Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #624: Malcolm Nance, Kristen Soltis Anderson

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 02/10/23) 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 Maugh. Okay, we're here on overtime with Paul Vagala, Democratic Strategist, Kristen Sulcus Anderson was on our show tonight, and counter-terrorismanctor Malcolm Nance was at the front of the show. Now we're on CNN. I can't believe they're still doing this for this, but I'm glad we're here on CNN. And as I said last week, if you don't watch this, what happens is people write things they know? I don't even know what these questions are, but I'm going to ask them.

this is for you, Malcolm, how much longer will the American public tolerate our involvement in Ukraine? Well, I think they're more than tolerating, and I think they're pretty much four-square behind it, most people, aren't they? Yeah, we're absolutely behind it. And we're going to tolerate it as long as we can feel that we're upholding the democratic values we established in the world for the rest of the world. I mean, we'd give up. I mean, did we give up in the Civil War? Do we give up in World War I, World War II? We put up with it. I mean, it's not like going to Burger King. No. We gave up a lot. Vietnam. Oh, well, there's that one. No, we didn't give up, but we, you know,

we kind of have slacked off as far as our war. We're a country of good tolerance. Right, all right. For the panel, does the fact that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a, does the fact that, this is written badly, that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a nepo baby

to track from her political accomplishments? I guess they were hearing me talk about the Huckabee dynasty. But yes, that's a big saying, these days, nepo baby. You know what that is? It's like, they mostly refer to people in show business as nepo. Anybody whose mother or father

was a star, and then you're a star, that makes you a nepo baby. I could name many of them. They're very upset about being called that. I've noticed this phenomenon, forever, as many people have out here. And it's fine if your parents were in show business. Just don't say, as I've

heard some of them, say, well, it wasn't any easier for me. Yes, it was. It was easier for you. Or the other thing they say a lot is, well, it just got me in the door. Well, that's a lot of it in show business, is getting in the door. Anybody can act.

It's not that fucking hard. Sorry, I forgot. When you're in politics. Sorry, CNN. I forgot. We're not supposed to be. Not on HBO. When you're in politics, one of the things

that you want, generally, is higher name ID. When a pollster like me goes out and we do a survey, we want to know how many people know what your name is at all. And if you have a dad or increasingly a mom that has been in politics before, it does make it easier for voters to just go, I liked her dad. George Bush, the second, that guy, when he ran, he went to the top of the polls. I remember this story, I think, in 1999, the people thought it was his father. That's what they were responding to.

He had the same name, and they thought, oh, George Bush is running again. Right. He was a one-termer. He could do it. And Franklin Roosevelt's cousin, Teddy, was president before him. John Quincy Adams' dad was president before. I mean, there is a tradition of that in America, but you still have to... I don't support Governor Sanders. I don't know her.

I probably wouldn't even like her. But she earned that job, fair and square. She won the... By the way, we didn't cheat. Nobody cheated. It wasn't rigged. She won the election, fair and square. And she's entitled, I think, to the respect that a governor of a state... I noticed that she made a big point of age.

She said, by... Biden is 80, and I'm 40. By the way, I thought she was 60. But, okay. I was shocked. No, I'm not 60, but I was shocked that she was only 40. I mean, Washington has a way of taking a toll on you. Let's just leave it at that.

But, I mean, that was kind of a strange thing to brag about, I thought. I don't think it's a strange thing to brag about, especially if your core argument going into 2024 is that Joe Biden has passed his prime and we need to do something new. Now, this depends upon does the Republican Party not, not. nominate someone who is also approaching 80. And so that's why some people thought... Don't say depends when you're talking about 80.

Something that I thought was very interesting about her response is she talked a lot about a new generation of Republican leadership. And when she talked about her time working for the former president, she did not use the word Trump once. Yes. And I understand he was pissed. Yeah. Okay. Public schools saw 1.2 million students depart during the pandemic.

and many have turned to homeschooling. Are we in the midst of a public education crisis? Yeah, I saw that today in the paper also. A lot of the students who went away during the pandemic never came back. What do you make of that? School is good. Community education, communal education is good because you have to develop social skills.

The hardest part about school is like recess and gym and all the times you have to interact with all those other little 10-year-olds. So I think it's really important for kids to be back. school. I do too. It can create a fiscal problem for a school too. So most schools, the way they get their funding is how many kids are enrolled? If all of a sudden your enrollment falls by

5 or 10 percent, your funding falls by 5 or 10 percent. So the fact that public schools for so many parents, they said, I don't know if I trust this institution to educate my child anymore, it's also going to potentially make the schools worse or have to do more with less when that student funding is now gone.

