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>> new york, i'm lawrence o'donnell. last time president obama extended a lunch invitation to the republican leadership, they told him they were too busy. but house speaker john boehner, eric cantor and mccarthy all accepted his invitation to join him at 12:30 tomorrow for lunch discussion at the white house. press secretary robert gibbs says subjects will include, quote, all issues, foreign and domestic. but there will be no preview of the president's budget. tomorrow's lunch is president obama's latest attempt to reach across washington's political divide. as an appetizer of sorts, eric cantor slammed two of the president's plans today. cantor vowed they would block funding for the healthcare reform bill when it takes up budget planning next week. he also said he's not in favor of the new plan for high speed rail construction, rolled out by the white house today. joining me now, a man who reaches across the political divide every week on his show, real time with bill maher. bill, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
>> thanks, lawrence, i try.
>> bill, you talk to republicans more than barack obama does. every week on your show. any advice for him how to handle these guys tomorrow?
>> well, actually he tried so hard. i mean, this man, i saw him with bill o'reilly as i'm sure a lot of people did in this country before the super bowl. all i could think of is i would never be that way. i just do not have it in me to take that much, really, that much guff shall we call it, since i'm not on hbo. i just feel like the most difficult part of his job must be to quelch the rage that somewhere must be inside and say i'm the president of the united states. you don't talk to me like this. i'm not some left -- i'm not al sharpton, you know. i won this job. and bill o'reilly who claims he's such a pat reat, how unpatriotic to treat a president that way. how does that look to other countries when you're interrupting and belittling, i saw what you did, counting the number of times he was interrupted. i just find it astounding.
>> yeah. i mean --
>> and as far as -- go ahead.
>> well, you know, 42 interruptions in 15 minutes. i mean, you don't have to be the president of the united states to say hey, maybe you only interrupt me 15 times in 15 minutes. how about that. how about one a minute.
>> and john boehner not attending any of these places that he's invited to by the president, i don't remember this ever happening before with other presidents.
>> but they have decided to show up tomorrow. boehner will show up there tomorrow, they're going to have lunch, pretend there's some way for them to go forward governing together right after, you know, less than 24 hours after the president says we should do infrastructure spending in this country, try to catch up with the rest of the world on this sort of thing, and get some real rail service going in different places around the country. republicans immediately say no, we're not going to do that. then what are they going to talk about tomorrow?
>> that's okay, i mean, that's policy, they're allowed to do that. but this idea, this attitude they have that barack obama won the election fair and square by a big margin. he is the president. but somehow he always has to beg them just to come to the table, or as he did with his speech yesterday before the chamber of commerce, apologize to them. why is he apologizing to these guys, the business community? he saved their butt. that somehow they had to put up with this incompetent socialist the last two years, and now he's coming around, no. they're the ones, the business community, not them central florida, more wall street, but they tanked the economy, and this competent man brought it back and stabilized it. all the people who got a lump in their throat watching that super bowl commercial about how detroit has come back, well, that's obama who got detroit back. he's the one that bailed out the auto industry. the notion that he somehow is moving to the center, he's always been there, and he's always been very friendly and good to business. how this president is a radical, i don't know where they're getting this from. you know, he wanted to drill more for oil, he stayed in afghanistan, healthcare is an old republican plan. you know, he wants to raise taxes 3% on the richest 1 or 2%. this is not a radical.
>> his healthcare plan was more conservative than richard nixon's healthcare plan which did not pass, but these republicans don't seem to have any memory for that sort of thing. bill, you started to ask the question on your show of where are we in the arc of the madness known as glenn beck. is he on the way down? we do know his ratings are sliding, it is hard to sell ads on his show, even though he does have pretty good ratings there, still. you have conservative columnist bill kristol attacking him saying he is basically the same thing as the john birch society. chart for us, bill. how should we look at this. is this just a show business career glenn beck flame out or is this a real political phenomenon and is it something liberals should be afraid of or is he now just a bad joke?
