Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #419: Policing, Veterans, Brexit, Terrorism

Episode Date: March 25, 2017

Bill and his guests - Matt Schlapp, Timothy Snyder, Chris Hayes, Max Brooks, Louise Mensch - answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 3/24/17) 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. Okay, here we are on overtime. Chris, we didn't get to talk about your book on the show. It's a great book. Thank you. So here's a question about it.

What contributes to the racial disparity in policing in this country? That's a nice... You buy the fucking book. That's the topic of the book. You might want to summarize it. One thing I would say is this. I hope people read it.

we tend to focus on police misconduct or police shootings. And one of the points of the book is that that is a small fraction of an inordinate amount of interactions. And in the past 20 or 30 years, particularly, we have changed the goal of policing from essentially solving crimes to sort of preserving order. The whole broken windows revolution that happens starting in the 1980s is that police's job is to prevent crime from ever happening, right?

as opposed to solving crimes when they do happen. And what that means is an unbelievable amount of police citizen interactions in particularly neighborhoods of color and poor neighborhoods, and a huge amount of those end up in the sorts of situations we see recorded on videotape. At the same time that that's been happening, we've seen homicide clearance rates in this country decline, even as homicides have gone down. So we have gotten out of whack in what we think of policing should be doing,

and it's sort of at the core, I think, of where we've gone wrong. Interesting. Max, do you expect Trump to make good on his promise to take better care of our nation's military veterans as the author of World War Z? We want to know that answer. I expect him to throw an incredible amount of money at it as he does everything.

Will that money be managed well or will it go into new weapons procurements that we don't need? Probably the latter. Right. I don't expect him to take care of anybody except him. Right. Louise, will Britain come to regret Brexit? Nope.

Next question. No, we won't. You're for Brexit? I'm massively for Brexit. Wait a second. I'm for Brexit. I am for Brexit. Wait, but doesn't that make you a Putin wacky?

No, he doesn't. I was like, it is actually possible to have a Venn diagram. What are you, an Islamphogue? No. Oh, no. I work with Muslims for Britain, who were some of the biggest supporters of Brexit, because before Brexit, white Europeans, somebody from Belgium was privileged

had the right to come and live in Britain, whereas people that were our citizens who have got relatives in Pakistan couldn't bring them over because Europeans got priority. So it's not Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. And, you know, maybe Putin likes dogs. I like dogs.

You know, there could possibly be an overlap, maybe, but I am for Brexit. I'm not British. He does like dogs. Or European, but... No one's all bad. I understand Brexit. I do.

I mean, I understand. why somebody in Britain would go, you know, Greece is always in trouble and needing bailing. Why is that my problem? It's always the same... Somebody asked me this. Is it always the same countries

that need the ballot? I was like, yeah, kind of. You know, Spain, Portugal, Italy. The sunny places where people are fucking from one to four in the air. They got bad things to do than go to work. Of course their GDP is lower. They're sleeping and fucking in the day.

I mean, it's a reasonable trade-off. It really was only partly the money. I mean, just it's portrayed as really racist, but if the prison of the United States, in this case it might be a good thing, given who is president, had to go to the Prime Minister of Canada for permission every time we wanted to do something

and also get the president of Mexico to sign off as well. And he couldn't do his own anything. Yeah, but if you had to get permission to do laws, then we just basically felt we should be able to govern ourselves. You know, we're big boys and girls. And if Europe would like to join into the United States of Europe, then God bless, but we don't want to. You were always against me?

No, no, I just feel like there are reasonable sovereign. issues that go to questions of Brexit and also question of some of these free trade agreements where at the end of the day, America should be able to do what America's in America's interest and they don't have to sign over their sovereignty to other entities. And that's the big thing. Who's America? There's 300 million of us all trying to get along. No, that's not true. In the end, it's one country. Free trade is a cornerstone of conservatism. When did free trade become bad for conservatives? I'm a conservative. I don't think it is bad. I'll tell you when it became bad. When Trump won the election.

Right. Yeah, right. That's suddenly, they did a big 180 on that because it's all about winning. Same thing with Russia. You know, it's like, it's okay as long as they help us win. Right. That, to me, is what I get from their view about Russia. I think the Brexit question was this basic question of should the U.K. be able to determine who comes into their country?

You know, if you come into one part of the EU doesn't mean you should be able to go anywhere you want. I think there are basic rules and regulations that a country should set. And I think when it comes to these trade agreements, I actually don't think these trade agreements are very free. I just think they're contracts. Look, they're protectionists. They discriminated against poor, well, Caribbean sugar producers, for example, at the expense of rich French farmers.

That's not free trade. And that's not free trade. That's protection. But she brings up a good point about Muslims, because there was a large section of England that did not want Muslim refugees coming in via Europe. The cruel joke on those bigots is that those jobs still need to be filled, and they're going to get filled by Commonwealth countries

who are brown and Muslim. So congratulations. No more Polish Catholics are coming in. This guy... You know what? The thing is right. This guy who did the terrorist... This guy who did the terrorist attack, you liberate.

He can... Okay, he's from Birmingham, which is heavily Muslim. And some of the schools there were actually teaching a form of Sharia law. This is a fact. I'm not making this up. There also been many acid thrown in the face attacks. Okay. Let me ask this.

I've asked this question before. If a European country, sometime in the future, became 51% Muslim, would it be the same country? Would have the same values, the same laws? Would laws change, you think? Would you ask that question about Jews? I will. Would you ask that question about Catholics? I will ask that question, and the answer is it wouldn't change, because they're already the fucking majority. But Muslims are not. If you're telling me that if a European country became 51% Muslim, it would basically be the same country you grew up in?

The problem would not be Islam. It would be homogeneity. It would be homogenity. You're talking about things where everybody is one-faith. But what I'm talking about are fundamental principles like equality of women, separation of religion and state, respect for minorities, rule of law, as opposed to religious rule. Do you know about the Westbro-Baptist Church? There are a whole bunch of fundamentalists. Again, this false equivalency.

It's not a false equivalency. I'm going to hurt your reputation by healthy use. I'm sure. You're bad telling me. I'm from Kansas. I know what that is. Oh, my God. We have to call things as they are.

Thank you. Look, there are a lot of moderate Muslims who know that Islam is in a fight for the idea. Let's stick up for them. That you can have a civilization where you have religious pluralism. They themselves, those Muslims don't believe in that religious. So, Matt, will you tell me this? Those extremists. Can you explain to me the structure of the government of Indonesia?

I can't. Okay. Do you know that Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world? I've read that. We do. Yeah. Yeah. So, right.

But then, so if you're telling me you don't know anything about the way that the largest Muslim country in the world... Oh, I do. I didn't say anything. I could tell you that in Indonesia, if you want to be a woman policeman or a woman, a military person, you have to undergo the two-finger test where they tell if you're a virgin. Right, but that's Indonesia's problem. It's not Britain's problem. It's my question.

It's my point. That we're not completely crazy. That assimilation is an issue. Wait, but let me go back. Let's extend that argument. Wait, can I extend that his argument? I'm sick. I got to go take care of my cold.

Thank you very much, everybody. Catch all new episodes of real time with Bill Marr every Friday night at 10. Or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.