:36.000 You know, I don't make fun of Quayle.

00:29:39.000 Except I don't think he's a man, he's a historical figure to me.

00:29:43.000 So certainly Stockdale could do this job.

00:29:46.000 That was a big moment for me when the left started ridiculing him.

00:29:48.000 I remember thinking, this room's getting too hip for me if guys like that are, you know, going to be disparaged at the expense of other guys who are, quite frankly, just hacks who went into a system ages ago.

00:30:01.000 You know, to me, much of politics is the ability, the best people at it, are the ability to look at the crowd they're speaking to and point an individual at and actually have that individual think they must have met at some point.

00:30:13.000 It's always that.

00:30:14.000 I always see them go, and I think, oh.

00:30:17.000 There's more to it than that.

00:30:18.000 How's about there's a guy who doesn't know how to do that, but answers the call to save a young man's life in the most horrid situation on earth.

00:30:27.000 So that was a big shift for me.

00:30:30.000 You know, some of the stuff was in my hard drive.

00:30:32.000 I just believe I'd like to keep 50 cents on a dollar.

00:30:35.000 I think I live in the best country in the world.

00:30:37.000 I think I'd like to keep one for every one I give away.

00:30:40.000 And then when I croak, I'd like the half that I kept to go to my kids.

00:30:45.000 People always say, well, why do you want your kids to have it?

00:30:47.000 Do you want to spoil them?

00:30:48.000 And I want to say, hey, why do I want to spoil your kids?

00:30:51.000 I don't even know your kids.

00:30:53.000 Yeah, my kids give me joy.

00:30:56.000 Yeah, I'd like to keep a little.

00:30:58.000 That's my vig for making it and having kids. 0.96

00:31:01.000 How's about that?

00:31:04.000 That part of it didn't make sense to me.

00:31:06.000 And after 9-11, let's say, anybody who was able to, like, wrap 9-11 up and move on, whenever I hear people say, it's time to get it behind us, like, what are you kidding me?

00:31:18.000 It's primal.

00:31:19.000 It's in the hard drive.

00:31:20.000 Now, as much as I'd like people to work hard for the money, I remember thinking, oh, we've got to get serious now.

00:31:26.000 I don't know what serious is.

00:31:27.000 I'm not a wizard wonk about foreign policy.

00:31:32.000 18 guys were able to do that.

00:31:35.000 And that's a dangerous world.

00:31:36.000 So that changed me a little too.

00:31:38.000 So how did people in Hollywood react when they realized what your politics were?

00:31:42.000 So can you take me through sort of what your resume was?

00:31:44.000 What was your career progression here?

00:31:46.000 Because a lot of people know you at like certain times.

00:31:48.000 So people know you from SNL or they know you from your show on CNBC or they know you from your radio show.

00:31:52.000 But what was the sort of timeline and career progression?

00:31:55.000 Well, listen, when I was on SNL, And I was talking about earlier about a business decision.

00:32:00.000 I had some political leanings, but man, when you get hired to do the news on SNL, you're there to make fun of power.

00:32:07.000 And that was Reagan at the time.

00:32:09.000 I didn't even know that much about Reagan, honest to God.

00:32:12.000 I mean, these people always act like that they were... I remember talking to you when you were in the amniotic sack and you were smart, but I didn't pay that much attention, honest to God.

00:32:21.000 And I had no trouble lighting up Reagan. 0.96

00:32:23.000 He was an older cat, power.

00:32:25.000 I was the weekend update anchor.

00:32:27.000 You know, you're supposed to be Scaramouche.

00:32:29.000 You've got to come out and flourish the cape a little.

00:32:31.000 So I made fun of him, but I can't even say I knew everything he stood for.

00:32:35.000 But if I go back, I do believe we had some basic overlaps.

00:32:39.000 And I've seen old specials of myself where I do have a pragmatic side that comes through even when I'm trying to be a hipster as a young man.

00:32:47.000 I would say 9-11 was a big thing, I would say Stockdale's a big thing, and I think just common sense is a big thing.

00:32:53.000 I wasn't certain enough of my guesswork to be liberal anymore.

00:32:57.000 There was such a degree of certitude about the same sort of, you know, or flip a coin that most of us do.

00:33:05.000 As I got older, it just didn't make sense to me anymore, some of that stuff.

00:33:08.000 And as I get older yet, it still doesn't make sense to me.

00:33:12.000 Listen, they always say, oh, Trump's insane, and I guess Obama's held up as the avatar of, you know, wisdom and that.

00:33:20.000 And I always think, who loads 1.8 billion onto a pallet and sends it to Iraq? 0.96

00:33:25.000 I mean, I'm kind of—people say, that's so naive.

00:33:28.000 I can hear John Kerry say—and I go, well, you overthink it. 0.99

00:33:32.000 I just know they live to kill the Jews. 1.00

00:33:34.000 I dig the Jews. 1.00

00:33:36.000 I'm not even Jewish, but I dig the Jews just because they live in the craziest cul-de-sac in the world. 1.00

00:33:41.000 And anytime you pre-package 1.8, just the fact that they would ask for it in cash, I'd say, why don't I just give you a check and fill the memo section on kill Jews? 1.00

00:33:52.000 You know what I mean?

00:33:53.000 It's obviously, anytime you send an unmarked cash to Iran, some of it's going to end up bombing a Siberian pizza parlor.

00:33:59.000 That stuff doesn't make sense to me.

00:34:01.000 I can't fake like it does.

00:34:02.000 I have to stop down on each issue.

00:34:05.000 And more socially, some of the liberal stuff makes sense to me, but on basic common sense things.

00:34:11.000 So that would be my progression.

00:34:12.000 I think when I was on HBO, I was on there for 10 seasons, I think.

00:34:18.000 215 shows.

00:34:19.000 And as I look at it, I was always A pragmatist, but maybe in the second half of it I was just more openly skeptical about some of the BS.

