Overtime – Episode #706: Ben Shapiro, Tim Alberta

Summary

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Real Time with Bill Maher – Overtime Episode #706: Ben Shapiro, Tim Alberta

Date: September 16, 2025
Guests: Ben Shapiro (Daily Wire co-founder, author of "Lions and Scavengers"), Tim Alberta (Atlantic staff writer)

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Episode Overview

This Overtime segment dives into the week’s most contentious headlines and philosophical debates. Bill Maher is joined by Ben Shapiro and Tim Alberta for a lively, sometimes combative, exchange on cancel culture, media ethics, 9/11’s enduring impact, the roots of Judeo-Christian morality, and the recent controversy involving Kamala Harris’s memoir about her role as Vice President. The tone is sharp, humorous, and sometimes openly skeptical, with plenty of memorable quips and pointed observations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tom Hanks’ Canceled West Point Award & Political Tribalism

[00:51 - 04:01]

• Context: West Point cancels a prestigious award for Tom Hanks; Trump brands Hanks as “woke and destructive.”

• Maher highlights Hanks’ distinguished filmography honoring the military (“Saving Private Ryan,” “Greyhound,” “From the Earth to the Moon”) and criticizes the party-line nature of the backlash:

  "Tom Hanks has done more for the positive portrayal of the American service member... Wait, Tom Hanks. Oh, we forgot he’s on the blue team. Fuck him."
  — Bill Maher [01:35]

• Shapiro calls the move “silly,” defending Hanks’ public record and contrasting it with worse actors’ behavior:

  “I’m not going to start removing prizes from people because…”
  — Ben Shapiro [03:43]

• SNL’s controversial MAGA sketch: Maher objects to a segment where Hanks’ MAGA character refuses to shake hands with a Black contestant, arguing it’s unhelpful and incendiary. Alberta defends the sketch’s intent as showing commonalities, not division.

  “Pretty volatile area to be saying that…to take it to that level. I just think it’s not helpful.”
  — Bill Maher [03:17]

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2. CBS News Pledges No Edits on Face the Nation

[04:01 - 04:54]

• Prompted by Republican complaints, CBS will no longer edit interviews.

• Maher and Shapiro: Both surprisingly support this transparency, even if the motivation is politically motivated.

  “As someone who’s been edited, it’s a good result.”
  — Bill Maher [04:18]
  “Honestly, it’s a good result.”
  — Ben Shapiro [04:22]

• Alberta links this to a trust crisis: Only 15% of Americans trust television news (Gallup poll):

  “Any step you can take towards transparency, it's not going to hurt, right?”
  — Tim Alberta [04:48]

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3. 9/11: Lessons, Iraq War, and the Collapse of Trust

[04:54 - 07:20]

• Maher frames 9/11 as a watershed: Many Americans are now “too young to remember,” but it was pivotal, and the U.S. mishandled the aftermath, especially invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Shapiro argues the U.S. wrongly projected Western values:

  “We have in the West a capacity to project our own values onto other countries and other people. That is just false.”
  — Ben Shapiro [05:49]

• Alberta connects 9/11 to decades of waning institutional trust, pointing to multiple disasters (Iraq, Katrina, financial crisis, COVID) as fuel for cynicism:

  “Americans have reached a conclusion that no one is looking out for them and that they can’t trust any of these people in charge. And I actually think that in some way we can trace a lot of that back to 9/11.”
  — Tim Alberta [07:02]

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4. Ben Shapiro’s ‘Lions and Scavengers’ Concept

[08:48 - 13:00]

• Shapiro explains his book’s theory:

  • Lions = builders (not tied to right/left politics); Scavengers = destroyers.
  • Trump has lion-like qualities (pragmatism), but isn’t exclusively a lion.

• Maher asks about Nietzschean and Ayn Rand influences; Shapiro says he quotes them critically, but acknowledges overlap:

  “There are people who are more creative and [who] ought to be rewarded, and the people who tear things down ought to be not rewarded. But I think that’s also baseline morality.”
  — Ben Shapiro [11:28]

• Discussion turns to Christianity as a ‘religion of losers’ (Nietzsche):

  • Shapiro refutes Nietzsche’s critique, arguing virtue should yield positive results in life.