>> well, of course, he's a bad joke, which is good for me and you and a lot of other people who can make fun of him, and he gives us a lot of material. i think most important in glenn beck's world is staying on the air. you know, once you get a job like that where you have fans and you go into an office, and everybody kisses your behind, and people are telling you you're great, it is really very, very hard to give that up. and he has gotten a little of a messiah complex. i don't think he cares how he stays on top. first it was political. then over the summer, remember his rally on the mall. it seemed like he was trying to seg into a nonpolitical semi religious figure. it was all about god and stuff like that. that didn't work too well. had a self help book, people didn't like that one. now he has gone further to the place he was before, sort of this apocalyptic politics. and it kind of reminds me of something i read about him, when he said he was getting married, and he and his wife, his fiance at the time before they got married, they said well, before we can get married, we have to pick a religion. it is like of course.
>> a china pattern.
>> you know, these people do not seem to have really firm convictions is what i'm saying.
>> bill, your favorite republican candidate, the one you created, delivered to the world, christine o'donnell. she's back, trying to raise money again for these things she's calling christinepac, a political action committee. big surprise, she's going to run it out of her home. in other words, she's going to raise money to pay her rent again through a political action committee, but she claims in her letter to her supporters she's trying to get money from the left keeps after me because they consider a strong republican woman a danger to their status quo. now, isn't she exactly, exactly the kind of strong republican woman that democrats are hoping will run for senate in every state in the country so the democrats might someday actually win a hundred seats if they're running against christine o'donnells?
>> that field of strong republican women, her and sarah palin and michelle bachmann. i found out this week apparently i'm having a feud with elizabeth hasselbeck.
>> we're going to get to that. you're not getting off the hook without that. in fact, we're happy to do it right now. why don't we do it right now. it is a perfect segue. you did say something about elizabeth on your show friday that started a pretty serious controversy that you're going to have to address. let's watch how it started.
>> now that hosni mubarak released lar a logan, he must put her intrepid hotness back on a plane to the united states immediately in exchange, we will send elizabeth hasselbeck.
>> notice how the audience laughed.
>> of course they do. you can hide anything in the cloak of a joke. i will say this to boy billy. it is unfair, it is chauvinistic what you said and you'll probably run this again. i find it disturbing and amusing that i happen to be on your mind. it is wrong to do to any person, but any woman who just happens to disagree with you, and you obviously missed a call of civility from our president, barack obama, and you are on the other line with ignorance and hate. maybe next time you should pick up the call.
>> mr. maher, you have as much time actually for your rebuttal.
>> i don't even know where to begin. first of all, it's a joke. not even that bad one. these people are so -- i don't want to use a word that will get me in trouble, let's just say i wouldn't put her on the intelligence committee to the point where they don't know where the line is. there is a line that can be crossed where you get into mean, bitter, chauvinistic, i didn't even approach it. it's a joke. you see, the difference between me and rush limbaugh, he said that new york times reporters were being attacked in egypt. should i feel bad about it? that's reality. i wasn't actually -- no one thought i was actually saying that they should take elizabeth hasselbeck and send her over to egypt. actually, she should be kind of complimented because i was putting her on a par with lara logan who we all think is a very attractive woman. so we're kind of saying to the egyptians, the imaginary egyptians who have lara in custody, we'll send you elizabeth hasselbeck because she's also attractive but we don't like her politics. that was all that's behind that joke. to say i'm on her mind? i think one joke that took twenty seconds. she had all weekend to get over it. apparently on monday morning, it was the first -- barbara, we must first take time out to deal with this atros tee.
>> not only was it a joke, it was a good joke and passed in this room, it passed the crew test. while that joke was playing, the crew was cracking up. and that's the ultimate test of any joke. we get the joke, bill. barbara walters explained to elizabeth, no, he was actually joking about your politics. so, you know, barbara gets the joke.
>> and i have no ill feelings towards elizabeth hasselbeck. we, you know, we disagree fundamentally on pretty much everything. she's not the kind of person who i would want to have lunch with, nor would she want to have it with me, but we can be civil. i've been on her show before. i'm not looking to start a giant fight with her, but you know, we're both public figures. people are going to make jokes about us. if she calls me billy boy, i am going to call her liz ee bird.
>> bill maher, host of real time with bill maher, thank you very much for joining us.
>> my pleasure.