00:34:28.000 I can remember having Tim Robbins on one night, and this was probably a turning point.

00:34:34.000 I said, where have you been, Tim?

00:34:36.000 What are you doing?

00:34:37.000 He said, well, I've been on the road with Bill Clinton for two weeks campaigning. 1.00

00:34:40.000 I said, that's twice in your life you had to crawl through a pipe filled with shit. 0.99

00:34:47.000 And I remember thinking, I came up after people to look at it. 0.99

00:34:51.000 I mean, I might have gotten more open about police at that point.

00:34:56.000 So in a second, I want to ask you, you've done a bunch of these jobs.

00:34:58.000 Which one of them did you like the best?

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00:36:13.000 So obviously you've had a pretty varied career here.

00:36:15.000 Which one of these did you like the most?

00:36:17.000 Which did you enjoy?

00:36:18.000 Well, let me go through them.

00:36:19.000 I was a stand-up comedian.

00:36:20.000 I dug it.

00:36:21.000 But I was broke.

00:36:22.000 At the beginning, you're broke.

00:36:23.000 I can remember being out on the road.

00:36:25.000 It's a brutal scene.

00:36:26.000 You go into the comedy condo and there's andromeda strain on the shower curtain.

00:36:31.000 You know, like nothing's been cleaned.

00:36:33.000 But you're out there.

00:36:34.000 At least then I was able to tell myself, yeah, brother, nobody throws your ball until they have to throw you the ball. 0.98

00:36:39.000 So shut up, lay low, keep your nose to the grindstone, and get through this as quickly as possible.

00:36:44.000 But you'd see club owners taking kids audition tapes and taping the Winter Olympics over them. 0.99

00:36:49.000 It was just like gladiator camp.

00:36:52.000 And I thought, well, I'm going to go down hard.

00:36:55.000 So I got all Spartacus about it.

00:36:58.000 I look back on it. 0.96

00:36:59.000 Now I'm such a wuss. 0.85

00:37:00.000 But at the time, I thought, well, this could be tough. 0.73

00:37:03.000 So I got tough, and then I was seen for Saturday Night Live.

00:37:10.000 I'd have to say that's, you know, to answer the question, but we can go through the other ones if you want, but that's the biggest change.

00:37:16.000 I mean, you know, you come in from Baltimore.

00:37:18.000 I remember I was in Baltimore getting stomach poisoning at a, oh, I won't say the name of the company, because I've eaten there since, but at a place, and then all of a sudden, two days later, you're healed up, and you're in New York, you're on Letterman, And I remember I had auditioned for Saturday Night Live and didn't get it.

00:37:36.000 They showed the cast in USA Today and I thought, I remember I was so tough at that point, I even saw that picture and just said, all right, now your time brother.

00:37:42.000 You know, it wasn't like I, I just thought it's brutal. 0.86

00:37:46.000 Don't waste a second, you know, being a wuss about this. 0.99

00:37:51.000 Get your rhino skin together. 0.98

00:37:52.000 So I forge on, I do Letterman.

00:37:54.000 They say, "Lorne Michaels wants to see you up on 17." Now I know something's up because he's not gonna call me up.

00:37:59.000 Lorne hates awkwardness.

00:38:01.000 He's having me up to talk about something.

00:38:03.000 I don't know what he's gonna proffer, maybe an appearance.

00:38:05.000 I go up and I sit outside his office for an hour and then they say, "Lorne's ready." And I go in and he's sitting at the end.

00:38:11.000 It's such a beautiful scene.

00:38:12.000 It's burned into my skull.

00:38:13.000 It's like a great engram or something.

00:38:15.000 Scientology, they always have the bombard engrams.

00:38:17.000 This is a good one.

00:38:18.000 I can't get this out of my mind.

00:38:19.000 I looked down.

00:38:20.000 He's got half glasses on.

00:38:21.000 One of those beautiful green table lamps over his shoulder is the Empire State Building in some tricolour status.

00:38:28.000 And he looks up and goes, Dennis, how would you like to be the weekend update anchor?

00:38:31.000 And I said, well, I'd like that a lot.

00:38:33.000 He said, I'll see you at 10.

00:38:34.000 And I walked out and your life's never the same after that.

00:38:38.000 I found out that Lovitz was supposed to do Weekend Anchor, but he was in so many things that they needed the time.

00:38:44.000 This is the vagaries of life.

00:38:46.000 They needed the time between the band who would play and the weekend update to dress him out in prosthetics for some of the characters he did.

00:38:54.000 Thus, I get the gig.

00:38:55.000 And so if I had to say what my biggest change was, it was that.

00:38:59.000 And also the most enjoyable.

00:39:01.000 You're in the bunker.

00:39:01.000 It's life in the bunker.

00:39:03.000 You know how that accelerates the emotion of relationships.

00:39:05.000 You're talking about a really brutal place where it's fun, too.

00:39:09.000 But if you screw up three weeks in a row, you're dead.

00:39:12.000 I mean, you're gone to the point where, you know, nobody sniffs you.

00:39:15.000 It's like an injured player in the NFL.

00:39:17.000 Nobody wants to be around it.

00:39:18.000 They know there's a taint on you.

00:39:20.000 So I dug that action when I was a kid.

00:39:22.000 I don't know if I have the nerves for it now, but at the time it felt like savoir faire.

00:39:26.000 Then after that, I went, I was looking for an exit point because I didn't want to be a guy who overstayed his welcome there.

00:39:32.000 I remember in college, there was always the guy who came back after he had graduated the next year and hung out near the keg, trying to tap it and get laid.

00:39:38.000 And I always thought, what a weird scene that is.

00:39:40.000 So I didn't want to overstay my welcome.

00:39:42.000 So around six-year point, I looked for a point to jettison the fuel module and get out for money.

00:39:47.000 And I got a nice gig in a syndicated show, but it got whacked after just six or eight months.

00:39:53.000 I went home.

