Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #645: Ari Melber and Andrew Sullivan

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 1/19/24) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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All right, great to be back on CNN. Happy New Year. We've got with us today, the guy who hosts MSNBC's The Beat with Ari Melba. Ari Melbur is over here, and he writes the weekly disc newsletter, Andrew Sullivan. Okay. All right, Ari, what do you make of the recent study that found that half of inflation in the U.S.? Oh, yes, I saw this, is due to high corporate profits. They're calling this greedflation, which I think is... Right.

I mean, what impact does greedflation have on our economy? Right. So people are... You know, there was a legitimate reason why prices rose for a while. But then, of course, they used that as an excuse to raise the prices. Now that stuff is coming down. Somehow the prices don't come down, too, because the profits are fat now. Yeah, the price couching is documented.

They brag about it at earnings calls to Wall Street. It's allowed. There are other places that make it much harder for... France has rules that actually make this a lot harder to do. But here it's legal, but it's outrageous. And at the time, they're giving themselves big pay raises in the boardroom, too. Well, here's my question is, what do you do about it? I remember two things.

Gavin and I talked for a second about jawboning. I mean, presidents did that in the past. They literally just did it by the power of presidential coercion. They got people in the Oval Office, and they said, look, you knuckleheads, you're doing something bad for the country, and sometimes that worked. Nixon, as I recall, maybe I got this wrong, but I think he had price controls. I mean, that's

something very foreign. Even I don't barely remember that. And they didn't work. No. They don't work in the long run. Right. Look, the best way to bring prices down is competition, right? So if these companies, if there's a cartel involved

in keeping prices high when they should be going down, then the cartel needs to be broken up. I haven't read the study, so I don't know. But it's not like inflation hasn't been explained by a variety of factors. Obviously, the supply side stuff

that constrained supply of goods. There you had the big overspending of the Biden stimulus, which really did. I understand why they did it, and they got a good deal of growth from it, but they did. Some of that was Trump. Some of that was Trump too.

Yeah, absolutely. Everybody got together to spend $6 trillion to block ourselves in our room. But what's interesting now is the most Brazilian high prices are a food, right? Yes. Is food corporations bragging about this?

Yeah, they are on their earnings calls because they don't think they're really going to get heard that much. They're even doing it on diaper sales. And it's not a cartel, but there aren't a lot of diaper providers. So if the three main companies that do it on the national basis, then no, there's no price. There are certain products you can't live without. I'm sure if you have someone who needs diapers. They're limited. Either at the beginning or end of life.

you definitely want I mean like I always hear people I always hear people bitch about plumbers you know they charge an arm and a leg have you ever needed a plumber

if plumbers only knew what we would pay them when it's coming up through your bathroom okay Andrew this is for you what are your thoughts about the Pope's recent declaration

that sexual pleasure is a gift from God thanks big man but that But that pornography must be avoided. Well, that's contradictory. No, I'm kidding. He's stating actually Catholic doctrine.

We're not supposed to hate our sexual pleasure. We're not supposed to... I mean, this is not the case with Protestants, of course, but Catholics were allowed. Right. I remember when I first realized I had this between my legs, it was the best day of my entire life. And I never really could understand it as a sin.

masturbation and that pleasure was just something that seemed so obviously self-evidently natural and great. Why would God be punishing me for it? And I actually, I was very devout. I just decided, well, that's obviously not true. The way I decided that, well, the Virgin Mary wasn't physically ascended into heaven. There were certain things you said, okay, no, that's not right. I remember when I was first masturbating, and I did not know what it was. We didn't have...

I didn't know. And I remember thinking, is this bad for me? But then it was like, I didn't know, really. I didn't know, really. I thought it was urine. I did it in the dark. And the only thing I'd ever seen come out of there was urine. I know.

And it seemed like, this doesn't seem right, but. The fact that you remember that moment. I remember that moment, too, just shows you how natural it is. And how naive we were compared to kids today, because I'm sure they know everything before they're seven years old. They do, and there was no porn either. Like, I used to... Honestly, I had a scrapbook.

