Lynn Redgrave
Dean Cain
Dana Rohrabacher
Jerry Falwell
Bill's Opening
Bill: All righty.
Thank you very much.
Hey.
Thank you.
Oh, please.
Thank you, delegates.
I know why you're happy tonight.
We finally had the big moment tonight that America
was waiting for at the Republican National Convention
--
the end.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Over.
I tell you.
I was getting sick of that, because, you know, now
they're the touchy feely party, ew.
[ Laughter ]
The whole theme was inclusiveness.
They took this too far.
Tonight's benediction was from the naked gay guy
from "Survivor."
[ Laughter ]
I have had enough of this.
But no, this was little George Bush -- he's running for
president, the little Bush kid -- this was his big
moment.
He made his speech tonight.
I have to say, as speeches go, it was a very
well-written speech.
He tried to invoke Reagan, for example, bringing that
inclusive theme to his bosom.
He said, "the wall between the haves and have-nots --
we must tear down this wall."
Then, later on, he had to admit that in his youth, he
tried to tear down the wall between his nostrils.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
I kid.
Please.
I'm kidding.
He also went on the attack though.
Also hit Al Gore pretty hard.
He said, always trying to link Clinton and Gore, "this is
not a time for third chances, it's a time for new
beginnings."
Which is also a line, by the way, he uses on inmates
right before he throws the switch.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Please.
That's all right.
All right.
Interesting, right before he spoke, they showed one of
those films they always do at the conventions, those
little films to make you love the guy.
It was called "The Sky's the Limit."
It was beautifully photographed footage of the Bushes
walking on the beach, relaxing at home.
But it confused the delegates.
They thought it was a commercial for Claritin.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Panel Discussion
Okay, let's meet our panel.
He is the distinguished United States representative from
Huntington Beach.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
Congressman, where are you, sir?
[ Applause ]
How are you, Congressman?
Good to see you, Dana.
He's the founder of Liberty University, and leader of the
moral majority.
The Reverend Jerry Falwell, ladies and gentlemen.
[ Applause ]
Reverend, always a pleasure, sir.
Thank you for being here.
You know the Congressman.
A fine actor and TV's Superman.
His movie "The Broken Heart Club" opens September
29th.
Dean Cain is right over here.
Hello, Superman.
How are you?
You boys can all sit down.
Come on, sit down.
You're making me nervous.
And finally, the star of the showtime series "Rude
Awakening."
Her film "Deeply" premieres in September at the Toronto
Film Festival.
One of the world's great actresses.
Lynn Redgrave.
[ Applause ]
How are you, beautiful?
Thank you for being here.
All right.
Well, I'm just gonna throw it out there.
What did you think of the speech?
Jerry: Awesome.
Bill: You would have said that anyway.
That's your boy.
Dana: That's right.
Bill: Really, what did you think?
Jerry: Awesome.
[ Laughter ]
Lynn: That was a little like the speech, though, wasn't
it?
It was like, "we will win!"
"Bravo!"
"We are here!"
"Bravo!"
I thought it was a little lacking in flow, but well-read,
on the prompter, well read.
[ Light laughter ]
Bill: See, I had the opposite reaction.
I read it first, because you know, it's spontaneous, so
they print it out.
[ Laughter ]
And I thought, brilliant speech.
Whoever wrote this I thought did a great job.
And then I saw him, you kind of see him reading.
A lot of moving of the eyes.
Dana: As you know, I was a speech writer for
Ronald Reagan.
Bill: I didn't know that.
Dana: Yes, I was his speech writer for seven years.
Bill: So it was you who was responsible for that
whole Reagan thing.
[ Laughter ]
Lord knows, he couldn't speak for himself.
[ Laughter ]
Dana: Reagan was a terrific writer on his own.
Bill: Oh, please.
Dana: He was a terrific writer.
I can tell you that.
Bill: I've heard a lot of [ bleep ] but that takes the
cake.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Dana: All right, all right.
Bill: Excuse me, Reverend.