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5. The Origins of Morality: Religion, Enlightenment, and Secular Values

[13:00 - 15:56]

• Maher: “We got that morality from the Enlightenment, which was an anti-religious movement. The Founding Fathers, they weren’t religious people, they were deists…” [13:31]

• Shapiro counters:

  • Our shared Western morality is rooted in “several thousand years of biblical history.”

  • Enlightenment values "grew from the soil" of biblical tradition:

    “You were born morally on third base.”
    — Ben Shapiro [13:29]

• Tim Alberta notes Christianity’s moral turning point in the West:

  “Much of what we would consider to be good moral ethical behavior was not in fact a commonplace or mainstream thing several centuries ago.”
  — Tim Alberta [14:24]

• Debate on whether secular morality is self-sustaining: Shapiro claims:

  “It does not systemically maintain, if there’s no actual outgrowth from a basis of belief, that this is fundamentally demanded of you by a higher power.”
  — Ben Shapiro [14:37]

• Maher objects to literalism of biblical morality:

  • Cites Bible’s acceptance of slavery, sexist laws.

  • Colorful analogy:

    “It’s like saying, ‘Well, jump in the pool, there’s only one turd in there.’”
    — Bill Maher [15:27]

• Shapiro: Religious morality is an “admixture of human reason and...faith-based principles.”

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6. Kamala Harris’s Memoir: Harris, Biden, and Leadership Accountability

[16:56 - 19:31]

• Maher: Harris’s memoir reveals she deferred to the Bidens on his re-election bid, now calling that “reckless.”

• Shapiro sharply critiques Harris:

  “What if there was an amendment to the Constitution, say like the 25th Amendment, that allowed the vice president… to recognize the president was brain dead and actually do something about it? And what if you then just sat there and did nothing…?”
  — Ben Shapiro [17:49]

• Maher disputes Biden’s supposed incapacity:

  “In the quiet of the Oval Office, [Biden] had not lost his marbles and was still able to make decisions among his staff.”
  — Bill Maher [18:16]

• Alberta: Criticizes Harris (and Pence) for pretending to lack agency during decisive moments:

  “She writes this as though she was some backbench, low level staffer without agency…You were the Vice President of the United States. If it was reckless for him to do this, Madam Vice President, did you not have a responsibility to the country to say something about it?”
  — Tim Alberta [19:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Bill Maher: “Wait, Tom Hanks. Oh, we forgot he’s on the blue team. Fuck him.” [01:35]
• Ben Shapiro: “You were born morally on third base.” [13:29]
• Tim Alberta: “Americans have reached a conclusion that no one is looking out for them and that they can’t trust any of these people in charge.” [07:02]
• Maher (on Bible morality): “It’s like saying, ‘Well, jump in the pool, there’s only one turd in there.’” [15:27]
• Shapiro (on Harris and the 25th Amendment): “What if…you then just sat there and did nothing until Joe Biden had his head cave in, basically on national television in a debate with Donald Trump and stare into the great maw of death off screen with a frozen grimace.” [17:49]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Time | |--------------------------------------------------------|------------| | Tom Hanks, West Point & Cancel Culture | 00:51-04:01| | CBS News Editing Policy & Media Trust | 04:01-04:54| | Reflecting on 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Institutional Trust| 04:54-07:20| | “Lions and Scavengers” Theory & Trump | 08:48-13:00| | Morality: Religion vs. Enlightenment | 13:00-15:56| | Kamala Harris’s Book, Biden, & Accountability | 16:56-19:31|

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Tone & Style

The conversation is frank, often sarcastic, and steeped in the combative wit characteristic of Real Time. While the three often disagree, the exchanges are substantive, with Maher poking holes, Shapiro responding with rapid-fire logic and analogies, and Alberta providing measured historical and cultural context.

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This episode is a must-listen for those interested in the intersection of politics, philosophy, media, and the changing moral fabric of American society.

Transcript

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[HBO Announcer]

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series Real Time with Bill Maher.

