Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #453: Privitization, NRA, #MeToo Wall Street, Civil Service

Episode Date: March 17, 2018

Bill and his guests – Beta O’Rourke, Billy Bush, Pete Dominick, Nayyera Haq, and Andrew Ross Sorkin answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 03/16/18) 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 Maher. The internet. It's a little turn. Yes. Andrew Ross-Sorkin, do you agree with Larry Kudlow that Medicare and Social Security should be handed to Wall Street through privatization? Is that what he's for? I'm sure he is. I'm sure he is for it.

I don't think I'm for that. No. I'm going to take the other side of that. Is that where you want me to go? Well, I don't know. What are you trying with me for? I'm asking you're the question. I mean, Bush proposed this.

I think that's a real problem. I think the privatization of so many things, actually, especially when it comes to people's pension and retirement, part of our problem has been that. So I'm going to take the other side. But as an economist, oh, wait, I'm not. Who plays one on TV? I'm just going to give you the other argument.

Okay, go for it. I've seen the chart of where money, if you put your money in the stock market, versus if you just put it in the bank or whatever that is. It'll do better on the market. Like the market one goes like this. Now, you can't watch it every year because the market goes up and down.

But over the time, if you put it in when you were 20, by the time you retired at 65, the money goes like this. If we had a forced savings program, by the way, if we had a real forced savings program where you couldn't take it out and somebody else and was effectively going to be managed elsewhere

and there was guarantees on it, I could have to go for that. Yeah, it's not the craziest idea that Bush. Bush, hey, who is he to you? Is he your uncle? George Bush? W? Yeah, he's...

He's my cousin. You have to think about that. There's a lot of us there, cousin. Right. His dad's my uncle. I'm pretty sure of it. You guys hang out? There's a lot of us.

No, not much. So, Billy, how is the rest of the Bush family holding up under Trump, this card says? Trying to take the high road, I think. I don't know if you... Right. I'm not sure either one cast to vote for him. In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't.

Now, speaking of Me Too stuff, boy, the old man sure skated on the ass crapping. Have you ever talked to him about that? I told him never again. You hear me? Don't do that. No. Because there's a conservative.

I mean, it sounds like the same thing that Al Franken was accused of and that just kind of like went into the ether. Okay. Except he's a former president of the United States. Right. People didn't know that about it. And there's a whole bunch of women that said it's pretty messed up.

Pretty unacceptable. And there was a joke that went with it. it's disgusting and inexcusable. Right, you are. Please, Pete. What a lot of fun you are. Well, I mean, okay. There's no upside to it.

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm not sure what Al Franken did. I'll just say that. I'm talking about Pappy. Either one. I mean, who's grabbing people like that in a photo op? It's weird.

It is weird. Especially, and... Everybody wants a photo of Bill Maher. Have you ever even considered... I don't even touch people. I take pictures like this. Yes, exactly. Every picture I think is like this.

Hands up. Okay. Why does the NRA get a tax exemption and how do we take it away? Elect Democrats. That's a good because they do run, they would like to say that they don't run a political action committee, but they do have that wing. Otherwise, they're saying they're grassroots nonprofit organization, but they've used illegal corporate tax loopholes to build out an entire political lobbying wing that doesn't get tax. That's a corporate tax loophole, but that's also because the NRA knows how to work the system. Boy, do they.

And they're not to use a crisis. They never let a crisis go to waste. If you follow the money on the NRA. Now we're arming teachers. Not yet. They somehow turn that. No, one shot. It's moving ahead in many states.

