Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #498: Andrew Yang, Rep. Katie Porter, Charles Blow, Clint Watts, Bret Easton Ellis

Episode Date: June 8, 2019

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 6/7/19) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's something else here now. Something new. From. Exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real.

Sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. 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 Maugh. Okay, here are the questions. Katie Porter, what do you think of Mitch McConnell bragging that he will never bring up any House bills in the Senate? So I have a favorite staffer. You're not supposed to have a favorite staffer. It's like having a favorite child. But I have a favorite staffer, and she said, I really want a pet.

And I said, absolutely no, no fucking way, no. No, we can't even find our way out of the emergency exit room. No, we cannot take care of anything. and we can't get. And she said, bye, bye, bye, bye. And I said, what, what? She said, I want a turtle and I want to name it Mitch. So I got her a stuffed turtle. It has a little tag on it. It says, hi, my name is Mitch. Ask me about my legislative agenda. So this is a real problem. I mean, this is a problem that unelecting Donald Trump doesn't itself solve. And so this is going to be with us potentially for decades to come, this kind of legislative roadblock. Okay. Andrew Yang, who do you most look forward to challenging in the upcoming debates? Well, I've said that I've an 8% chance of standing next to Joe Biden. And that's the plan, because I want America to Google Asian man standing next to Joe Biden.

So I'm trying to have that debate. He is the frontrunner. Yes. You've got to beat the frontrunner. Okay. Brett, do you have any thoughts on YouTube announcing that we'll take down? videos with extremist views? Well, I don't know.

I mean, once you start opening that door, and this is what I've always said about the censorious media machine, is that then what's next? It becomes this thing where you cancel one person out and then who's next, and it becomes just this endless maze that you fall

into. So I was not particularly, I was kind of shocked by it and upset by it, and I also know a lot of my friends on both sides of the aisle were as well. I don't think it's anything that's going to move the needle forward or protect people or do anything of the sort that it thinks it's trying to do. I hate to say it, but I think the big platforms are at this point begging for government help and regulation on figuring out what's free speech and what's not. Because they're like,

why are we making these decisions? But they could be expected to do that. I mean, there was a point when the press thought it was very much in danger of having government regulation. And they stepped in. the big media company stepped in and said, we're going to do this ourselves, we're going to make sure that we have some standards. The big tech companies could do the same thing. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have federal regulation,

but I'm saying the idea that they think that we are supposed to be pitying them, that we're so helpless, we can't do it on our own. Yes, you can do something. And I think that you can do something with morals and values and that says that this is our value system as companies, and that that is a first step. before the government gets involved. The signal, though, that they get from the government is if there's a terrorist attack and we tie it back to any of these things or any other extremists, what are we going to do?

We're going to regulate you. We're going to shut you down. So their response then is what? They try and move more towards censorship. Once they move towards censorship, other people say, oh, you can't censor that content. I can tell you just having more counterterrorism for a very long time, what brought people together was the Internet. And social media has really accelerated extremism across the board, whether it's al-Qaeda and ISIS, or white nationalist terrorism we have now,

they network online, they congregate online, the operationally plan online. So there has to be a balance in there. I do think the government needs to come up with some sort of middle solution where they work with the tech companies instead of scolding them in both directions, depending on what it is.

Charles, do you think the 2020 census question will be shot down by the Supreme Court now that we have proof that Republicans designed it to intimidate minority voters? It's a great question. Not the question that's on the census, but the question, You propose.

Because I have no idea, actually. And we know both that by everybody who studies the census, and this is their job, that it is going to undercount blacks and minorities. Not just that question, but other alterations to the census as well. By one estimate, we could have the worst undercount since 1990, right? we know from that leaked material that they intentionally tried to do it to have an undercount

of blacks and minorities blacks, Hispanics, particularly Hispanics. But the Supreme Court has been very wobbly on this issue of whether or not racism still exists. Well, I'd say they said it doesn't because that was the voting rights.

The Chief Justice basically said it doesn't exist in the same whether or whatever, you know. No. Problem solved. Is there a problem solved? And so I don't know how they're going to land on this, but we know exactly what the plan is and how this thing was... But it'll tell us a lot, because if they look at that evidence,

which is pretty smoking-gunny, and still say, you know what, too bad, that's going to tell us a lot. Okay, Andrew, should Amazon follow Venture for America's Model and open its new headquarters in a city that could use the economic boost? And also, I would add to that, what do you think about breaking up the tech companies? That's a big issue.

Elizabeth Warren wants to do it. Well, they're absolutely excesses in tech and our antitrust laws are way out of date. They're using price as the primary framework, which doesn't work for tech. But the zeal to break them up is a 20th century solution to 21st century problems. None of us wants to use the fourth best navigation app. There's a reason no one is binging anything. So saying that, like, hey, if we just break them up and make them compete against each other, it's going to solve the problem.

It's not going to solve the problem. And some of the problems that are more fundamental to me are that social media is depressing our teenagers. And if you break up Facebook into different ownership groups, that actually doesn't impact. Say ownership? In that context, I think it's why. So we have to figure out what the actual problems are trying to solve are

and then move in that direction, not just say if we break them up, it's going on. Excuse me, I have to go cry in a safe space. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate it. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Marr every Friday night. or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.