[Bill Maher]

All right, here we are. He's an author and a staff writer for the Atlantic. Tim Alberta, and he's the Daily Wire co founder of his new book, it's called Lions and Scavengers. Ben Shapiro okay, here are the questions from the people. What does the panel think about a West Point alumni group canceling an award it was planning to give to Tom Hanks? Oh, yes, I have all this information on this. An actor that Trump has called woke and destructive. Yes. Well, let me read you. I actually have the they were going to give Tom Hanks an award from West Point, the sylvanisthayer Award. It said Tom Hanks has done more for the positive portrayal of the American service member, blah, blah, blah. Which is so true. I mean, when you think about, I mean, my favorite movie of all time is Saving Private Ryan.

[Ben Shapiro]

All time.

[Bill Maher]

But I mean, he's played, you know, from the earth to the moon.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, Greyhound. Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

I mean, a million things where he's.

[Tim Alberta]

A patriot and for the military alone. I mean, he used to be a big part of bringing these honor flights of vets to D.C. every year.

[Bill Maher]

Well, Trump says we don't need destructive woke recipients getting our cherished American awards. So, you know, it's just so typical of how things are. Probably not in this country because it's like, wait, Tom Hanks. Oh, we forgot he's on the blue team. Fuck him.

[Ben Shapiro]

No, do not like.

[Bill Maher]

Okay, this is disapproved, by the way. I will also say this. I didn't like it when Tom Hanks went on Saturday Night Live and did a sketch where he was wearing a MAGA hat and wouldn't shake hands with a black person. Not helpful.

[Tim Alberta]

I disagree. I thought it was a great sketch because it was a continuation of the earlier sketch where he's dug.

[Bill Maher]

But you think that's a fair Portrayal of the maga.

[Tim Alberta]

I mean, that's not what the point was, though, Bill. The point was that that sketch was meant to show that Doug, in the continuation of the original sketch, that Doug on Jeopardy. As a working class, rural white guy with his MAGA cap on, actually had a tremendous amount in common with the black panelists that he was competing against. And that was the entire. The entire idea of the skit was that actually. Whatever.

[Bill Maher]

But why would he not shake.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right. That's the moment that Bill's objecting to.

[Tim Alberta]

No, I understand. Well, it's Saturday Night Live. I mean, I don't know that we should overthink it necessarily.

[Bill Maher]

No, but I can totally see why that one pissed them off.

[Tim Alberta]

I think in the spirit of the sketch, it was plain enough, but it's.

[Bill Maher]

A pretty volatile area to be saying that. You know, it's one thing to have differences about how we should handle racial matters in this country. To take it to that level. I just think it's not helpful.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, listen, when it comes to actors, Charlie is like the most sane actor there is.

[Bill Maher]

Charlie Sheen.

[Ben Shapiro]

I think so. Have you met many of the actors? Yes. He may be one of the more sane ones now. And so I'm not going to start removing prizes from people because.

[Bill Maher]

Right. But I mean, other than that, Tom Hanks, you know, impeccable record of service.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's silly. It's silly.

[Bill Maher]

And then. And also a genius actor and, you.

[Tim Alberta]

Know, he survived on that island all.

[Bill Maher]

Those days, all that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Unbelievable.

[Tim Alberta]

Give the guy break. You.

[Bill Maher]

What does the panel think of CBS News announcing that its Sunday show Face the Nation will no longer edit recorded interviews with newsmakers? Okay, this is obviously coming from some pressure from Trump. Kristi Noem is on there and complained about, you know, you edit me. I mean, I don't think this came from a good place, but as someone who's been edited, it's a good result.

[Ben Shapiro]

Honestly, it's a good result.

[Bill Maher]

I can't be too mad at it because I know that feeling of like. Or even in a print interview where they just print. They don't print the question they asked you.

[Tim Alberta]

Right.

[Bill Maher]

They just print part of your answer and they can make you look completely different than what really went on. But I don't know if this is the answer, but.

[Tim Alberta]

Oh, well, look, I mean, Gallup this summer, in the most recent survey they do on Institutional Trust, I think it was television news was down to 15% among all Americans. So any step you can take towards transparency, it's not going to hurt. Right?