Dana: Let me just swear that he was a great writer.
But let me just say about this particular speech, I was
at the convention, I was kind of concerned that it was
all fluff.
There was no substance going on.
It was trying to prove that we care.
I don't know why we have to prove that, but they went
out of their way to prove it.
But in this speech, it was substantive, there was a lot of
issues.
He took on issues that he didn't have to.
And I thought that was very courageous.
Bill: Like?
Dana: Well, he mentioned the abortion issue, which is
a very controversial issue.
He didn't have to do that.
I think it was --
Lynn: And he said he'll veto it.
He just said it's --
Dana: He did not have to mention that.
I think it was courageous for him to bring it up.
Bill: Yeah, well, you know what?
For me, I don't know if I'm like everybody else,
probably not.
On this speech, here are the two issues I care about
most --
the environment and campaign finance reform.
One is ruining our democracy.
One is ruining the Earth.
Nothing on campaign finance.
Two lines on the environment.
He said "we are learning to protect the natural world
around us."
Well, not from two oil bagmen running for president.
[ Applause ]
Lynn: Doesn't Texas have the worst pollution of any?
Bill: Texas has the worst pollution in the country,
which is probably why he didn't mention that a lot.
Dean: Makes good sense, absolutely.
The thing that freaked me out about the whole thing,
watching the last four days, is every single time
somebody got up there, I felt like I was at a high
school pep rally.
Two words and people start screaming.
They're going nuts.
It made me uncomfortable.
I recall certain speeches, not to liken him to Hitler or
anybody, but you see people, they speak, and people
just go nuts.
I don't think anybody's listening.
It was very, very strange for me.
Jerry: It will happen at both of them.
Bill: That's true.
Jerry: You own any oil stock?
Bill: Do I own any oil stock?
I don't know.
[ Laughter ]
I don't know.
Jerry: Just a question.
Bill: I don't know.
Jerry: I have a feeling that making the oil industry the
bad guys is popular today like the tobacco industry,
but a little bit errant.
Bill: The difference there, if I may, Reverend, is that
tobacco, that's just killing you.
Oil is going to kill all of us, and that's not just me.
Dana: I think the oil industry has done a great job for
this country.
And let me say, before the oil industry provided --
Bill: Have you been to Alaska?
Dana: Yes, I have.
Bill: Have you been to that beach?
Dana: I was there because the oil industry provided a
type of fuel that could get me to Alaska and permit the
people who live in Alaska to live decently, to have
warmth and to have transportation.
Before the oil industry gave us the ability to do so, our
cities were filled with horse manure and flies and all
kinds of diseases.
Bill: I would rather have horse manure in the streets
than a hole in the ozone layer.
You people have got to be kidding if you don't think
that this --
Jerry: I think global warming is a myth, and I don't
think the ozone layer's going anywhere.
I think God made the whole thing right, and it will stay
right.
Lynn: Reverend, let me take your pulse.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Jerry: I think it's all a myth.
And I don't believe for a moment that we have to be
concerned about the ozone layer or global warming.
This has been the coldest blooming summer I have
ever lived in in Virginia.
Dana: It has been.
Lynn: And that's why.
That's why.
Bill: If that was any other Republican, I would say
what I've said before, that that's a lie bought by an oil
company.
I don't think you're a liar.
I always defend you.
Jerry: I just believe that.
Bill: I know you do.
And that is some how sadder, but --
[ Laughter ]
Dana: I was the chairman of the energy environment
subcommittee.
For the first time, we had actual hearings on global
warming and had both sides represented.
Until then, the Democrats would only bring the
pro-global warming people there.
By the end of the hearing, the people advocating
saying we have to worry about global warming were
admitting, "well it might be global cooling."
Give me a break.
Bill: No, they aren't.
And you know that's not true.
Dana: At that hearing, they were.
Bill: There's an enormous, enormous, over 90%
consensus of the scientific community that --
Dana: That's not true.
Bill: It is of course true.
Dana: That's not true at all.
