Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #487: Matt Schlapp, Noah Rothman, Jonathan Alter, Mary Katharine Ham, Michael Steele

Episode Date: March 9, 2019

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 3/8/19) 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 Ma. Okay, we're here back and now we're the questions. Okay, Jonathan Alter, do you agree with the Democrats' decision to keep their primary debates off Fox News? No, I agree that you need to hunt where the ducks are. Right. But, you know, people don't know that four years ago, the RNC canceled the NBC News Republican debate because they didn't like the way the CNBC debate had gone earlier. So this idea that somehow something horrible has been done by Tom Perez,

the Democratic Party chairman, is not true. And they actually haven't had a Fox debate in the Democratic Party since 2004. So it's not like this is something they do every year and are canceling now. But you have to take every opportunity to reach voters. Yeah, they got the votes on MSNBC. It just feeds into the wrong narrative anyway. So just put it like Matt Chesson said earlier. If you want to play, get in the game and play.

And you can reach Wisconsin without even going there. Right. Right. Michael, is there anyone in the Republican Party who can mount a credible primary challenge to Donald Trump? Good question. There are a number of folks who are already starting to look at that.

Certainly Governor Well, former Governor of Massachusetts, is already in the game. My governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, who just won re-election in a blue state that's outnumbered Republicans 2 to 1, has done a good job of governing, is looking at the rest of the president. and there's a lot of excitement about his potentiality.

He brings something to the conversation that I think sets up a perfect contrast between Trumpism or Republican Trumpism and traditional Republican ideas and governance. So I think that's a conversation we still need to have internally. I have some real concerns about a lot of the value sets that we have jettisoned because of the cult of personality that has always bothered me from the very beginning. And so if we get someone involved in the narrative that can reemerge the idea that we still stand for free markets, that we still should not spend more money than we take in, that we should not burden future generations with debt and deficits, that we should empower communities to make decisions for themselves.

That's a debate, I think, inside the Republican Party, we should be ready to have. Seems like thousands of years ago. The question should really be what do you want to achieve through a primary challenge, right? because unseating the president is extremely unlikely. So do you want to move the president in your direction and in that sense, who do you want to run into? Right. But again, that's going to be part of a national conversation

that can take place in a microcos. You mentioned deficits. I noticed at CPAC this year, and I watched it every year, that there used to be when Obama was president, there was a lot of stuff about the deficit and the dead and this year it seemed to be good. It's just a number.

It's not true? There was mentioned? We had Tim Chapman there from Heritage Foundation. We had Senator Purdue from Georgia. The fact is, is this, which is both parties, deserve to be horsewipped over their profligate spending. I mean, $22 trillion in debt. Someone's going to eventually say, hey, guys,

you're going to have to do something about this. But only one with the tax cut, a trillion dollars. Look, I'm going to disagree with you about the need for the tax cut. I actually think America was growing less and less competitive because of our fourth-highest corporate tax rate. But I do agree with you on spending. Let's do something about spending. let's do something about entitlement.

Well, that was the tax rate. It wasn't what they actually had to pay. It adds to the deficit in the way, Matt. No, no. Whether you add spending or... But only one party was the one who proudly wore this mantle were the party of fiscal responsibility. That was just a con, right?

And I agree. Our party has been terrible at this. Okay. And you tell them that? And Catherine would agree. Yes. Totally agree. Well, what I don't realize, over the last 40 years,

Republicans have been a lot worse Republican presidents than Democratic presidents, you know, Obama and Clinton brought down the deficit with a Republican Congress in Clinton's case, but he oversaw a balanced budget. Okay. Noah, doesn't that lenient sentencing of Paul Manafort suggests that racial bias still exists in our judicial system? Well, I could.

So I'm a fan of judicial discretion, right? Judicial discretion as an alternative to mandatory minimums, mandatory minimums are unjust. However, the, so the notion here that the judicial system is impertional system is impertive. because it was created by the hands of man is something that I think all of us would agree. Sometimes the judicial system fails people. That's why you have the power of pardon to save people from conditions that are unjust. The social justice prescription, the Rawlsian prescription, John Rawls' prescription, is to create institutions that are dedicated to establishing justice by treating individuals unequally,

essentially exacerbating the very condition that is making the judicial system unjust in the first place. That is the flaw in Rawlsian thought. that is the flaw in social justice thought. Okay. There isn't such a thing as social justice thought. It's something that you've constructed as a way of, well, in theory that you're reading in the academy. But for most people, social justice means trying to make society better. And why do you need to turn it into some sort of a caricature?

Because there is a caricature of some of it. It's like, this isn't an abstract idea, Jonathan. It is in practice. on the specific cases. So speak out against those cases. But they're in the news every day and people see that. When people were asked why they like Trump, the number one thing they said was he's not politically correct.

And it's a huge issue. And that doesn't mean he's not also a huge asshole. But that was a breadth of fresh air in a country that was choking and is choking on political correctness. There is a difference. You have to turn the idea of social justice into a new. No, liberals are for social justice. liberals want to protect people.

The people we're going after want to protect feeling. I completely agree. Why are we arguing? Why are we arguing? Every time I get to something, we completely agree. Everyone agrees. You might also agree that we need a lot of reform in our criminal justice. It's a mass. And you didn't get there, and we just signed

a bill, and you didn't get there by telling people to sit down, shut up, and check their privilege. No, that's right. Okay. John, do you agree with Elizabeth Warren's plan to break up the tech companies? You know, she just came up with it, but I do think that a lot of antitrust action, the way Theodore Roosevelt and other presidents did, is called for right now. We haven't had antitrust in a long time, and Louis Brandeis was right that bigness can sometimes equal badness, and they abuse consumers when they get too big. And I think that is starting to happen with the tech companies.

They should take a close look at it. Can't you just hold bigness to be accountable for what they do? But they're not being held accountable. But that's part of the problem. You can break them up and still not address the underlying problems that caused the behavior that everyone's upset about. So instead of trying to deconstruct something that was built at the hands and the sweat of someone who took the very risks that were necessary

to create a Google and a Microsoft, et cetera, instead of say, well, it's too big now because we don't know what to do with it, let's break it down. Let's look at the underlying issues that caused the, concern that a lot of us have... To do that, you have to have regulation. You're against regulation. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. And I think basically consumers should be able to control their data. They should be able to decide what they do. And these privacy policies and all these platforms

are ridiculously complex. And what we're learning is they just override any box you check anyway. And that's probably a fraud. I take matters into my own hands and just lecture my Alexa because I know it goes straight to the top. The CIA. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. 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.