00:39:53.000 That was the one time I remember being hanged on.

00:39:55.000 But Michael Fuchs, who headed up HBO, called me the next morning.

00:39:59.000 And I had done a couple of specials for him.

00:40:01.000 And we got on.

00:40:02.000 And he said, listen, you know, lick your wounds, heal up, and we'll do something here.

00:40:07.000 And he gave me three shows on the air at HBO.

00:40:10.000 The second one won an Emmy.

00:40:12.000 And then I got 215.

00:40:13.000 At that point, I began to disengage from actively judging how good my life was going through job or not job.

00:40:21.000 I remember thinking, you know, I had this theory about lump in your armpit theory used to keep me through where I'd think you could get fired from a job and be like as disconsolate as you want and be in the shower the next morning saying, God, I can't believe they whacked me.

00:40:37.000 And all of a sudden, you find a lump in your armpit as you're lathering up.

00:40:40.000 And your wife goes, what were you saying about losing the job, honey? 0.89

00:40:43.000 And you go, hey, screw that. 0.98

00:40:44.000 I've got a lump in my armpit.

00:40:45.000 What does that matter?

00:40:47.000 So I started to get that insight.

00:40:49.000 I was probably in my 30s at this point, that the jobs didn't matter that much, that you had to have some fun and a journey.

00:40:54.000 It sounds a little new agey, but it was true. 0.96

00:40:58.000 So I did that for a long time.

00:40:59.000 That ended.

00:41:00.000 I got Monday Night Football.

00:41:02.000 I got that horse shot out from under me in two.

00:41:05.000 Two years, but I had fun, but I knew I wasn't long for that one.

00:41:09.000 Because I was trying to shoehorn what I do, which is weird arcania, into the National Football League game.

00:41:15.000 I remember they'd get mail like, what is he talking about?

00:41:18.000 What was that reference?

00:41:19.000 The Plantagenets.

00:41:21.000 I remember, are we on cable?

00:41:24.000 Can you say that?

00:41:25.000 Yeah, you can say whatever you want, yeah.

00:41:26.000 Okay, I'll tell you a great story.

00:41:27.000 We're doing a game one night and...

00:41:30.000 This receiver hurts his ankle, and they're wrapping it in an Ace bandage and on the air.

00:41:35.000 I try to make Al laugh, and the weird Arcania is what makes him laugh.

00:41:38.000 Because Al's a genius, but if you throw him off his feet, he can't gather it, and he's like a tipsy air traffic controller.

00:41:43.000 It gets a little weird, so I spend all my time trying to get him to laugh, so they show him wrapping the ankle, and I go, you know, Al, I haven't seen that much fabric used since the environmental artist Christo wrapped the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris.

00:41:55.000 And I remember Al hits his sneeze button, which cuts his voice out to the home viewer. 0.91

00:41:59.000 He looks at you and goes, hey, what the f*** are you talking about?

00:42:04.000 Ohmire, our producer, is down in the truck and he fancies himself an Artificianado. 0.92

00:42:08.000 I actually hear him say, no Al, Christo, environmental artist, good call, good call.

00:42:15.000 And I remember simultaneously delighting in that and thinking, I'm not long.

00:42:18.000 Because you can't, you know, they're watching football.

00:42:22.000 I would have whacked me too.

00:42:23.000 It was like when I heard Madden left Fox, I called Fouts that morning.

00:42:27.000 He was our third guy in the booth.

00:42:28.000 I called Dan Fouts.

00:42:29.000 I said, listen, it's G Gordon Liddy time.

00:42:31.000 Just tell them what corner you're going to be on so innocents don't get hit in the crossfire because we're gone later today.

00:42:38.000 So they just rehired us.

00:42:39.000 I don't care.

00:42:39.000 Madden has not left Fox to sit up in the Dakotas with the old lady and drink frappuccinos all day.

00:42:45.000 He's coming over here.

00:42:46.000 Sure enough, they whack us later today. 0.81

00:42:48.000 I want to whack me, too.

00:42:49.000 It's the way of the world.

00:42:51.000 Listen, if I'm ever in L.A. 0.99

00:42:52.000 on any given night and I want to do stand-up and I go into the improv and John Madden's on stage, they better haul his fat ass off, too. 0.99

00:42:58.000 That's the way the world works. 0.98

00:43:00.000 So after football, what did I do then?

00:43:02.000 I went to CNBC and I didn't even I want to do that, but there's a number they hit.

00:43:08.000 I'll make the drive.

00:43:09.000 That's the way I look at it.

00:43:10.000 I mean, you can be all ethereal about showbiz, but at some point they hit the number, you go, listen, I'm a breadwinner.

00:43:16.000 Go win some bread.

00:43:18.000 And then from there, I got the perfect gig, which was, I was on for six minutes a week with O'Reilly.

00:43:25.000 Right.

00:43:26.000 I didn't even have to do the heavy lifting because he didn't want me to.

00:43:29.000 He wanted to say, hey, Miller, there's a robot in Korea.

00:43:33.000 And, you know, he'd show footage or spring break so he could show the bikini footage eight times in a row.

00:43:38.000 What about these kids?

00:43:40.000 So I was sort of like the hinge joint that would like take the weird stories.

00:43:45.000 I did that for five years.

00:43:46.000 I made a good buck.

00:43:47.000 And the best thing was we'd go on the road.

00:43:49.000 We're selling 10,000 seats for a guy.

00:43:51.000 O'Reilly's like a commerce machine.

00:43:54.000 And you're selling 10,000 seats.

00:43:57.000 So I just rode that.

00:43:58.000 I didn't do anything else for six years.

00:43:59.000 But then O'Reilly, I don't know what happened.

00:44:02.000 That ended relatively quickly.

00:44:06.000 And in the interim, I've just been sort of looking for something else.

00:44:09.000 But nothing's shown itself at this point.

00:44:11.000 And like I said, I had a great talk with Ada Carvey.