Somehow they turn that around to a way they could sell more guns. It's moving ahead in the States where they still beat kids with paddles. I mean, it's not, you know, I don't think it's taking hold. Certainly it's not, there's no agreement with a bunch of, educators and experts about arming teachers. Teachers don't want that. One thing I was just going to say, on money on the NRA, you can go after them on the taxes or

whatever it is, but the real thing, the real opportunity given I cover the world of finance, is the companies. It's all the companies that do business with the NRA and people who do business with guns. It's the credit card companies that allow the transactions on the cards. It's Apple TV and Amazon and everybody who

allows this stuff over their airwaves. Washington, unfortunately, is not going to do anything. I don't think, anytime soon. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But I think in the meantime, there's a huge swath of stuff that can actually happen, but it depends on everybody actually doing something about it. That goes to the action related to your pocketbook, right? Consumers

have to wait about two years before we can use our power of citizens to kick somebody out of office. I can make a decision tomorrow if I want to go to a different store. If I don't like, like Walmart, Walmart. They get in your business? They got the business of a lot of people out of that day, right? But Dick's

sporting goods did. Yeah. I got, I I got paddled a couple of times and didn't seem to destroy me. I'm still here. Only when you do something really bad, you know, and, you know, didn't have like nails in it or anything. I'm not quite sure what kind of paddling he's talking about,

but maybe we should move on. I'm just saying. Have you worked in the White House, would you resign on principle or stay to help minimize the damage Trump causes? Oh, so I don't think there's any heroism in serving in this White House anymore. I think initially people really did think that, like John Kelly, he's like, I'm going to serve my country and do this, but it's, you're not serving the public at

this point, right? You're serving Trump and his personal Trump interests, and that's just not, and you don't know what they are. Right, but the, although it's actually very clear what they are, actually, they're advancing his family and whoever else is willing to line his pocketbooks, whether it be Russian oligarchs or any other dictators that he may or may not want to emulate. But there is, And I, yes, I did work in the White House. And there's absolutely no question that I would ever work in a Trump White House. And the sad thing is everybody who's walked out has walked out tarnished. Like, it's a dead end job.

Hickers, fly close to the sun. Yes. No, but anyone... And then Monica Lewinsky has a better reputation than Sean Spicer does. But would you want, John Dilley? Who does? Monica Lewinsky is doing better, briefly wise than Sean Spicer, the former White House. No, anybody, as you can attest, anyone who gets in contact, he's a human wood chipper.

people just everything he touches dies you don't have the courage to say no to a job to Donald Trump you shouldn't be running a McDonald's unless whatever but we have a problem I do want to throw in about public public servants who are I was a political appointee

there are public servants in the Foreign Service the military civil servants who keep the day-to-day function of government running the fact that they are feeling demoralize is a massive problem because they're the ones who make sure we get things like our social security checks all I was going to say is the real problem though is Look, you can call all the people who showed up in the beginning of opportunists,

which they are. Today, the new people are believers and fortunately or unfortunately for Trump and unfortunately, maybe for... But the opportunist, to the degree you thought that they were saving the country from Trump, those people don't exist anymore. And so I think there has to be

some thought about whether you do want some diversity of thought in the room. Even if it's going to taint people, I don't know what the right answer is. He has to want the diversity of thought in the room. But he doesn't. So like what do you get out of serving? How are you going to fix anything? That's what they're...

But that's what they're claiming these days all over TV is that he won't... That's why there's this turnover because he has this... He said he likes to see people go at it and fight. And I'm like, this is the guy who's going to negotiate with Kim Jong-un. Like, well, I like to just see people go at it. But this is how we know him.

The boardroom. I mean, this is how he's the host of the apprentice. He's fired. He instigates. They're all about selling lemonade on a corner in this avenue. It wasn't like it wasn't all there for us to judge. But he made voters think he'd be able to take business savvy

and apply that to politics and all these other things and policy. Maybe so many people are complicit in that though, don't you think? It is, and it's shady business deals. That's the problem. It works in real estate. It doesn't work in your policy. How many of those voters are convinced? This is my question. How many of those voters that he did convince, you know,

have changed their mind? More importantly, has anybody said since Trump was elected? You know, I was really against him the whole time, but at these 14 months, he's really impressed me. I think I'm going to reconsider my vote for November. That's like one guy who's a pig farmer. There are. I think there are. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime

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