Bill: The oil companies who buy politicians don't want
you to know that's true.
But people know that's true.
Bill: That's bologna, Bill.
I have studied this issue.
I don't own any oil stock.
I don't own --
Bill: But the oil companies contribute to your
campaign and the campaigns of many others.
Politicians do the bidding of the people who pay for
their elections.
[ Applause ]
Dean: Very true.
Bill: I'm not saying you.
Dana: Let me just tell ya, a lot of other people
contribute to my campaign and other people's
campaigns.
The bottom line is, we are concerned about America.
I can't speak for other politicians.
I am.
And I think global warming is bologna.
Lynn: But that's what's so scary.
I'm just in shock.
But going to have to move away.
But how can you say that?
Dana: Because I have interrogated the scientists on
both sides of this issue, which you have not.
Bill: No, I haven't interrogated them.
I just read them.
[ Laughter ]
I don't put them under a bare lightbulb with a rubber
hose.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
"What's going on with global warming?"
Dana: Why don't you have a scientist on the other
side of that issue on your show?
Bill: Because professor Irwin Corey is busy.
[ Laughter ]
He's the only scientist on the other side of that issue.
Jerry: There are hundreds -- thousands of them.
Bill: No, there are not.
Jerry: Listen, I have preached on this subject and
have had --
actually had scientists to put papers together for me.
And the majority of the scientists are saying global
warming is a myth.
Bill: What happens to all the gas emissions?
What, does that just go to bunny land?
[ Laughter ]
Dana: It's about 1% of the carbon emissions that you
are talking about come from the internal combustion
engine.
The rest are coming from termites, from all --
volcanoes.
Bill: Cow farting.
[ Laughter ]
Dana: Yeah, cow farting.
It's true.
Bill: So pollution is nothing to worry about.
Dana: No, no, I didn't say pollution is nothing to
worry about?
Jerry: I think pollution is to be worried about.
I just don't think there is a such thing as global
warming.
Bill: It's not?
The ozone layer is fine?
Dana: You want to take pollution out of the air
because it affects people's lungs, not because it's going
to create some cataclysm in the world.
The bottom line is, the purpose behind all of this global
warming talk is to try to get people to agree to raising
the gasoline taxes.
That's the way it's been for the last five years.
That's why Al Gore has been pushing it, because he
wants to raise taxes on gasoline.
Bill: I've got to take a commercial or I'll be fired.
---
[ Applause ]
Bill: All right, the Republican convention just ended.
And of course, they were trying to shove down our
throats a lot of bad rock music and also the
inclusiveness idea.
I'll tell you, I haven't seen that many blacks and gays at
a Brooklyn dance club.
But, okay.
[ Laughter ]
So the old Republican crowd, the very conservative
crowd, they are a little murmuring -- they're a little
upset, you know.
And Jerry, you had -- Reverend, you had a quote
today.
You said, "Our crowd needs to get into the battle,
keep their mouths shut and help this man win."
Jerry: That's what I said.
You have a great platform.
We got two great candidates.
Bill: But, wait a second.
"Keep our mouths shut."
Jerry: That's a good idea.
Bill: "And help this man win."
Jerry: But you invited me here.
That's why I'm not keeping it shut.
Bill: But, "Keep your mouth shut" -- doesn't that imply
you're gonna wait till November till he wins, and then
the mask comes off?
Jerry: Well, I would hope that's the case, but I don't
think it is.
Dean: You hope that's the case?
Jerry: No, in all seriousness, George W. Bush is
everything the convention portrayed him to be.
He designed that convention.
It's from his heart.
Bill: Yeah, an infomercial.
Jerry: And I believe that -- by the way, no political
party is a church.
And the criticism of the diversity and having a gay
speaker and so on, that our side criticized, is invalid.
Bill: Yeah.
Jerry: And the fact that I am pro-life, and a majority
of, probably, the delegates are -- but General Powell
is not --
doesn't mean that he cannot do a great job there and
did do a great job.