00:44:14.000 We were talking.

00:44:14.000 I said, I don't know.

00:44:15.000 You think it's politics, Carve?

00:44:17.000 And he said, Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that we're midway through our 60s?

00:44:22.000 You know, he's brutal too, Carve, about the nature of showbiz.

00:44:26.000 So at this point, I don't know.

00:44:29.000 I like doing this, but it's not like I wake up every morning thinking, where's the side hustle?

00:44:34.000 I'm sated.

00:44:35.000 So what were your parents like?

00:44:37.000 I mean, growing up, where did the comedy come from?

00:44:40.000 Well, I remember being in high school, and I was completely ostracized because I was so shy.

00:44:47.000 But I remember I sat in a study hall next to the star tight end on the football team.

00:44:53.000 And under my breath, I would make him laugh.

00:44:56.000 And I was just Pavlov's dog at that point.

00:44:58.000 You're talking about a kid who might as well have been Eddie Slovic walking down to the electric chair all alone.

00:45:03.000 All of a sudden, the tight end says, you want to walk between classes, you know?

00:45:07.000 And I'm thinking, Wow, I get it now.

00:45:10.000 I make them laugh and I'm included.

00:45:13.000 So that's when I started to, you know, get funny.

00:45:17.000 I don't think funny is some mystical sword from the stone moment.

00:45:22.000 I think you have to have a perspective that's a little quirky.

00:45:24.000 And I think the best guys have a quirky perspective.

00:45:27.000 But it's like Seinfeld always said, you sit near the faucet.

00:45:30.000 These are most people watch the drip go down the drain.

00:45:33.000 You cup your hands and catch the drip.

00:45:35.000 Put it under the jeweler's loop, feed it back to them to make a living.

00:45:41.000 It's less Camelot and more, you know, just pay attention.

00:45:47.000 And after the initial thing, you shouldn't let yourself be afraid after around a month.

00:45:52.000 You should at the beginning.

00:45:53.000 It's petrifying.

00:45:55.000 But then I remember at the end of the month thinking, well, the option is to hand this to strangers and watch them score with it.

00:46:00.000 And I don't have that sort of... Some guys have that where they can sit behind the scenes.

00:46:05.000 I didn't.

00:46:06.000 I thought, force yourself through this vomitous feeling and tell your own jokes, brother.

00:46:10.000 This is going to back up on you.

00:46:12.000 So how much of your work do you actually craft?

00:46:15.000 What's your kind of workflow when you're creating a new scene?

00:46:17.000 When I do a special, I craft the whole thing.

00:46:19.000 And then it's an interesting thing.

00:46:21.000 I don't have the memory I used to.

00:46:22.000 So what I do is put a prompter in the back of the room, and I have a button on stage right near my right foot.

00:46:29.000 And I leave the prompter off, because everybody wants to do it.

00:46:32.000 But just knowing that it's there, bullet points, if I get to a point where I'm just For a second, it slipped my mind.

00:46:39.000 Like I said, I don't have the memory I did when I was a kid.

00:46:42.000 I used to remember it like that.

00:46:44.000 I just go like that, and the kid turns the prompter on, on the bullet point I'm at, and then I hit it and turn it off, and then you're good for another 20 minutes.

00:46:53.000 But on a special, I write everything.

00:46:55.000 The way I develop jokes is I'll go up with the, I used to always try to, when I was stuck on SNL, I had this big poster on my wall.

00:47:04.000 Where, you know, Friday, come Friday, nobody wants to hear your sad tale about how you don't have a weekend update together.

00:47:09.000 And like I said, you do.

00:47:10.000 If I didn't do that good for three weeks, well, for three weeks in a row, A. Whitney Brown would be co-hosting.

00:47:16.000 So I'd get motivated at a certain point.

00:47:18.000 I'd think, you better write jokes now. 0.97

00:47:19.000 You better shut up with the whining.

00:47:21.000 And I'd look up at the poster and it said, indignation. 0.94

00:47:24.000 What am I?

00:47:25.000 Arcane reference.

00:47:26.000 It was like a basic iambic pentameter for jokes, because I would get to the point where I'd say, you know, I went to the doctor, he said I was a little stiff, what am I, Rosie the Robot Man?

00:47:36.000 You know, it was pretty easy.

00:47:40.000 It would signal it, or it would trip me up, and then I'd think how easy it was.

00:47:45.000 You have to at some point have a little, you have to be debonair about it.

00:47:50.000 You know, you have to demystify it and then you have to feel proud of it.

00:47:54.000 So at the beginning I remember I went on Letterman the first time and Biff, the guy who lets you backstage after if you don't get called over, says, hey, what's your last two lines?

00:48:03.000 So I know when to pull the curtain.

00:48:05.000 And that was a big thing.

00:48:06.000 I remember thinking, beautiful!

00:48:08.000 That demystified it for me.

00:48:10.000 So eventually you get through that part and then Weekend Update I remember thinking taking it to the next level thinking I'm taking the next level as a value judgment I did the best I could but I remember thinking you better do some panache now brother because they want somebody out there It doesn't look like he's looking at his feet and shuffling and acting apologetic.

00:48:27.000 They want him out of doors So start getting in closer to the horns.

00:48:30.000 That's when I started putting Savoir Faire in and all the goofy affectations and I just remember that During the week, I had a perfect thing.

00:48:39.000 I was in New York City.

00:48:40.000 If I had a joke I wasn't sure about, you go out to a club and you go up and tell it.

00:48:44.000 And it doesn't have to kill, but you have to get something that lets you know it has a pulse, you know?

00:48:49.000 And so it was a perfect lab.

00:48:51.000 I was just smart enough to think, don't drink, don't get loaded.

00:48:54.000 You know, I've never done blow or anything, you know, like it was a crazy time.

00:48:58.000 I just remember thinking, I talked to Leno about it.

00:49:00.000 He said, Stay on the road!

