Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #626: Sen. Bernie Sanders, John Heilemann, and Russel Brand

Episode Date: March 4, 2023

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 03/03/23) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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But we're back with our panel from Vermont Bernie Sanders, the senator. Host of Showtime's The Circus, John Heilman, and actor and Gridian Russell Brand are back with us. Okay, so here are the questions

people wrote in. I guess this is for you because it mentions the Brit Awards. What does the panel think of the discussion around the Oscars getting rid of gender-specific categories like best actor and best actress, and how did it work out at the Brit Awards?

As a person who's never won an award, I feel confident in saying that they are vacuous and pointless, a distraction at a time where we need to be coming together around real principles and values. Unless someone wants to give me an award, in which case I'd like to make it as specific as possible so I could bloody well get it.

But am I wrong that at the Brit Awards, which is for music, I hosted that before, but I'll tell you, Bill, that I was able to let go of the experience and have never thought about it since. I feel that it might be fundamentally meaningless. Okay. I can't find meaning in it.

I've looked. What I read was it used to be best male, best female, and they just cut out the categories, and it was won the only people who won. It was four men and Harry Styles. Yeah, I think. No, women won. They should just give awards to Harry.

Stiles and that can be an industry and we'll watch the world incinerate while Harry Styles dances beautifully. What is the likelihood that Congress will abolish daylight savings time? Is this something?

I read this also today that... Is it like they're calling it the permanent daylight savings time? I don't really understand what that could mean. Do you care about this? No. I have been criticized for having a very narrow focus.

I accept that criticism. Dayline savings time is not one of the issues that I've been studying. Okay. But you know what? I bet you... This is the kind of stuff that actually affects a lot of people. It does. I don't. And it's anachronistic. It's stupid. I don't get it. I don't know. I guess we did it 100 years ago

because farmers needed... Okay, well, how many people in America are farmers? It's like 1% of the population. I mean, we need the farmers. I love food. I'm not crazy about the way they do their farming, torturing animals. And by the way, just to connect it once more to COVID, we are never going to be done with diseases like COVID while we are still torturing animals.

It all comes from animals. Now we have to worry about bird flu. It's birds and pigs. We're back in the wet market again where it's like that's the reality. It's like there's bad shit that goes on in those places. That's right. And that's why that also could be. it came from, but it always jumps

from animals to people, and it wouldn't if we didn't pan up the animals and torture them before we eat them. Let me be non-funning. Your point about sickness and the possibility of future pandemics absolutely speaks to the need for international

cooperation. Because a pandemic is not going to be an American issue, it's not going to be a Chinese issue. We're going to have to bring the world together to deal with climate, to deal with pandemics. Okay. Should law enforcement be policing

TikTok in order to crack down on illegal trends like the viral challenge to steal Kiyas and Hyundai's? Oh yeah. Do you know about this? There's TikTok videos

that show how you could with just a, I think, a screwdriver and an iPhone charger, you can hotwire a Kias and Hyundai. So like they're being stolen left and right. What do you think about TikTok?

That's another thing that's before a country. Somebody has a bill to ban TikTok, certainly for people under 16. I think that's Josh Holy's. Well, I think the concern is TikTok is a Chinese own company, and you're seeing states and the U.S. government

not wanting to use it for fear that some secretive information could fall into Chinese hands. Well, but also it's rotting the minds of our young people. Well, it's a whole other story, but that's beyond TikTok, isn't it? It is. But TikTok is. But TikTok

The stock is not helping. I would say the rotting of the minds of America's youth is a problem that existed long before TikTok. It's like one of the things, great things about being young. Made it much worse. Kids at least used to read a book. I don't think kids ever see a book. They do not read, they scroll.

Scrolling does not make you smart. You know, not to become overly serious. I think it is now perceived that the pandemic has made the mental health crisis that we previously had even worse. and there is a lot of discussion about the impact of social media and the isolation and the lack of human contact that it develops on our health.