[Bill Maher]

Yeah. Okay. Let's ask about 911 because that was yesterday and a lot of people are too young to even remember. And so it's not really a big deal to them, but it was a big deal for the country. We're almost a quarter century out from there. You mentioned it during the show, like we didn't handle it right going into Iraq. I mean, that's my view. Some people maybe think we did and maybe in the future there'll be revisionist things and oh boy, we missed it at the time. What a great idea that was. I don't think so, but I mean, Afghanistan is well on its way to being in the 9th century, so there's $2 trillion well spent. I mean, what lessons do we do we have from a quarter century away?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, the number one lesson, which actually was the lesson of 9 11, which we should have learned at the time, is that we have in the West a capacity to project our own values onto other countries and other people. That is just false. The reason that many people thought you could just project democracy into Afghanistan or Iraq is because they're just like us. They have the same priorities we do. President Bush gave a speech where he said, every human heart seeks freedom. So well, does every human heart seek freedom as like the ultimate objective in the way that we see it? And the answer, of course is no. And we should have known that from 911 when people flew planes into buildings and killed 3,000 people. It turns out that cultural differences make an awfully big difference and we ought to know that going into conflict and it ought to shape our war fighting goals and our foreign policy more generally.

[Tim Alberta]

I just talked about institutional trust a minute ago. I think maybe the great lesson that we've learned, or perhaps not learned, is that trust really, really matters. If you think about Iraq, if you think about Afghan, if you think about really in the decade that follows Hurricane Katrina, the financial collapse, we have all of these moments now that plot points and as we go along we see the ways in which by the time we get to the COVID 19 pandemic, that collapse of trust across the board, confidence across the board in all of these governing institutions in this country. I mean, higher education, the media, law enforcement, government, Major League Baseball, for crying out loud. I mean, Americans have reached a conclusion that no one is looking out for them and that they can't trust any of these people in charge. And I actually think that in some way we can trace a lot of that back to 911.

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[Bill Maher]

Okay, Ben, is Trump a scavenger or a lion? This is your book. First, explain basically what you're saying when you're talking about divided into scavengers and lions.

[Ben Shapiro]

So this is not a left, right? And one of the things I really tried to do in the book is not use the words right or left, because I don't actually think that the division between lions and scavengers is predominantly political. I think that lions are people.

[Bill Maher]

Lions are the good guys, right?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes. Lions are the people who want to build and scavengers are the people who want to tear down, who see the institutions of society as things that need to be predominantly removed. They're threats to them. They are violent. Luigi Mangione is a good example of somebody who's a scavenger. And again, I don't think that it's predominantly about policy. I even think that we all inside of us have both those tendencies, right? Sometimes you get up in the morning, you're ready to tackle the day and be productive and do something good. And sometimes you're bitching about the world and you want to tear things down. And so when I look at political figures, I try to say, are they more of one than the other? And usually it's a combination. So I see aspects that I think are lion like in President Trump. I mean, obviously I think that his policies on foreign policy are excellent. I think they're much more aggressive than a lot of People thought they would be in a lot of ways.

[Bill Maher]

He didn't quite get at how hard it would be to solve wars, though.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, that's true, but the thing about President Trump, just as a politician, and this really isn't to the lion scavenger point, is that he is heterodox, but responsive is the way that I would put it. He tries things and then because he is not actually ideological, if they fail, he tends to untry, to say the least, things.

[Bill Maher]

Yes, definitely. No, no, he's definitely flexible. He's a pragmatic, which is not always a bad thing at all.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tim Alberta]

The mane is very lion like.

[Ben Shapiro]

But I must say, Zoramtani would be an example of a scavenger. Somebody who's a complete lifelong loser who has. He was a rapper with less successful record than I have as a rapper. That's not even a joke. That's real.

[Bill Maher]

All of us in our twenties try things that don't work out.

[Ben Shapiro]

Do we become mayor after doing nothing?

[Bill Maher]

Well, obviously his forte was not in rap. Maybe in politics, it seems like his.

[Ben Shapiro]

Forte is destroying the real estate market in New York, increasing crime rates and importing the intifada.