00:49:02.000 I know the road looks crowded now, but I'm telling you, everybody starts going off the road for pleasures or neuroses.

00:49:11.000 And it was true. 0.94

00:49:12.000 I just, like, wrote my jokes and shut up and didn't get loaded.

00:49:16.000 And, you know, it opened up.

00:49:19.000 So you're famous for being so arcane that they threw you off Monday Night Football because of it.

00:49:23.000 So where did all the— Oh, that and other reasons.

00:49:25.000 I don't want to make it strictly that.

00:49:28.000 Like I said, John Madden's the best color, and people think I'm all wounded and dinged.

00:49:32.000 He should do that job.

00:49:33.000 The moment he wanted it, like I said.

00:49:36.000 But yes, also the Arcania doesn't only serve, but then it does, listen, people act like you're some cat who gets to dim some around and say, I think I'll be this.

00:49:46.000 Funny from this direction.

00:49:48.000 It's my one monkey trick.

00:49:50.000 I got a somewhat deep drawer and a nice retrieval system.

00:49:52.000 That's all I got, man.

00:49:54.000 You know what I mean?

00:49:55.000 It's not like I'm not Moliere.

00:49:57.000 I'm not an old coward.

00:49:58.000 Everybody's got their strengths.

00:50:00.000 I did learn a lesson from a great comic named Richard Belzer early on.

00:50:03.000 Belzer ended up being an actor on... Law and Order, right?

00:50:07.000 Yeah.

00:50:08.000 And when he was young, in the 70s, he ruled New York City at Catch a Rising Star.

00:50:13.000 He was like Anton LaVey, the Dark Prince, man.

00:50:16.000 And he was so non-caring about whether they dug him or not.

00:50:19.000 That was a big lesson for me.

00:50:20.000 Because I would go up there, and I had this talk with Carlin once when he was young on the Ed Sullivan Show.

00:50:26.000 He said, I look back, I'm coming on, I'm practically a band singer.

00:50:29.000 And then he just said, screw it, I'm going to push all my chips in on George Carlin.

00:50:33.000 He came out in a long sweater.

00:50:36.000 He rolled the dice and said, if I'm going to take this up to the next level. 0.98

00:50:43.000 When I watch Belzer, I remember thinking, I'm such an ass kisser out there. 0.97

00:50:47.000 I'm so needy to be liked. 0.99

00:50:49.000 I've got to drop that.

00:50:50.000 And I find out in a very important lesson, at least in a confined space, a room, People don't want you to be as kissy.

00:50:58.000 They find it unctuous.

00:51:00.000 This is the objectivist in me.

00:51:03.000 I'm reading Atlas Shrugged as we speak again, and part of it's weird to me, but part of it, the self-determinism part, I find really exhilarating.

00:51:13.000 I remember thinking they don't want you to be up there being sucky like Dagny's brother Jim in the novel.

00:51:18.000 They want you to be like Hank Reardon.

00:51:20.000 Step up and do your thing and do it confidently and they're freed up to dig you because they don't have to worry about your self-esteem.

00:51:28.000 I remember at the beginning crowds would look up.

00:51:31.000 Nervous laughter is them thinking you seem like a reasonable, nice guy and they don't want you to fail.

00:51:36.000 They've diverted their shields like on Star Trek away from just flat out laughing into protecting you in some way.

00:51:43.000 If you go out and start giving off that sort of Garbo thing that you don't care if anybody ever sees you again, it's an intoxicant to them.

00:51:50.000 That's showbiz somewhere right there.

00:51:52.000 It's politics too, right?

00:51:52.000 I mean, President Trump is that.

00:51:54.000 I mean, there's no question that it works.

00:51:56.000 I've never seen anybody like that, Ben.

00:51:57.000 I'm telling you, here's the thing I think about Trump.

00:52:00.000 Say what you will about him.

00:52:01.000 I think his outer voice is an entirely accurate depiction of his inner voice.

00:52:06.000 Oh yeah, there's no filter.

00:52:07.000 As crazy as that is on some days.

00:52:09.000 I don't think Hillary Clinton's inner voice and outer voice have ever even had a cup of coffee together. 0.98

00:52:14.000 And I think that's why he's the President of the United States right now.

00:52:17.000 Yeah, I think there's very little question about that.

00:52:19.000 So, who are some of your favorite comedians?

00:52:21.000 You had to rank comedians historically.

00:52:23.000 Like, historically, who are your favorites?

00:52:24.000 And then who are some people working now you like?

00:52:26.000 Well, listen, when I was a kid, Jonathan Winters made me howl, because he was easy to understand.

00:52:33.000 You could airdrop him anywhere in the world, and the faces and the funny voices and his ability to improv was liberating.

00:52:42.000 So I saw that when I was young.

00:52:44.000 That stuck in my head.

00:52:45.000 Then the next thing I saw like that was Robin in his first HBO special, where he was so untethered.

00:52:53.000 And Robin became a movie star in that.

00:52:54.000 but when his young stand-up, just to watch somebody that carefree, I knew I could never do that, but I remember thinking, God, that must feel like a loofah scrub on your brain to go up and be, you're always so guarded in front of strangers.

00:53:08.000 To go up and be that unguarded, you must feel bulletproof when you walk out. 0.65

00:53:11.000 So that was cool.

00:53:12.000 I went to see a comedian named Kelly Monteith, who was nice enough to have me backstage, and I don't even know if Kelly's still with us, but I always kissed the ring because I was a young kid thinking, I can't do Robin, but I think I can do what Kelly's doing.

00:53:24.000 And I don't mean proficiency-wise, I just mean that sort of, Delivery to Mike.

00:53:28.000 And imagine what a sweet man he is to have me back.

00:53:31.000 A kid unknown who does not even a comedian to say I'm contemplating it for 10 minutes backstage and giving me some guidance.

00:53:37.000 Very important thing.

00:53:39.000 Next guy I saw was Jay.

