Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #470: Tipped Wages, Constitutional Convention, Reality Winner

Episode Date: August 25, 2018

Bill and his guests – John Brennan, Kara Swisher, David Corn, Saru Jayaraman, and Rick Wilson answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 08/24/18) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Ma. Oh, we're back? Don't I ever get a break? Okay, do you agree with, this is to you, with Senator Ron Wyden's statement that there should be consequences for platforms that don't remove people like Alex Jones?

I don't know if consequences are, but I think the internet comes to be regulated in some level of how they're operating. And so he did that interview with me, actually. And I think probably a lot of people worry about that idea. of doing that, but companies should be able to do whatever they want. Okay. I'm a free speech person myself. Saro, should we get rid of tipped wages?

Yeah, softball for you. Yeah, nice softball. Well, if you want to maintain a legacy of slavery and keep sexual harassment, keep the $2 wage in this country. Otherwise, give people a full wage, let them actually live. And you know what? If you put it on the ballot, they'll actually go out to vote, and maybe we'll change all the stuff

that we've been talking about. Right. It is changing to a degree, is it not? I see more and more places where it's kind of big to... Absolutely, and we actually just won in D.C. on June 19th. We raised the wage from $3 to $15. We're on the ballot in Michigan

if the Republicans don't take the top. Do you think it's time we had a constitutional convention to alter some of the fundamental problems with America? I do. I've been saying it for 20 years. Problem is, They're the ones now who want a constitutional...

I saw this in Nancy McLean's book, that this is the Koch brothers thing. Yeah, it's a constitutional convention can be very damaging and dangerous. Could be, yes. You want to go back to Dred Scott, say. That's what you want to do. That's how you do it.

And so you open that door, and it's interesting. Progressives and liberals have been fighting this for years, and the Koch brothers and conservatives want to open that and attack unions. They want to go back to appointed senators. Yeah. I worry about right now.

now in this country where we've got 40% of the people who say that the president should be able to shut down a news organization. He's not happy. I worry that we'll get into a very deep mire if we go into a constitutional convention. You know, I know the operating system has some flaws and some bugs in it, but we may be replacing it with like guys who want to hit rocks with hammers. I really worry about that. There is a long-term problem, though. We've talked about the electoral college and how lousy that is. We have gerrymandering, but also as the population becomes more urbanized, rural states have more power in the Senate. So we have a democracy crisis that's growing in this country. And I don't know how you get around that. Get rid of the electoral college.

Well, you can do that. Well, once you, one, look, if somebody wants to do a constitutional amendment to strike the electoral college, that's one thing. Going into a constitutional convention, remember, that reboots us from zero. We rewrite at that point. And I am... How likely is that to happen? It's really unlikely. It's super difficult. It's like they can't agree on lunch in disdeme. Right. Right. It's really, it's really, it's really. I keep saying you have to take a baby step, and the baby step is not two decodas. One would be plenty.

It was good enough for Deadwood, right? They had one to code. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. What tip wages me is then? How about, what do you think, David Corn, of reality winner, the NSA translator who leaked the Russian her board being sentenced over five years in prison? Well, as a journalist, we count on... What is with the name? Well...

It's a long story. You don't want to hear it. Okay. As a journalist, we count on people to leak us information that's vital for our democracy to function. Knowing what happened with a Russian hack was a very important thing. Now, she did violate the rules of her employment, but this penalty that she's gotten five years is exceedingly long. one of the longest penalties, and it's obviously there to create a, you know, a chilling effect, right, so that other people don't do this and we stay in the dark.

And if we have an administration and a Congress who won't tell us what happened fully, the 2016 hacking, then we need people like Reality Winner, we need more of them, and now we're going to get less of them, because we still don't have the full story because Trump and the Republicans don't want us to. I worry about the fact that we've got a president who goes in private meetings, the Oval Office with Russian spies and ambassadors, and goes behind closed doors, and God knows what he and Putin are talking about. No one will tell us. And he's been hip-deep with the Russians since he was a young post-STD avoiding veteran of New York. And so I worry, and yes, you know what?

She broke the law, and the sentence was harsh, but it was within the bounds of what the guidelines were. and set the journalism thing aside. She broke the law. But we've got an administration that's more fundamentally compromised our security on so many different levels than she ever could have dreamed of doing.

To be fair, the Russians will tell us, right? Yeah, well, eventually. Or the Chinese, maybe. We'll get there. That's why we indicted them. They'll just turn themselves in. What do you think of this, Maria Butina? Funky Cool Butina?

I'm making an L.O. Cool J. joke. It's a rap dad joke. Look, she was absolutely perfect bait for these for the DC conservative nerd crowd. They're like, ooh, hot Russian girl who likes guns? Guns and church. I think it's very interesting that she targeted,

I love guns and I go to prayer breakfast. Who wouldn't love me? I like what you like. She wasn't a trans-5, but she was a guided weapon into the... It's amazing. Yeah, it shows that they're into our psyche or the conservative psyche. She's clean. Guns and Jesus. I'm still stuck on your...

You're purring. He'll give you a ring telling for that. Maybe later. After the show. Okay. I gotta go. Thank you very much. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

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