Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #418: Russia Investigation, Dodd-Frank, 2020 Candidates, SCOTUS

Episode Date: March 18, 2017

Bill and his guests - Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Andrew Sullivan, and Fmr. Rep Barney Frank - answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 3/17/17) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. You love that. Nice to meet a White House not controlled by the Russians. Do you think the Senate investigation of Russian hacking

of the election, yeah, you're on the committee. You're the judiciary committee? I'm the ranking member along with Chairman Lindsey Graham. Okay, so do you think that investigation you're starting it now? We've started it. Will yield actionable results?

I would like to add a question to that. Are the Republicans helping at all? They are. Lindsay's being terrific. Really? Yep. We had a really good first hearing. And we still have some documents that we are waiting for

and some explanations from the FBI. And he's indicated that if we don't get what we want, he's prepared to go the subpoena route. And I think we'll have support from our full committee level, Chairman Grassley and ranking member of Feinstein. so we're on our way. We've got the next hearing is going to be on...

So the best Republicans are Lindsay and McCain, right? And they're always... Well, they're friends of mine and I think they're terrific. And they're certainly friends of each other. They are. Yeah.

No, they are. They are. I mean, they do everything in lockstep. I mean, you cannot separate them. If I'm not mistaken, John has called Lindsay his idiot bastard son. But he obviously means it in the nicest possible way.

Yeah, they're true friends. That's a great Senate friendship. That's an S&M thing, Senator. I don't think so. I want to get into that. No, no, no, no. Don't even go. No, no, no.

Don't get into what those two call each other. Bernie, do you think Trump will be successful in dismantling Dodd Frank? No, they've already given up on much of that. Again, I think he's going to be much less successful across the board. And one of the things, Joan just indicated, the Republican independence from him. They were intimidated by, I agree, the solidarity for him in the Republican ranks, but he's pushing them to where they can't go. Chuck Grassley is no rebel, but he said he won't have a hearing to confirm the Deputy Attorney General,

who will be the only Attorney General will have as long as Sessions has to recuse himself. And I think, no, he's going to, his two top appointees in this have just said they accept basically what we did with regard to derivatives. If they do go after the Consumer Bureau. I mean, I love Elizabeth Warren. I think she's great. But I don't know if she deserves the great favor they will do for her by letting her become a national leader in defending the Consumer Bureau. So I think they will make very good old headway there.

And they've already given up on some of the big parts of it. Who is going to be the Democratic candidate in 2020? We cannot fuck this up. And we cannot. We also can't. live under the illusion that the electorate is going to go for somebody who isn't charismatic, okay, and a great salesman. You can't, Hillary Clinton proved. You can be completely competent.

You can't win an election with, I know I'm not that great, but this guy's not. Bill, first of all, I want to be saying, you know, you have overdone this. Oh, how terrible it was, and this great, mighty Trump. It was the narrowest victory in American history. And still a victory. Yeah, but a very narrow one. And since then, he has alienated a lot of people. I don't know what world you guys live in

where you think he's so triumphant. Even the Wall Street... The world where he's president every day? That totally is the world I live in. No, but that's not... No, you're living in a world in which he's not just the president, but he's a politically successful and mighty president, and it's the other way around.

He's losing popularity. He's not getting anything done. Of course, I wish he wasn't president. I worked very hard to try and stop him. But you've got to estimate where we are. To answer your question, by the way, it has never this far ahead of a presidential election been able to predict

who the non-income candidate of either party would be. I know. I'm just, I'm looking around scouring the landscape, and I see nothing. I mean, I really would like... And you would have seen Barack Obama at this point? Yes, I would have seen Barack Obama at this point. No, you wouldn't.

I'll tell you that. I actually predicted it at this point. At what year? 2007? Really? Yeah, but he won the year after, not three years before. We're in 2005. When he gave his speech...

Boy, boys, boy. Barney. He gave his speech, his famous speech in 2004. We could see his... him rising. There's no one. I know a guy. I know a guy. Please. I think the people in this state do, Gavin... We say that in Rhode Island, by the... Gavin Newsom. We got a guy.

