Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #606: Chris Cuomo, John McWhorter, Sam Stein

Episode Date: July 30, 2022

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 7/29/22) 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, these are the questions. Andrew Yang, in a group of former Republican and Democratic members, announced their new centrist political party. I think David Jolly's involved with that. I saw their brief announcement of this, and they said, other third parties haven't worked? Here's why ours will.

Right. Do you think they can become a viable third party? Who's that too? That's to all of you. You want to take it? Well, the one thing that I... Too tough. No, I mean...

Why is that such a hot potato? Jamel Bowie in the New York Times has a very skeptical piece about this, and it's all well taken, but I think that we also forget that a lot of these things are driven by personality and charisma, and there are only so many lessons you can take

from 1850, because we have something called social media. And so I think all bets are off at this point. I think that the idea is valuable. It's clearly urgent. And I think that we need to see whether things could happen on the basis of unpredictables. History can't teach us everything.

I just piggyback and add two things. One is it requires a lot of money, okay? And the other thing, to your point about personality, you need someone who's dynamic who can cross-appeal. So it could work, and by work, I mean it could siphon off enough votes to affect the election. if you had an extremely rich person with a dynamic personality who did it. But I don't know, you know, Michael Bloomberg could have done it,

but he chose to run in the Democratic Party. So there's probably a reason for that. You need more of a personality than Michael Bloomberg. Yeah. And so. How dare you? They've actually had personable people run before. It's not that.

It's that when a third party starts doing well, yes. One of the other two parties steals. what made them popular and adopts it. They were, you know, Ross Perrault did pretty well, and I think the Republicans stole his thunder a little bit, you know, on debt and stuff. They did, of course, didn't follow through. They're the biggest dead hypocrites in the world.

But, you know, and we had other ones back, wasn't... Well, I think the problem on the left is that there's, like, this trauma lingering from Ralph Nader, right? Like, the idea that a third party would come in, siphon off a couple thousand votes, and you'd have a Florida 2,000 redux, is, you know, panic fuel for a lot of progressives. And so you're more likely, obviously, to get something in the centrist who would peel off moderate Republicans,

but Democrats are fearful of that because they need those people to leave the Republican Party and support them. So there's a lot of incentives that work against. But it is an interesting dynamic about how much shit people are full of. Because it won't work. because and it people are really as Chris was saying

they are more in the middle and there is this hunger this thirst for something that isn't and yet when push comes to shove and they get in the voting booth I don't know if it's whether the attack ads work on them or they just think that that party will lose they don't want to vote for a loser but they don't follow up they don't follow on those convictions I think a lot of it is the I think I mean political advertisement is you know geared around

creating a whole culture of fear of the opposition. I mean, it's potent, it's targeted, and it's persuasive. I do think, though, you know, the one sort of caveat is that, like, you know, Joe Biden's not a radical. I mean, he's just not, and he was put forward as a Democratic nominee, precisely because... And he bends it to the radical. He has been, yes, and I think that's part of what's been a problem

from his president is that he's raised these expectations by, you know, saying, yeah, let's do all this, this $2 trillion bill. Social media makes all this different, though, and I think that there's a possibility that social media could create a furor, a united group of people constantly whipped up to stay together, who were actually in this middle. It would be a matter of branding, but maybe those forces that, for example, kept Perrault as a marginal figure could actually make a difference this time because of what Twitter in particular is like. It really creates a whole new world. It would depend on the branding and the charisma. But I can imagine that maybe it would be different this time. because of these things in our pockets

and the way it unites groups together. It can create a new group, in other words. Well, I think what would happen, my prediction, is you could have a sensible middle party, and what would happen is it would force the Democrats to go back to being the sensible middle party. And they would, because they would see that's where, you know, Biden, I mean, Biden reminds me of some grandfather,

and when AOC and the woke people come into his office and he just goes along. He doesn't really understand it. It's like, Grandpa, can we have money to go play Fortnite? And he's like, I don't know what Fortnite is. I don't know what TikTok is. Just get out of my hair, you know. And that's really, okay.

The only one in three Americans say it may soon be necessary to take up arms against the government. Ish. Pro or con? Is this an indicator Is this an indicator that we're already in a cold civil war? Well, I would say we already are, yes. What does this tell us about the next presidential election?