[Bill Maher]

So it's not my kind of candidate either. But I must say, reading your book, which is really interesting, I mean, it's not quite the page turner Charlie's is, but, you know, but there was. It did put me in mind of two authors that I don't know if you would want to be compared to two, Nietzsche and Ayn Rand.

[Ben Shapiro]

So I quote both of them critically, actually, in the book, particularly Nietzsche.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, but, but I mean, it's. The theory is a little Nietzschean.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes. I mean, in the sense that there are people who are more creative and Belgian, they ought to be rewarded, and the people who tear things down ought to be not rewarded. But I think that's also baseline morality.

[Bill Maher]

I mean, he also went into the fact that, you know, he. Or the fact. His theory, Christianity is really a religion of losers because, you know, you're saying, I don't want this world. So what? I didn't do good in this world. My kingdom in the next world, the meek shall inherit the earth.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right.

[Bill Maher]

That's when God says, when I die, you'll inherit the earth.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah. That is his obvious critique of religion is that he basically says that biblical religion upholds the virtue of poverty and failure as opposed to upholding the strong. That's his critique. I think that's an unfair critique of religion. But I do think that, you know, virtue One of the things that I would hope that people who believe biblically, and I know you know, that's not everybody, but I hope that good people who believe biblically, which is not everybody who believes biblically, believes that virtue should lead to better results in life than non virtue. That to me is one, as a believing Jew, that is one of the central points of the book of Deuteronomy. Right. You're supposed to choose life so you and your children shall live. Doesn't mean that you have to agree with everything in Deuteronomy or Leviticus. I'm not going to make it.

[Bill Maher]

I know, but like, but that's always such a sin argument because if God wrote the book, how could there be things we don't agree with? It either got to be perfect because it's written by you know who, or it's just not perfect, written by people, which it was obviously. And it's full of nonsense and wickedness and things that are everything but virtuous.

[Ben Shapiro]

Bill, you and I agree on morality. I'd say like 87% morality. 87.5%, but not from the Bible. I have a question. Why?

[Bill Maher]

Because the, because it's for slavery. Because it's okay with slavery.

[Ben Shapiro]

Why do you and I agree on morality, like 87.5% religious Jew, you're an atheist. Why do we agree on those things? I'll tell you. I mean, I can give you my answer.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, please.

[Ben Shapiro]

Because we probably grew up a few miles from each other in a western society that has several thousand years of biblical history behind it. And so you can think that you hit that triple and you formed your own morality, but the reality is you were born morally on third base.

[Bill Maher]

No, we, we, okay, we got, we got that morality from the Enlightenment, which was an anti religious movement. The founding fathers, they weren't religious people, they were deists, they weren't particularly Christian.

[Ben Shapiro]

Thomas Jefferson used the morality of the Bible when he was ripping all the miracles out of the Bible.

[Bill Maher]

Yes.

[Ben Shapiro]

He literally ordered a virgin of the Bible without the miracles. I mean, that is the miracle.

[Tim Alberta]

I discussed this last time I was here and you were talking about all of Jesus teachings and how this was really radical new stuff. Right. And how it changed the world.

[Bill Maher]

It's basic philosophy. Yes.

[Tim Alberta]

And how without that, I mean, I think it's worth understanding that pivot point in history when we talk about Judeo Christian ethics, but more specifically Christian ethics, what a turning point in history that represented within the Roman Empire and beyond in terms of medicine, in terms of care for the widow and the orphan. Much of what we would consider to be sort of good moral ethical behavior was not in fact a commonplace or mainstream thing several centuries ago. And so I think, to Ben's point, some of that.

[Bill Maher]

Why do we still do it? Why do we still admire it?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, because cut flowers die, meaning that if the flower is the result of the root and then you cut the flower, you can live on with a secular humanistic morality, be a moral person and be a good person. But it does not systemically maintain, if there's no actual outgrowth from a basis of belief, that this is fundamentally demanded of you by a higher power. Because you can't get from atheism to reductive morality just by pure reason. Right? Even every atheist will acknowledge this. The values that you believe are not things that can just be reasoned to because they assume things that are not in evidence, like the inherent value of humanity. I mean, we're pieces of meat wandering through space. What's the inherent value of that? These are all religious, faith based premises. You don't have to believe in God to believe in those things. But they are logical jumps, they are leaps of faith is what we would call that in religion. And so at least acknowledging that recognizes that we're all living in a world of faith, whether you believe in God or not.