00:53:40.000 He demystified it for me. 0.85

00:53:42.000 He was a stone killer on stage.

00:53:43.000 I know people see Jay on the Tonight Show.

00:53:45.000 Jay's smart enough to serve a task and the task was to win that for 17 years and he did.

00:53:52.000 That was his prime directive.

00:53:55.000 There he did a great monologue, but I'm telling you Jay Leno offstage is wicked.

00:53:58.000 I just talked to him last night. 0.98

00:54:00.000 He's just stone killer. 0.97

00:54:02.000 So that was important. 0.51

00:54:03.000 The next guy, Seinfeld.

00:54:04.000 I remember seeing Seinfeld in New York and thinking, well, I don't think I should watch him anymore because that's too...

00:54:11.000 That's insightful.

00:54:12.000 You know, it was about socks and a dryer, but it was such a clever take.

00:54:16.000 I remember he did a joke one night, he was the only one that said, maybe quit show business.

00:54:20.000 It was so deft, where he said, I watch a parakeet fly into a mirror, and I always think, well, sure, they're low brain power, but that being said, wouldn't he want to avoid the oncoming parakeet?

00:54:36.000 You know, I remember I had to leave the room and say, man, I'm writing jokes.

00:54:40.000 I got to go sublingual here because that's way down here.

00:54:44.000 And so he was important.

00:54:46.000 And then today, I would say the funniest man in the world is Brian Regan.

00:54:50.000 Who's a brilliant comedian who, the beauty of it is you have kids, I don't know if you still have the kids' grandparents, but you could take all of them to this thing from 10, and I don't say this about a lot of guys, to 80, and they all walk out like with temporal mandibular joint syndrome.

00:55:07.000 They've been laughing so hard.

00:55:09.000 He's a flat-out genius.

00:55:10.000 Jerry's still, you know, Jerry's Mount Rushmore.

00:55:13.000 He's the man.

00:55:13.000 And there's a cat named Sebastian Maniscalco who does sort of a, It's about his upbringing.

00:55:20.000 That's a little more that guy, you know, prowling the stage.

00:55:25.000 And he, I don't know, my son and I go to see him and literally we were in trouble.

00:55:30.000 I think the hardest I've ever left, I have a good memory.

00:55:32.000 I can't say he always worked for me because he, but I loved him and he made me laugh.

00:55:38.000 The single hardest I've ever seen was Sam Kennison.

00:55:40.000 I don't know if you're as familiar with Sam, but it was just so wrong.

00:55:44.000 Like sometimes you'd be so wrong that you'd sit there and this is what we talk about with political correctness.

00:55:48.000 Now we've like augured out a huge bit of what makes you laugh.

00:55:53.000 Sometimes wrong or unfair or mean is what makes you laugh the hardest.

00:55:59.000 I remember Sam convulsing me one night.

00:56:00.000 There was a group of people in from Decatur, Illinois or something, and we're in the comedy store.

00:56:06.000 It's like 2 in the morning.

00:56:07.000 He's the last guy.

00:56:09.000 Sam comes out.

00:56:10.000 He hasn't broken big yet.

00:56:11.000 He's getting big, though, but he comes out. 0.60

00:56:13.000 He's like some pissed-off golem. 0.98

00:56:15.000 He's got the beret on and the coat, and they don't quite know what to make of him.

00:56:18.000 Where are you in from?

00:56:19.000 And he starts talking to them, and they think he's nice Sam or something.

00:56:24.000 I'm like, oh Christ, they have no idea they're dealing with the Antichrist.

00:56:30.000 And then he said, what are you doing?

00:56:31.000 The guy describes it, and Sam says, yeah, sounds good.

00:56:34.000 Hey, listen, around three o'clock, after hearing that story, around three o'clock tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to be doing some yard work, and if there's anybody else in the crowd who wants to drive by and put a I'm dead!

00:56:49.000 Like him!

00:56:50.000 I'm dead!

00:56:54.000 And the people were like, it was like the beginning of The Mask or something, where the eyes are coming out.

00:57:00.000 Now, looking back at that, that's the hardest I've ever laughed.

00:57:03.000 I was with a comedian named Jeff Cesario.

00:57:06.000 No, I look back on that.

00:57:07.000 I don't have any choice in that.

00:57:09.000 I look back on it.

00:57:10.000 Is it like great moments in comedy?

00:57:12.000 No, it's not exactly deft, but it was just so wrong.

00:57:16.000 And the equilibrium was so thrown off.

00:57:19.000 Maybe it was nervousness, but it just made me laugh my ass off.

00:57:23.000 And I often think now, all that's dead.

00:57:25.000 Sam would be out of the business today.

00:57:27.000 So would Rickles, I mean.

00:57:29.000 I think Rickles might get through because he was a softy.

00:57:33.000 He had a good heart.

00:57:34.000 But Sam had a good heart, but he was more malevolent.

00:57:37.000 I don't think either of those guys could work now, and that's a weird place to be in.

00:57:40.000 I mean, that's what I was going to ask you next, is about the modern standards.

00:57:44.000 You know, it seems to me that we've actually returned to a sort of puritanism about comedy, where if the only jokes that you're allowed to make are basically sex jokes, all the other jokes are out the window because they rely on stereotypes or they rely on observations about reality that could be offensive to somebody.

00:58:00.000 Sex is inherently funny, so you can make a sex joke and get away with it, or you can just shock somebody by cursing or saying something incredibly lewd or vulgar, but it seems like that's It's either that or probing social commentary, meaning just leftist social commentary you could watch on Maddow.

00:58:15.000 So is there a future for comedy in this world?

00:58:20.000 You know, there always is, but I can't foresee it.

00:58:23.000 You know what I mean?

00:58:23.000 Something's going to happen in this country that's going to uncap this pressure.

00:58:27.000 What was the guy's name?

00:58:28.000 Ray Donovan?

00:58:29.000 Where do I go to get my reputation back?