How often were people asked about that particular thing before? That's a genuine question. Now you would be inclined to put that in a poll. Were people asked in 1951, are you ready to take arms against the government? I imagine many more people would have said yes then than we can know now. What was there big beef against the government? Imagine there would have been people who were very angry at, for example, still angry at Franklin D. Roosevelt, still angry at inequality in the system. There was a great deal of anger in the 51.

I mean, the civil rights movement, right? I mean, the 60s were. They were people angry for incredible anger, obviously, assassinations. There was a lot of talk before Kennedy got assassinated about that, doing that. So this is a common American thread, a very despicable American threat. But, you know, obviously we've never experienced a president sort of harness it to agree that Trump has. And I think that's what makes this kind of a unique moment.

But it's been with us throughout our history, for sure. Okay. Why isn't Biden more aggressive on legalizing marijuana? Yeah. I mean... Why is that the one issue when the grandkids come in and say... Grant, can we have some money to legalize marijuana? No.

It's all about the way. crazy with him. Are you on the pot? Yeah, that funky green. I wrote about this because this is crazy to me. At a time when he's experiencing an complete enthusiasm deficit on the left, here's an issue where it's like 80% of the country's like, yes, legalize this shit, just do it.

And he's like, we need to study it a little bit. It's low-hanging political flu. Now, the actual reasons, and I'm not saying, I'm not saying I believe them, the actual reasons are is that he has a history of addiction in his family. And he actually believes that marijuana has a gateway pretend, which it doesn't. Of course.

It's Hunter. Yes. And that's, I don't, but I don't. He thinks Hunter started on the pot. It's a real, it's a real belief that he has. Right. And I'm sure we did. But so what?

We all start somewhere. And of course. That came out wrong. That's not what I meant. No, but I mean, beer is a gateway drug. You know, if you're, if you're going to be Hunter Biden, it's not the marijuana. You can't stop. everyone in votes my want to because one out of so many people is going to wind up that.

But it's like, and the other thing that it was that I wanted to write about this is that it's not like Biden hasn't touched sort of socially progressive hot topics before. I mean, he was the guy in 2012 who came out and said, let's do gay marriage. And everyone at times like that is nuts. What are you doing? You're going to lose Ohio. This is crazy. Right. He said, fuck it. I'm going to do it. Well, it was not quite that intentional, is my recollection. Well, everything's a little bit intentional. He didn't go in there being like, Like, you know what? Maybe I'll just throw out that I support gay marriage. Yeah, I think he did. Really?

Yeah, he was talking about somebody specific, and he was just doing what he does, riffs. And he, you know, he was just riffing. And then the next day in the office, like, what the hell did you do? We're backing what marriage? Either way, he has an experience knowing that it doesn't backfire. And he could do it with pop, but he doesn't. So, Sam, is it really true that there are people from states all over the country? There's a question.

Sure. States from all over the country, there's this groundswell to legalize marijuana and then hopefully go further, if you ask me. And the president has actually said that he's not interested because of the family issues and his conviction. He is, our reporting is that he has conveyed this to his AIDS, that he is nervous about his own family's experience. His current platform is decriminalization, which obviously is different than legalization. And there's a lot of people in the party who really think legitimately that this could be one of those issues that's so low-hanging could energize people. and if you just got it out of the way we'd look back and be like, what were we?

And it would be a social revolution. And by the way, it's already de facto in effect. Of course. How do I know this? I used to travel this country so paranoid. I would put a little bit of marijuana. I don't know one and aware. No.

Not there, but close. How close? Under my nuts. Really. I swear to God I told the story on Jimmy Kimmel one In a, in a Because I only did a little...

There was a little thing... How specific are we going to? There was a little thing There was like half of a cigarette. It was metal. It was just a tube. That's all you need to smoke through. And I only needed like this much.

I took one bud, put it in a Kleenex under my nuts. And I was ready if they said, what is this? What were you going to say? I was going to say, it's not. Meaning the pot.

And then if they... I said it's snot. I had that ready. That's how paranoid I was. And you don't still do that just for shit to get? And now, like, and then there was a phase where I'd be like, oh, what states is it legal? What can I...

And I didn't even think about it. Because even if it's a state where it's illegal, are they really going to make a thing about a thing under... I don't carry it anymore. And I was like... I just put it in my nuts because I like it. All right. Thank you, everybody.

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