And also, I mean, you say you think kids should be in school. it's the Democratic Party, your party that is blamed for that not happening during the pandemic. Right, and it happened to Republican states and Democratic states. And all those things were doing the best they could with the science it was available. But there were some. Ezekiel Emanuel, is a doctor who was advising Biden, was saying at the time, this is going to hurt kids, we should be really careful about closing schools.

And I remember Zeke saying that. But I don't want to bang on people who were trying to save lives when we lost a million people that's stinking virus. we're still losing 5,600 a day. But it was clear much earlier on than many Democratic leaders in particular. Republicans didn't put them back in school either. They did a lot faster. And that's... Yeah, I mean, I think the Republicans would say that it was the teacher's union,

which is very strong and democratically controlled, that made sure that the schools did not reopen. And also that you're not... It's not the kids who were dying from it. Right. And that's the big shame is that the kids who were getting hurt, the most by it were the ones whose parents don't have the resources to say, well, the public school's bad, let me take them out and put them in a private schooler. Sure, I can homeschool them.

I have the bandwidth to do that. It was poor kids, kids of color, they're the ones who have seen the biggest learning loss as a result of all. Malcolm, if the cops who killed Tyree Nichols had been white, would we be seeing a different response? You know, I'm afraid to say that we would have. I mean, I think that we would have had a slow walk of the indictments. But, you know, the issue here isn't about the color of the policeman. The issue is that the tactics, techniques, procedures, and training of these law enforcement officers on these special teams. You know, way back when I went through a SWAT officers course with Capitol Hill Police and some other police forces that were there

to learn how to be SWAT cops, the techniques that we were shown back then were not always guns forward guns all the time. Now the average police officer is trained to believe that he's, you know, number one job is to come home at night. I agree with that a thousand percent. But there are jobs there. There are things there that are just clearly require an intervention that does not require you to draw your weapon. Yeah, I mean, this doesn't...

I mean, that's certainly... Everything you said is valid. All that is an issue. This seemed to be just five cops who wanted to wail on a guy for no apparent reason. If that kid had been white, would they have not done that?

No, they wouldn't have. Period. We all know that. So five black... I mean, there is a color issue within law enforcement altogether. Even among black cops? Yeah, because they're cops. Because they're cops.

This is a mindset, the same way we have in the military. We have a mindset, right? I think policing now has moved so far away from community service towards self-preservation. You know, they go to courses like the on-killing program on how to do self-preservation, how to battle like a, you know, a special forces soldier. What they need to do is they need to start thinking,

more along the old beat cop, you know, protecting the community by knowing the community and not seeing, I don't understand it, right? I'm a big guns guy. Not every black man is the one who has the firearm, right? They assume this block is all armed. Maybe that's because some of them are. But I'm going to tell you, there is a large proportion of the white population in the United States who routinely carry guns openly, brazenly, have stickers under cars, and cops just

see, oh, these are the kind of guys that I go to range with. Good job. Could I just, Kyle Rittenhouse, for example. Right. Right? They gave through him water that night. If I'd been out on the street with a long rifle like that, they would have been throwing lead down there, freedom bullets at me, right? Okay.

For Paul, should should Biden do the annual pre-Superable interview on Fox? Oh, yes. That's a tradition, and Biden has turned it down, or as has been done by other presidents. Yeah.

Why do you think he declined that? It raises the all-important question. Who cares? I'm sorry. He has no obligation to just don't care. I guess I'm always inclined to communicate more or not less.

I guess if I were advising me, I'd tell him to do it. But Fox is not entitled to the time of the President of the United States of America. I'm sorry, they're just another corporation trying to make a buck. Kristen, what do you make of Ron DeSantis installing a conservative anti-woke board

at the new college of Florida? So he has made a big name for himself as being someone who is pushing back against what he views as an education system, both K-12 and higher-ed that's gone too far off. I don't know that the answer to liberal overreach in higher ed is conservative overreach in higher ed. So I'm much more interested in when I'm thinking about higher education in Florida, my home state, is I look at the University of Florida, where Ben Sass was just installed as president. There were some protesters, but not as many on the day of his actual installment. And he has really said, I'm not coming at this with an ideological lens. He is certainly conservative himself. But can he take an institution and actually do interesting things with it that are not about owning the libs or about proving this is what a conservative school is like?

This is something that frustrates me about the right is every time they see something on the left that they think they've gone too far, we need to create a conservative version of it. Let's have conservative Wikipedia. Let's have conservative Twitter. It's just, it's just silly. Why not just try to thrive in these institutions and do what you can to make them work for everyone from within? Perfect sense. I love it. Thank you very much. Thank you, folks. Thank you, CNN. Sorry about it. One week without saying a bad word. 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.