00:58:31.000 Or I think there was a guy named Walsh who one time said, have you no shame?

00:58:36.000 You know, Hollywood's running the tightest Torquemada type thing now.

00:58:41.000 It's not McCarthyism.

00:58:42.000 It's like Jenny McCarthyism.

00:58:44.000 You can be kicked out in a second for saying something wrong, supposedly, by the cool kids.

00:58:49.000 I never thought I'd see that coming.

00:58:56.000 And now I can't say how I see it going, but I do think there'll be some moment where something is overplayed, somebody has a rang.

00:59:05.000 It might almost happen with Monica Lewinsky, but she saved that dress.

00:59:08.000 I mean, when you look back on that, people always say, that's such an odd thing.

00:59:12.000 Thank God.

00:59:12.000 They would have driven that young girl, I think, into...

00:59:16.000 A nervous break?

00:59:17.000 You know, something's going to happen that's going to make us all step back and go, oh, that's heavy, you know?

00:59:22.000 And that's weird.

00:59:23.000 And we've got to start.

00:59:24.000 But I can't foresee what that is.

00:59:26.000 But it's not going to be a minor thing.

00:59:29.000 Something's going to come out of this perpetually uptight attitude that's going to make everybody shake their head and think, oh, we've gone too far.

00:59:36.000 Well, one of the things I wonder is whether there's been too much of a merger of politics and comedy.

00:59:40.000 So you were mentioning Leno before, and the fact that Leno really did try to play it straight when he was on The Tonight Show, avoiding ticking off one side at the expense of the other.

00:59:49.000 He would actually tell jokes about both sides.

00:59:52.000 And now it seems like it's Well, it makes you question what comedy is, doesn't it?

00:59:57.000 of the aisle.

00:59:57.000 And you'll hear comedians say things openly like, well, there wasn't anything funny about Barack Obama.

01:00:01.000 And I just think to myself, how is there nothing funny about Barack Obama?

01:00:04.000 There's plenty funny about Barack Obama.

01:00:05.000 Well, it makes you question what comedy is, doesn't it?

01:00:10.000 Or in another way, it makes me question, I don't know, I don't want to sound like I'm going to be Kierkegaard or something here, but the subjectification of the empirical is a great puzzlement to me.

01:00:21.000 And it's why I think somewhere down the road you literally could have 2 plus 2 equaling what the child believes it equals, when you start putting intent, feelings, emotion ahead of Well, what's it equal?

01:00:36.000 What are two twos or four?

01:00:39.000 That's what's happened now is I often wonder, well, how am I looking at Nancy Pelosi and seeing sort of a disingenuous person who's been in that system for so long, her one genius is knowing how to play that That micro world that she's in of sharp elbows.

01:00:58.000 But when I watch her, I don't think she's a great intellect.

01:01:00.000 And then I have other people, you hear people talking about her.

01:01:03.000 She's our last hope.

01:01:04.000 She's a great intellect.

01:01:05.000 And I look at that and I think, well, is it just egotistical for me to, do you ever have this moment where you think, what is separating these two?

01:01:13.000 And it's my opinion.

01:01:14.000 And I start to wonder, is there an actual thing out there?

01:01:18.000 Or is there not?

01:01:20.000 Is it just how you see it?

01:01:22.000 I want to ask you for a second about what seems to me a transformational point in comedy was the rise of Comedy Central, and particularly Stewart's show.

01:01:30.000 I think that Stewart's show had almost a cataclysmic impact on the merger of politics and comedy.

01:01:36.000 And because Stewart was so incredibly talented, he was able to get away with the merger of the two.

01:01:41.000 But it sort of killed comedy to merge it with politics in the way that Stewart did, where he would read a headline, and then he'd make a funny face at the audience, and then the audience would laugh simply at the headline.

01:01:49.000 And it wasn't an actual joke about the headline, it was just we laugh at the headline itself.

01:01:55.000 And so it became that politicians were now comedians, because I can read a headline too, and comics became politicians.

01:02:01.000 There was an actual merger of the two, and you can't separate it off, and that means there's no actual leeway for comedians anymore.

01:02:05.000 It used to be that if you were a comic, You could say something deeply offensive and terrible and completely get away with it because you would just say, right, I'm a comic.

01:02:12.000 That's what I do.

01:02:12.000 I'm here to offend you.

01:02:13.000 That's why they came to you.

01:02:14.000 Right, exactly.

01:02:15.000 And now it's, well, no, you're not allowed to say that.

01:02:17.000 That defense as the comic doesn't obtain anymore because The thing that bothered me about Stewart's routine was that it was clown nose on, clown nose off.

01:02:27.000 Sometimes it was that he was the clown, and sometimes he was not the clown.

01:02:29.000 So when he was appearing with Tucker Carlson on Crossfire and ripping into the horrible things that Crossfire was doing to the world, he was not being a comedian. 0.92

01:02:36.000 And then he'd go back on Comedy Central, he'd put the clown nose back on.

01:02:39.000 And I think people stopped being able to tell the difference between the people who were the comedians and the people who were the politicians.

01:02:44.000 And you're seeing that with Kimmel right now, who's being seen as a moral voice as opposed to a guy who is supposed to make you laugh on late night.

01:02:53.000 I think the job description's changed.

01:02:56.000 I think he's hitting the job description now.

01:02:58.000 And at some point this does come down to individuals who have seized great jobs.

01:03:02.000 I mean, really, where's Jimmy Kimmel gonna go?

01:03:04.000 Where's Stephen Colbert?

01:03:05.000 Stephen Colbert was, I believe, in third place and probably in trouble.

01:03:10.000 Trump got elected, and he's in first place.

01:03:13.000 At some point, it is a Skinner box.

01:03:16.000 You're Pavlov's dog.

01:03:17.000 What are you going to do?

01:03:17.000 Go over and get the electric shock?

01:03:19.000 You want the corn kernel?