And we agree on more things than we disagree on.
And I'm glad he's one of us.
All I'm saying is that George W. Bush is going to be a
great change, a great president.
And he's not be going to be owned by anybody, and
particularly not the --
Bill: Oh, come on.
[ Scattered applause ]
Lynn: You know what?
On the sort of inclusiveness thing, I noticed that when
the openly gay speaker, colby, spoke, the Texas
delegates all wouldn't look at him.
Bill: No, they prayed.
We talked about this.
They prayed when the gay guy was on stage.
"Oh, please, make the gay guy go away."
[ Laughter ]
"Please, no gays."
Jerry: They were probably praying to make the gay
guy stop doing what he does, but his personal lifestyle
has nothing do with the speech that he gave.
Lynn: No, he left out all gay issues, didn't he?
Jerry: I suspect --
Lynn: He left out all gay issues.
Jerry: -- At the last few conventions of the
Republicans, there have been a few adulterers.
As a matter of fact, I'm quite sure there have been.
But the fact is, what they're saying needed to be said,
and he said it well.
Bill: Lincoln, big homo.
But you said his gay lifestyle had nothing to do with his
speech.
Why can't you take that one step further?
Why does his gay lifestyle can't have anything to do
with anything?
What about his ability to get into heaven?
Jerry: Well, it's a question of whether he takes the
Bible seriously.
I believe all sex outside of the marriage bond between
a man and woman is forbidden.
Bill: Oh, God, I'm in trouble.
Dean: Okay, I'm going --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: Look at this guy.
I mean --
Jerry: No doubt about it.
Bill: Reverend, you can't blame a guy that
good-looking.
You gotta beat them off with a stick.
My God, he was Superman.
Of course he got laid.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Dean: I have a question for you, then.
I have a child.
He's 2 months old.
I'm not married, nor am I with the woman that I had
the child with.
Does that make me wrong or bad?
Jerry: It makes you a father --
Bill: And it was born on Krypton.
[ Laughter ]
Jerry: It makes you a father with a responsible to take
care of that little boy for the rest of his life.
Dean: And I take responsibility, 100%.
Jerry: And to raise him up in the nurture and
habitation of the Lord and take him to church with you
and find yourself a wife and raise that child up to the
glory of God.
Dean: See, I have a real problem with the organized
religions, especially when it deals with politics.
Jerry: So do I.
Dean: I have a humongous problem with it, and for
someone to say that my responsibility is to go take the
child and raise him to the values of this church or that
church is frightening to me.
Jerry: I didn't say that.
I said -- I have a relationship with Christ.
I'm not a Baptist with a big "B."
I'm a Christian with a big "C."
My faith is in a person, Christ, and through his death,
burial, resurrection 48 years ago, while a college
sophomore, studying to be a journalist, I received the
light.
Dean: He didn't die 48 years ago.
You, 48 years ago.
Jerry: I was an 18-year-old college sophomore.
Bill: I'm a fun lover a big "F."
Don't talk to me.
[ Laughter ]
Jerry: But my work is with people like Jerry Falwell
who are sinners.
All of us are.
And all I would say is that you made a mistake.
But now, with the Lord's help, you correct that.
And we all make mistakes.
And we make, then, the best of it.
And the way to make the best of it is create a Christian
family, marry a good, Godly woman and raise that little
boy.
Lynn: You know what?
I think what would make me a little more confident in
George W.
Would be if -- 'cause I agree with you, Reverend.
If one admits to mistakes, we're all -- we all make
mistakes, and we all try to learn by them.
But I get the feeling that George W. Is so sure that he's
right on every issue that it makes me suspect him.
For example, on the death penalty when the governor
of Illinois said, "I'm going to put a moratorium on it,
because we have definitely sent some innocent people
to the chair, and we -- "
Jerry: There's no evidence we ever have.
Lynn: Well, it's like global warming, isn't it?
There isn't any.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
But George W. --
Jerry: Now you admit there's no evidence in global
warming?
