Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #610: Rob Reiner, Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Episode Date: August 27, 2022

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 08/26/22) 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, we're on overtime. Senator Klobuchar, some of the biggest threats we see on our democracy are at the state houses. Yet we have fewer and fewer journalists covering state legislatures in city halls. I assume that's true, I guess so. You have legislation that would strengthen local journalism. Oh, what exactly would this legislation do? Well, I think this is what we've been talking about today

is that if you don't have coverage of things, democracy dies. Right. And what's been going on around the country is more and more local newspapers, local radio, TV, have been folding. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that they generate content, and Facebook and Google, put it up, and they get, like, a little snippet of it,

and they don't have to pay them for anything. And what this bill does, and it's bipartisan, we're just introducing it, It basically says, you've got to let these smaller venues, these newspapers, TV stations, be able to join together and get an exemption from the law so they can join together to negotiate better rates with Google and Facebook. Because otherwise, they're just going to die on the vine. Because their revenues, Google's went up $66 million in three months, $66 billion in three months from ad revenue. And meanwhile, more and more newspapers, thousands of them are shutting down. So this evens the playing field.

Australia just did it. They're able to get better rates for their news content. And you're able to pay the journalists that are doing the investigation and writing the stories and just plugging it in to the big tech companies. Yeah. It is a shame about local papers. I mean, I remember when I was a kid, the Bergen Evening Record was on our doorstep. And there was like an afternoon edition.

Yeah, well, they cover the football games. They cover. It's also things that bring the community together. And they know when the flood is coming. They tell them what you're supposed to do. And if there's no local media and it's all nationalized, you're going to lose that really important part of our democracy. Rob, you recently mentioned that you believe Archie Bunker would have supported Trump,

but would have condemned the insurrectionist. How do you think he'd vote in the next presidential election? I think he's one of those people that would have had enough of Trump. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. And you see a lot of Republicans peeling off now.

And I think that's a good thing. Because this is not a political party anymore. I don't know what this is. This is some, you know, the cult. The cult, you know, whatever. But it's, you know, they, you know, this, I believe it's, there's a Christian nationalist movement that's very frightening. Well, there is.

And I actually am finishing up a documentary on. it called Christian nationalism, the danger. It's called God and Country, the danger of Christian nationalism. And it's basically, they take somebody like Donald Trump who doesn't espouse anything that they believe in, and they elevate him to Godlike status, and that whatever he does is okay. So, um... Well, I, there, I mean, first of all, Trump was losing steam before the raid at Mara Lago. Yeah. I mean, I, I, it's... The election. I mean, he lost by 7 million votes. Yeah, but he was not as unpopular right after the election as he was right before the Mar-a-Lago rate.

He was steadily going down. DeSantis was stealing his thunder. And it looked like DeSantis was going to get the nomination or at least had a fighting chance. Then the raid came. And look, I don't agree with the other about Archiebock. There are Republicans peeling away. I don't think he would have been one of them. I don't think he was not a bright guy.

and he was just, it was all based on loyalty and personality and also that he was, he was an angry guy who was not happy with his life and that's the, that's what fuels Trump voters. Well, you might be right. Normally are just turned 100, so let's ask Kim what he thinks. He would be the one who came to this character. No, you might be right. You might be right.

I don't know. I get a hard time thinking Archie Bunker would turn on somebody who just loved to stick his finger in the eye of the elite. That's what Archie Bunker loved. But did you think that Dick Cheney's daughter would turn on Trump? And she did? I mean, Liz Cheney, I'm saying there are a number of Republicans, especially those that came forward and testified at the January 6th Commission.

And maybe they wouldn't have even done it right after the election. But over time, it's just the guilt and what they're seeing happening to our democracy and he's still out there. Well, yes. People can change. Well, I don't know if they... I don't think the Republicans change. People within the Republican Party, there are people abandoning their party, and they are voting in places like Kansas.

And independents have a strong voice here. Those Republicans... I don't give up on some of these people. I give up on 30%, but not the rest. Seven Republicans in the Senate voted to convict Trump over January 6th without all the information that we have now. That's seven Republicans. I mean, if they have 10 more, you know what I mean? There are a lot of Republicans that are not fed up with them.

I agree. I can guarantee you Mitch McConnell is not thrilled right now with having to support Trump. He's not. Well, I don't know if he's going to anymore because Trump came out today attacking Mitch McConnell. He, in a really, I know it's hard to believe, mean-spirited way. It's really, it's really. Rumored that Liz Cheney, here we go. We'll run in the 2024 presidential election.

Oh, we could have two women running. Do you think her running will end up hurting Biden and helping Trump? Could be the opposite. I don't do hypotheticals, but what I've seen here is that, one, Joe Biden has racked up a number of incredible accomplishments in the last year. We know them. Semiconductors, burn pits for our veterans, you name it. Sweden and Finland in the NATO treaty

and then Finland! Yay! Oh, let's get to that. Were you at that party? Was I at that party? I wish I was at that party. No, but I mean, you didn't think it was

terribly inappropriate? You know what I thought was interesting? The same week that she was criticized for that, the Australian Prime Minister, was at a private concert, chugged a beer, and everyone thought it was the coolest thing in the world when the video came out.

So I do think that there is double standard. And if there wasn't a double standard, we could play a game called Name Your Favorite Woman President. Well, that's true. I mean, definitely, I mean, there's no doubt about that up until the 21st century, the BMA probably was not really in the cards. Things have changed a lot in the last. generation, about gender, sex, race.

I don't think that's the case anymore. I don't think someone is not going to become president anymore, simply because they were a woman. That could be the case. That's true, but they still have a bigger uphill climb than a man. They still don't. I don't know if that's the case. I mean, I've talked to many Republicans who did not like Hillary, and I said, look me in the eye and tell me

and they could be lying, but they're like, not because she was a woman, it's because she was that woman. They really don't like Hillary Clinton. Now, I don't agree, but sometimes people just don't like you in politics. And there are things that obviously Hillary Clinton did that make people not like her. But in general, she, I think, would have certainly would have been better than the president. Most qualified woman ever to become president of the United States. Qualified doesn't make you necessarily a good president.

Well, I mean, you know. Qualified and also knowing how government works, much like Joe Biden. He knows how it works. And he gets things done. I think of those four years if Hillary had been president versus what we had with Donald Trump. You can't make that. I just said that. But this is a different issue I'm arguing here.

I'm saying just being qualified, you know who is super qualified? Buchanan. Okay. Buchanan? James Buchanan. You were there? 18? No, I, no, was I there?

I do know how qualified. That's what millennials say. I wasn't there. It didn't exist. What somebody your aide says, no, there's a thing called a history book. Yeah. I think the point of this, over time it's been getting better. But for so long, people were willing to vote for women for the legislature, things like that.

But they were afraid of having them run things, right? So we had so few women governors. We're starting to have more. We still have a lot less than we should. We have, including Democratic woman, Laura Kelly, is the governor, by the way, of Kansas. We had so few women in positions of power, mayors, police chiefs, things like that. That's changing. after polls showed that that was the step

that the voters had to take, and I would agree with you, I think there's been a major shift. Miller, Philmore, very qualified. Terrible. All right, thank you, too. Terrible president, but very qualified. Thank you, folks. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher

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