01:03:20.000 Those might be their beliefs, but I'm also saying, even if they weren't their beliefs, really?

01:03:24.000 Are they going to come out there and start?

01:03:26.000 No.

01:03:26.000 You wouldn't have that gig.

01:03:27.000 So I can't cut through that part of it.

01:03:29.000 How much is that?

01:03:30.000 I do know this.

01:03:32.000 The people who I think have gone in the bubble for so long, mostly in Hollywood, I think there's always a haunting thing.

01:03:39.000 You hear great people talking about, people who have built great fortunes talking about, I was always a little haunted I didn't get a college degree.

01:03:46.000 And I always think, why?

01:03:48.000 What does that matter? 0.68

01:03:49.000 It seemed like a jerk-off thing to me.

01:03:52.000 But they always say that.

01:03:53.000 I look at people in Hollywood, and I think they're a little haunted by their good fortune.

01:03:58.000 Not all of them.

01:03:59.000 Some of them are great artists, but some of them have a mug that works.

01:04:03.000 Some of them are at the right place at the right time.

01:04:05.000 I think they're always a little haunted, so they're trying to legitimize themselves now by being, you know, professorial, and I've got some wisdom here, and you're saying, you're the fifth lead on Full House, you know?

01:04:21.000 Pepperidge Farm, Alyssa Milano's.

01:04:23.000 I have no feeling.

01:04:25.000 But the fact is that guys like Trump, Trump lived a whole life.

01:04:30.000 I don't think he feels any need to, you know, when people say, how can he say those things?

01:04:34.000 I don't think he's thinking the look wise.

01:04:37.000 I think he's kind of built what he thinks Donald Trump is, and now he's just going to upset the entire apple cart.

01:04:43.000 All I know is this, I don't watch the Oscars anymore.

01:04:45.000 I had a chance to last year, but they had somebody also offer me the chance to kayak solo across the Pacific with a rabid meerkat in my lap, so I opted for that.

01:04:53.000 But everybody goes on there to look wise now, and you go to Trump press conferences for laughs now.

01:05:00.000 That's just such a, so when people say, well, how did we get, I can't even tell you how we got there, much less how we get back.

01:05:07.000 But I would say if I had one hot lead on how we got there is people started, people in tertiary industry started taking themselves serious about knowing how the world works.

01:05:19.000 Honest to God, when I go out and do my thing, I say that, now these all, Stop at the end of my fingertips.

01:05:26.000 I'm barely getting through.

01:05:27.000 I've been puzzled, confused, mistaken.

01:05:32.000 My whole life's that.

01:05:33.000 But there's a degree of surety now that comes along with the self-righteous nature of being right.

01:05:39.000 For instance, Real quick, I'm pontificating, but I always look back to 1965.

01:05:46.000 It's a big thing for me.

01:05:48.000 The institution of the Great Society, which was ostensibly supposed to help the disenfranchised.

01:05:53.000 Great intent.

01:05:55.000 I guess LBJ's trying to level his karma out from the NOM, you know what I mean?

01:05:59.000 So he's thinking, here on the home front, I'll try to help the disenfranchised.

01:06:03.000 Now, the yield of that over 64 years now, 2019, I think there was a 21% single parent rate in the black community back then.

01:06:13.000 I might be wrong, and once again, these are the subjectifications, but I think that figure is now over 70%.

01:06:19.000 And I just say, well, you have a half a century to analyze the data field.

01:06:24.000 This has not worked.

01:06:25.000 We should try something else.

01:06:26.000 That's the pragmatist in me.

01:06:28.000 People on the left will never say, no, we just need another 50 years to get there.

01:06:34.000 And you think, well, what happens at 50 years if it's 80% single?

01:06:37.000 You know what I mean?

01:06:38.000 I get to a point where I go, okay, there's a decision that has to be made here.

01:06:42.000 There's no decisions that are, those are etched in stone over there.

01:06:45.000 Sometimes the, you know, people on both sides are etched in sand.

01:06:49.000 It's a little bit bullshit politics, but they are definitely etched in stone on around 10 of these things. 0.52

01:06:54.000 And that lockstep is tired to me. 0.96

01:06:57.000 I don't like clogging.

01:06:58.000 I don't like line dancing.

01:06:59.000 I don't like liberal politics.

01:07:01.000 You know, to me, liberalism, modern liberalism is like a nude beach.

01:07:05.000 It sounds good until you get there.

01:07:07.000 Then there's a lot of cankles, a lot of misspelled tattoos.

01:07:10.000 So, in a second, I'm going to ask you the final question.

01:07:12.000 I'm going to ask you for the best joke that you've ever heard and the best joke that you've ever told.

01:07:17.000 But first, if you want to hear Dennis Miller's answer, you actually have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.

01:07:20.000 To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com.

01:07:23.000 Click subscribe.

01:07:23.000 You can hear the end of our conversation over there.

01:07:26.000 Thanks so much for stopping by.

01:07:27.000 I really appreciate it.

01:07:28.000 Hey, I'm happy for you.

01:07:29.000 You're such a fine young man.

01:07:30.000 I remember talking to you years ago saying, now that is a... You know what you are?

01:07:34.000 You're a fine young man.

01:07:35.000 I don't know that they use that term anymore, and I don't mean to embarrass you, but you're a brilliant guy.

01:07:40.000 I talk to people and they know you're brilliant.

01:07:42.000 And when you get beyond brilliant, you find out the guy's not a prick about being brilliant, but a nice young man.

01:07:47.000 I'm so happy for you.

01:07:48.000 Well, thank you so much.

01:07:49.000 I really appreciate it.

01:07:49.000 it.

01:07:49.000 Good to see you.

01:07:50.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay.

01:07:59.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

01:08:01.000 Associate producer Mathis Glover.

01:08:03.000 Edited by Donovan Fowler.

01:08:04.000 Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.

01:08:06.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

01:08:08.000 Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

01:08:10.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 21, 2019

Dennis Miller | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 47

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