Lynn: No, no, if I could just finish, Reverend, if you
wouldn't mind.
Thank you so much.
[ Laughter ]
God bless you, sir.
That when George W. Was asked, well, Texas has
this -- you're knocking them off every 30 seconds,
practically.
Bill: Texas kills a lot of people.
Lynn: Texas, they kill a lot of people.
Bill: Their last meal is a buffet.
Lynn: And he said he absolutely knew that no
innocent person had ever been put on death row or
certainly executed.
Now you know, I would have more confidence in him
if he said, "You know, we just might have made a
mistake somewhere, and I'm feeling kind of bad about
it.
But I still support my views."
I'm not expecting him to change them.
It's this absolute, this spirit of infallibility, that really
bugs me.
Dana: I didn't see that in his speech.
Bill: Well, his speech wasn't written by him.
But I think she was talking about a sense of entitlement
you get when your daddy was president.
Dana: It wasn't written by him, but having written
speeches --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Look, Bill, having written speeches for politicians and
for people who will be President of the United States,
I will tell you, they do not give speeches unless they
believe in it.
And you can tell if --
Bill: You've got to be kidding about that one.
You just said politicians do not give speeches unless
they believe in it?
Dana: Somebody -- if you are -- writing a speech for
someone is like writing a script for someone.
If it is something that they cannot -- they don't believe
in, they will look phony.
Lynn: But I think, perhaps, he needed his speech
written.
I mean, I saw him interviewed where he didn't know
who the president of India was.
Bill: And I will be looking for a job if I don't take a
break.
Lynn: Yes, take a break.
[ Applause ]
---
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: All right, I'm way over time, so this is gonna be
short, I have to tell you.
But, okay, George Bush said, "My job is to lift the
spirit of the American people."
Don't you think it's pretty pathetic if you have to count
on the president to lift your spirit or even think that he
could?
[ Laughter ]
Jerry: I think Ronald Reagan did.
And I think he brought America back.
I think this country has had eight years of ineptitude
and malevolence that it will take the next President
eight years, at least, to straighten out.
Bill: Right, that peace and prosperity has got to go.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Jerry: Well, there's something more important than
peace and prosperity.
This country --
Lynn: Global warming.
Jerry: -- Is losing its soul.
And I think that our children -- I work with children
and young people.
I have been a pastor of the same church 44 years.
I have never seen the complex and sophisticated
problems that kids are going through today.
Bill: Because of Bill Clinton getting a --
Jerry: Well, he certainly hasn't helped any.
There's an epidemic of oral sex in the middle schools in
America today.
Bill: I have got to re-enroll.
[ Laughter ]
All right, I gotta take a commercial.
I told you it was gonna be short.
I'm sorry.
[ Applause ]
---
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: All right, we were just saying -- well, we like
each other even though we disagree.
And I don't think you get a starker contrast.
Some people think global warming is our biggest
threat.
Some people think oral sex is our biggest threat.
[ Laughter ]
And that really is what these two conventions are
about.
[ Laughter ]
Tomorrow, we have Paul Rodriguez, representative
Jack Kingston, Terry McAuliffe and Darlene
Kennedy.
Thank you, folks.
We'll see you tomorrow.
[ Cheers and applause ]
---
Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher
Executive Producers
Bill Maher
Nancy Geller
Jerry Nachman
Marilyn Willson
Co-Executive Producer
Kevin Hamburger
Producer
Sheila Griffiths
Created By
Bill Maher
Directed By
Paul Casey
Writing Supervised By
Billy Martin
Writers
Kevin Bleyer
Brian Jacobsmeyer
Bill Kelley
Bill Maher
Billy Martin
Jerry Nachman
Ned Rice
Danny Vermont
Coordinating Producer
Joy Dolce
Associate Director
Bob Staley
Stage Manager
Patrick Whitney
Announcer
John Cramer
Executive in Charge of Production
John Fisher
Producers
Brad Grey
Bernie Brillstein
Marc Gurvitz