We got a guy named Gavin Newsom. This guy should be president. He can win. He's going to be governor in 2018. And I know that's a short time just to be governed before you run. I don't give a fuck. His slogan should be, hello, I must be going. Nice to stop by, California. But I got a other things to do. I don't think that's going to win back

Ohio and Pennsylvania and the key states that you need to get back. And look, I'd love there to be a real candidate. Then who? Who? I don't, I just don't see it. You guys... Too early to tell. Let's get a Democratic speaker in the House in 2018.

Yes. She's not a game. That we can do now. That's another thing here. Who do we have? We have. Nancy Pelosi is still there. I mean, the it's not a popularity contest for her. It's going to be races in the key districts that go one way or the other. And we have the chance to win those, and any of them will help stop this madness.

I'm no vested interest. I just look at the Democratic Party, and I think it's pretty pathetic. I think the way it stood up to Trump has been rather sad. That is nonsense. And I don't. By the way, if you look at the votes in the Senate on confirmation on the cabinet, you have the highest percentage of no votes of any set of cabinet nominees in history because the Democrats have been so overwhelmingly, in some cases unanimously against him.

They're frustrating him on health care. This pessimism and this fear, you're talking about, oh, liberal's cry. You guys are cowering before a guy who's a paper tiger. Yeah, he got elected, but he has been very ineffective and generated an awful lot of...

And what about after he starts the war with North Korea? How powerful will he be then? Because once the war starts, you know, presidents seem to be able to get whatever they want. I don't believe he's going to start a war with... I hope you not. By the way, George... We'd have to be... crazy to do that.

Well, he pushed on the war when he locked, and it didn't work out very well for the Republican Party. He got re-elected handily. Right. And then all you need is, all you need, and he's almost asking for it. Just a second, Barney. I don't want to get elected. Let me finish.

Boys. I was trying to get you to be calm in the way you said before. Senator White House, will you vote to... Will you... Anything to stop that side, right? Will you vote to confirm Neil Gorsuch?

I want to hear him out first. Oh, that's not... Wrong answer. No, no, wait a minute. They stole that pick. Unless the guy's name is Merrick Garland. I don't want to hear anything else. No, the issue...

They can't. They can't. The issue that we need to address is what the Republicans do when they get five justices on the Supreme Court. And they go on a bender. Well, that's one issue. They do Shelby County. They do Citizens United.

The other issue... They do Heller, on and on and on. That's what we need to focus on. a pick. Obama had a year. He was president for almost a full year. The Constitution is not ambiguous about this.

The president gets to pick, and they didn't let that happen. It cannot stand. They're the ones who said that 4-4 is okay. And by the way, there are a number of very good decisions that are coming out of the circuit courts. Which will stand? Striking down Texas and is bigoted and ridiculous things. If it stays

4-4, that gets upheld. So I hope that nobody votes to confirm Right. I think we can hold at 60. Yeah. And if they try to pull the nuclear option, I think they're going to have a real problem on their hands. Let them deal with that on their own. But you started that, right? Yeah, fortunately. And they said...

I'm sorry, but Harry Reid already nuked the filibuster in the last... For a whole... not the Supreme Court. Precisely. And there's a reason for that. They said no Supreme Court. By the way, it was very important. We agree. We're on weak grounds when you've already conceded...

But just to show... ceded this. Just to show what a different world were living in. You want to give them every single argument. I'm stuck by that. Harry Reid did a great thing by breaking the filibuster

because you had a very right-wing court, for instance, in Washington, D.C., overturning all kinds of regulations. One of the best things Harry did was to break that filibuster, so we got a fair balance on the court. Have you ever criticized the Democratic Party on the Democratic Party on the Democrat? Yeah. I just said

earlier, if you were listening, that Obama screwed up with the rollout. I said that the big problem in the health is. You're wrong on that, actually. The rollout, I mean, technically speaking, that was an incredibly hard thing. You don't want to change the subject. You asked if I ever criticized them and I gave, I criticized them.

Guys, where was this hatred when we were on TV? Why save it for the end? Okay, I just think it's interesting that when we hear the term nuclear option, it's always been something we talked about and we were talking about the Senate and stuff like that. And now when I hear the term nuclear option, I think of what happened

this week. Yes, when Rex Tillerson said, the first strike option is on the table with North Korea. That's a little bit of a different thing. Happy St. Patrick's, everybody. I hope you have a great weekend. Catch all new episodes of real time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10

or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.