being professionally courteous and maybe thinks that the audience would be interested in the book, it's not an endorsement of the person. It's not an endorsement of all that person has done. It's more like I wrote a book, you wrote a book, your book is interesting, maybe other people would like it too. That's it, right? Authors promote other people's books. It doesn't mean anything.

Scott is waffling again. What am I waffling about? Somebody says I'm waffling. I don't think I've waffled less on any livestream than today. So you could have your own opinions about Jake Tapper's politics and performance etc. But let the guy promote a book from anybody. Just let him promote a book.

Because I like to say this every few months at least: I insist on the right of association. I insist as a citizen of the United States on the right of free association. If I want to talk to the worst person in the world and get a selfie with that person I'm going to do it and I don't care what your opinion is and I'm never going to care what your opinion is. If I want to tweet somebody's book and you don't like their politics but I think the book is interesting I'm going to tweet that book. There's nothing you're going to do to talk me out of that behavior. So freedom of association, there is no wiggle room. That one's an absolute and can't ever change.

All right, Bill Maher continues to be interesting politically. And he noted on the show with 85 percent of the people Trump endorsed for the primaries won. 85 percent. And he said, quote, "Say what you want about Mr. Evil" — meaning Trump — "but boy what a politician. I mean that's impressive. Impressive in an evil way but still impressive."

So do you remember when Trump first announced? Do you remember what I seemed to be completely alone in the United States saying? I wrote a blog post called Clown Genius. He was being called a clown and I said you better watch out for the clown because this clown is a genius persuasion-wise. And then the clown became the president of the United States. And then even out of office he influenced 85 percent of the primaries.

Now can we give me some credit for calling on day one, the first one at least, maybe not the first one but among the first to say there's something going on with this guy? And I said that he would be the most persuasive person you've ever seen. I believe that that's now the case. I believe that even his biggest critics would say okay I don't like what he's saying but there's no question about his persuasion. He's got the entire package. He does. Whole package.

BJ Novak I guess was on Bill Maher's podcast and you know he's a writer and humorist, stand-up guy. He wrote for The Office and he was an actor on that. BJ Novak. If your initials are BJ you've got to learn to tell a joke. You've got to have a sense of humor. But BJ believes what I believe, which is that wokeness is really people pretending to be offended on