I would draw the dudes I wanted to have sex with. That's all I could do, draw them. But that meant my imagination was kind of set off. Right, exactly. When I first discovered sex, it was like, oh, this is interesting, that is interesting. Now you meet like someone who's 21. They're like, well, I'd like you to be daddy with a bad report card. We need to be there with a spanker and show up at this point.

to wear this? And I'm like, where did you get this wrong? Okay. It's probably CIA. I got to remember, we're on CNN, not Club Random. For panel, who do you think Trump has on his short list for VP? Well, Stephanic is the one that was talked about now? Isn't that the one that they were talking? She's the New York State, used to be a normal and then became.

Trump crazy? And the tormentor of Claudine Gay. Yes. Right. Oh, yes. That's what makes sense. But I think still Haley, I mean, Trump has teamed up. I think he's teamed up with people who've said way worse things. J.D. Vance wrote a whole book and launched his career attacking Trump. He doesn't care about that. He doesn't care about that. And Haley, although there are parts of MAGA, as we discussed, that might not love her. If Trump says this is it, and he's very practical and she would help in the suburbs, which is his biggest general election vulnerability, I think there's a lot of the actual numbers, people around Trump who are trying to get him

to think about that. And it would, it would. would probably give him several points. I saw on the paper this week that he is doing better and did better with college educated. I remember when he won Iowa or was running in Iowa in 2016 and he had that famous line, I love the poorly educated. I mean, we can't write this material. Bill, you said tonight that it looks like he could get reelected. He definitely could.

But he got 3 million fewer votes in 16. He got 7 million fewer votes in 20. And they had bad midterms. And the Democrats have won. every state-based special election in the last year. If he's going to win, which he could, he can't run as the 20 or 16 version of him, and the ticket is the first largest way to say to the suburbs,

I'm a little different. The trouble with Nikki is that she makes sort of Dick Cheney look like the Dalai Lama. I mean, there is not a country she wouldn't invade, not a region she wouldn't bomb. She is the most un-reconstructed neocon I've ever come across in politics. And Trump's entire message is I'm not an unconstructed neocon.

I think the base of those bonkers. Again, you're parsing, you're giving the voters way too much credit. Like, they are looking at, neoconverse is not, this is not what they're thinking about. I don't, I think, no, this is why I get back to the issues with Trump. No, I think one of the issues that helped him was people were sick of these wars. And when they have someone that seems like we're going to get into more wars, they were not going to like it. It's a big issue to them. I don't think voters expect the running mate to set foreign policy, period.

I don't think they think about foreign policy, the hell of a lot, except if it, the one that they care about now is Ukraine because it's holding up immigration reform. They care about this country, what's going on in this country, just the way most people watch local news. They don't watch national news. That means they don't want the wars, which Nikki represents. That's what that, that's their position on foreign policy. We don't want to have one, really.

Yeah, the media and Trump voter doesn't think that he's going to, take the cues from her on that? Or that's really the issue they're voting on. Nikki Haley, what is she going to do about Pakistan? I just don't think this is I don't know what you're going. All right. I have

time for one more. I see they're going after Alec Baldwin again for the shooting. Is this not the most ridiculous thing? I mean, does anyone think Alec Baldwin purposely shot that person? If not, what is this about? If he

If it was an accident, it was a horrible accident, accidents happen, maybe this is some sort of manslaughter thing, but certainly he didn't go, give me a loaded gun. I want to shoot the cinematographer. I feel this is ridiculous. And you want a legal view? Yes.

Yeah, it's very overcharged, and it's hard to imagine charging a normal, random citizen, a non-famous citizen twice on this theory of the case. Now, legally, the prosecutors say, well, look, as an involuntary manslaughter, we don't have to prove deliberate intent. We're saying it was so reckless and a life was lost and that's tragic. And it is a terrible tragedy.

And obviously a lot has to change on however that set was ever run. But I don't think, based on how it looks and what we know, again, always if more evidence came out, that a citizen, a non-famous person would be double charged like this. It seems very extreme. Okay, that's it. Right out of time. Thank you, CNN. Thank you, audience.

Thank you, panel. We'll see you next week. Good to be back. 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. Lazzang sur-gillet,

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