[Bill Maher]

I'm just saying the book, the Wellspring from where you're getting this morality is so, so deeply flawed, even if it was just the slavery thing. And it's not just that. I mean, if you rape a woman, it's a property crime. We're talking about Bronze Age people who had a whole different way of looking at things, which was not as advanced as we are. And it's like, well, you know, we have these things. It's like saying, well, jump in the pool, there's only one turd in there.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's more like saying that as a religious person, the basic idea is that God has to speak to humans of the time and then human beings have to apply their reason. This is why the relationship between reason and faith is not just you take it on faith and you do whatever the Bible says. I mean, this is why there's a developed oral tradition in Judaism or this is why there's a developed natural law tradition in Catholicism. I mean, the idea is that it's an admixture of human reason and those faith based principles. But here's the real question. If the sort of reasonable morality that you espouse is universal, then why is it not even remotely universal on Planet Earth. Okay. It is only found in Christian based societies. You will not find it unless it was grafted on later by, you know, us conquering someplace Christian based.

[Bill Maher]

You saying this with the yarmulke on.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes, because Christian. Yes, because. Because Christians believe the first half of the Bible.

[Bill Maher]

How much is mine?

[Tim Alberta]

I'm working on them, though. I'm working on them.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, as you know, this is the point where I remind all Christians in my first of all, I appreciate all the attempts to convert me. And yes, you get infinity heaven points if you're the one who does it, is what I have heard.

[Bill Maher]

All right, final question. What does, ah, Kamala Harris, boy, she does not have a lot of luck. Like this week her book comes out. She was trying to do the press and then of course, all this news buried it. The book is called 107 Days. Wink, wink. That's all. That's all the time I had to win. Just 107 days.

[Tim Alberta]

Only there were 108.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah. And she only had a billion and a half dollars. I don't know how she could have gotten to get a message on. But what does the panel think of Kamala Harris admission that it was reckless to let Joe and Jill Biden decide on his reelection bid? Yes. This is the big takeaway from the book is that she says, Joe, we kept saying she says like a mantra, it's their personal decision. And now she's saying after the fact. Well, actually, it wasn't really just a personal decision. It did have some effect on the country.

[Ben Shapiro]

What if there was an amendment to the Constitution, say like the 25th Amendment, that allowed the vice President of the United States and the other cabinet officials to recognize that the president was brain dead and actually do something about it? And what if you then just sat there and did nothing until Joe Biden had his head cave in, basically on national television in a debate with Donald Trump and stare into the great maw of death off screen with a frozen grimace. And then you still waited a month for him to drop out.

[Bill Maher]

It wasn't that bad. It was a. Let's, let's not, let's not rewrite the history. It was a terrible debate performance from an elderly man. Excuse me, excuse me. Who in the corner, the quiet of the Oval Office, had not lost his marbles and was still able to make decisions among his staff. Okay. That's what we were dealing with. Was he able to run? No. Was he able to do the job?

[Tim Alberta]

Or bike, by the way.

[Bill Maher]

Or bike. Yes.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, we don't know if he lost his marbles because he doesn't know how many there were or how many he had to find.

[Tim Alberta]

Can I just say, look again, this.

[Bill Maher]

Is why the country will never heal, because nobody's ever been president.

[Ben Shapiro]

Joe Biden Sinai.

[Bill Maher]

No.

[Tim Alberta]

The tough thing about the Harris book, right, is that she writes this as though she was some backbench, low level staffer without agency. I mean, it's not dissimilar to what Mike Pence did during, towards the end of the Trump presidency. And then he comes out after and says, oh, shucks. You know, it's like you were the Vice President of the United States.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah.

[Tim Alberta]

If it was reckless for him to do this, Madam Vice President, did you not have a responsibility to the country to say something about it?

[Bill Maher]

I mean, Trump does the same thing. Last week he tweeted out, I guess we've lost India to who did that? All right, thank you, guys. Thank you, audience. You were great.

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