All right. Russell, what are your thoughts on the UFOs that were intercepted and shot down by the U.S. military last month? I don't know if they're referring to the Chinese balloons. They were not UFOs because we know what they were. They were Chinese balloons. But there were other things, there were some things that we didn't get,

and we don't know what they are, and there are the things that we haven't found out what they are after. we did shoot them down. I wonder whether or not the $14 trillion that have been granted to the Pentagon, 55% of which has ended up in the hands of the military industrial complex, which surely American people are becoming weary of,

needs occasionally to be boosted with fanciful ideas of extraterrestrial invasion. Maybe there needs to be a continual reminder that the skies themselves could become a threat unless Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, BIA, systems continue to profit. Elsewise, a balloon, a perfect metaphor, for it is naught but hot air, nothing inside it, shot down by a $400,000 missile, might be coming for your family. But, again, I mean, we're just saying here we all should be skeptical and have open minds on

everything. It is possible that there are, there's life on other planets that are visiting us or scouting I mean, there are, even the U.S. Even the U.S. I'm just saying it's possible. Carl Sagan's... Sure, it is possible. But if you think that something from another universe came all the way here

and was just kind of dragging around and was shot down very easily, I think if it's a UFO, they would have done a little bit better in avoiding and evaded my kind of missile. First of all, it's... We're not saying it's from another

the universe. It's from the same universe. Universe is very big. Very big. Phil, I think Bernie raises a good point. It's not like E.T. would come all the way here and then trip up outside Elliot's house. He's made it all the way here. I agree. Now... That's the point. That's the point, Bernie. Okay. The Chinese balloon is different. I'm not saying the Chinese balloon was from another universe or this universe. I mean, it has to be from China. If it's a Chinese balloon. And I mean, Now, of all due respect, that's the least it can do.

Well... I'm just going to say, I think, though... I'm moving on. You've put Bernie back out here. He won't be happy if you're going to talk about extraterrestrials and balloons and that. Okay. Inequality! If you're looking for proof that there's life in outer space,

intelligent life in outer space, you need to look there further than Russell. There's not really another accounting for how... I'm glad that became a compliment, sir, because I was rearing up. No, don't you worry. All right. All right. Complements, my friends. With all the emphasis on DEI, are we confusing equality of opportunity with trying to guarantee equity and outcomes?

Okay, that's interesting because I think this word equity has come into the language in the last few years. And before that, we didn't hear it a lot. And I think a lot of people hear equity and they hear equality. It's the same word. And it's not the same word and the same concept. So how would you differentiate between equity and equality? Well, equality, we talk about, I don't know what the answer to that is. Come me to think of it, you know, equality is equality of opportunity.

We live in a society, we want all people to have whatever color your skin is. Equity, I think, is more guarantee of outcome, is it not? Yeah, I think so. I think that's fine. Okay. So which side do you come down on? Equality. Equality. Yeah. Okay.

boys any comment on that one i just don't know if that's the that's the definitional difference but certainly this debate over the question of a quality of outcome over over a quality of opportunity is one that you know it's been it's the question that underlies a firm of action and everything else that we've had in our politics for a very long time and there's obviously people are very strong even people who actually want a quality of outcome say they only want a quality of opportunity and vice versa but that's you know that's the it's a that issue that core of that what do you actually want and i think burney is where everyone says they want to be but there in fact programs that have been designed,

that's designed to actually engineer equal outcomes, not just equal opportunity, and that's where a lot of the controversies arisen. Okay. One more. Have Democrats done enough to support strong labor unions, Bernie? What's the future of unions in this country? I think they just subpoenaed the Starbucks do?

They didn't. I did. You know, it's not fair. You're not going to have, that is an issue I do know something about. that I pay attention to. And the bottom line is that you're not going to have a middle class in this country unless workers are able to stand up, organize form unions,

and negotiate for decent contracts. And what we're seeing right now is more and more workers wanting to form unions, but you're seeing companies like Starbucks and Amazon and other Apple and other large corporations really engaging in illegal union busting. So we have asked the leader of, of Starbucks, the head of CEO, Howard Schultz, to explain to us why he thinks it's acceptable that over 50 occasions, the NLRD has said they have broken federal labor law

in breaking unions. So we hope to have him come before our committee. There will be a vote on Wednesday, a vote on subpoenaing him. And it does seem like there is a strange sort of hypocrisy there, because these are usually liberal companies. I think Whole Foods also. And it's like they care a lot about the indigenous people of the Bolivian Andes,

but not about some worker in Cincinnati. You got it. All right. They're very liberal about everything except where the workers can form a union and earn decent wages. They're very liberal, except whether or not we ask them to pay their fair share of taxes. They're not so liberal then. That's right. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, CNN. 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.