Overtime – Episode #677: Rep. Jamie Raskin, Tim Miller, Michael Moynihan

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maul. That's it.
Nobody else. Not Tim and Michael.
All right. Tim Miller and Michael.
I guess I guess. Or the prompter guy just died.
All right. Here are the questions from people.
If Trump loses, do you think Steve Bannon will lead election denial efforts? No kidding. Now that he has been released from prison.
He would have done it from prison. Yeah.
I talked to Steve Bannon. I interviewed him in 2020.
And he told me a month before the election that they were going to deny the results. A full month before.
He told me that in an interview. That that we're going like, there's no way Trump is going to concede.
And I don't suspect he'll do that again. There's only ever two outcomes with them.
Either we won or it was rigged. It's...
Yes. I can't believe we...
I can't believe we're... I mean, we've been living with this for 10 years.
Yeah. I don't know if it's going to...
If Trump went away tomorrow, would that end?

I don't think so.

I think another person in the Republican Party

would pick up that mantle, don't you think?

I don't think there's anything going back from that.

No, I don't think so either.

Somebody's going to try to take place.

But what's interesting is that in 2020,

Bannon and the inner coterie were all emphatic that Trump was going to declare victory, even if he lost, and they were explicit about it. They were saying, regardless of whether or not he wins, he will declare victory.
Can I give you one happy thought, though, on this? Yes. Happy thoughts.
I agree that they'll try in the future, but, like, it is really hard to imagine, like, a mob of people storming the Capitol waving J.D. Vance flags.
You know what I mean? Like, there will still be election denialism, but, like, Trump's unique charisma is important, and, like, removing him from the process is a good positive step. Okay.
Okay. What would the public reaction be if instead of Elon talking to Putin, yes, we found out that Elon Musk does talk to Putin, we learned that George Soros had a secret relationship with Chinese President Xi? Well, good question.
The Elon thing is insane. Actually, it's insane to me that it isn't, like, wall-to-wall.
There's no precedent for the situation we have. He's the biggest donor to Trump.
He is, if not the biggest, one of the biggest government... Defense contract.
Yeah, recipients of government contracts. He's talking to Putin.
Apparently, during one of the talks with Putin, Putin asked him to do a favor for him for Xi. So Xi is involved in this, like about not giving starlings to Taiwan or something like that during the conversation.
So like the Soros example isn't

really apt at all because he's on top of Soros. He's also a government contractor and he's also

coordinating with our geopolitical foes. It's an absolutely insane scandal that I feel like people

are like, well, yeah, we know that's happening. Well, Russia and China are close allies now.

And we've got North Korean troops that have joined the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine. So there is like this axis of autocratic powers that have gotten together, and yet we've got Donald Trump and Elon Musk in frequent, often daily contact with them.
It was a very fast ascent, too.

I mean, at the beginning of the Ukraine war,

Elon Musk provided Starlinks for Ukraine.

Right.

And then said at some point that they would prevent Starlinks

from working in certain areas of Ukraine

because the Ukrainians were using them for offensive purposes.

And, you know, I was on this stage when he was here being interviewed, and he was, this was a year and a half, two years ago, and it just seemed like a different person. Today, I saw that he's posting videos on Twitter, on X, of people trying to vote for Donald Trump and it making it a Harris vote.
I mean, these are obvious nonsense videos, but this is being spread by the person who owns the platform, is the richest man in the world, and has how many, you know, hundreds of millions of followers. It's depressing.
What do you make of the statement? I woke up today to the headline that Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney. And this is what I really don't like about the media.
No, he didn't. You don't have to move me to not like Donald Trump.
He says so many shitty things.

Why do you have to do that?

And by the way, if you don't realize it, here's what he said. He's criticizing him for being a war hawk.
I mean, she is Dick Cheney's daughter. He said, she's a radical war hawk.
Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let's see how she feels about it.
You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, we'll send tens of thousands of troops right into the mouth of the enemy. Now, of course, he expresses himself horribly.
He has to add she's a stupid person because he's a moron. Well, Trump knows what it's really like from Vietnam.
Okay. Okay.
Just to be clear, This is exactly what hippies always said this is exactly what peace dicks always said this is fortunate son the song it's like you know what it's very easy to sit in your building and send young men to die apropos of ukraine yes because i don't know that war doesn't look like it's going in the right direction. Not at all.

But just so, you know, just don't lie to me.

I don't like Donald Trump.

Don't lie to me and tell me he wants it in front of a firing court.

He was saying something that, by the way,

if it came out of the mouth, some of it, not the stupid part,

again, sounds like what hippies used to say,

about not sending people to... I agree with you on the lying.
I mean, that is ridiculous and absurd and counterproductive. But when did Donald Trump ever criticize a war hawk the way a hippie did? I mean, was it during Vietnam? He got out of going to Vietnam, but he didn't criticize the war where they're not.
Jamie, I'm not defending Trump. I'm just saying, don't lie to me.
I agree with that. I mean, that's just a distortion.
It's counterproductive. I mean, the number of Trump people you talk to who talk about the media and giving them any ammunition like this.
I mean, I saw headlines, chyrons on television this morning saying that Donald Trump had said that Kamala Harris should be executed. I mean, at the beginning of that kind of rambling, incoherent thing, she said give her a weapon, which is not typically something you do to say he's being executed.
And again, the spirit of it is something that if someone with a blue hat said it, people would nod along on the left. Yes, exactly.
There's plenty of things he says that you don't have to invent. Can I just say one thing? And I agree with you.
All All those criticisms are fair. But there's been a lot of

violence, as Nancy Pelosi

knows, and a lot of threats.

And on both sides of the...

There's nine guns in somebody's face. It's just still not something

you really want a president to say. Of course, he's horrible.

But you know, half the country is like,

that's the way we all talk. We don't

watch our peas and views. I also get a little

annoyed about the media, the constant media criticism

of the mainstream. This is a fair criticism, but it's

coming oftentimes from people who are like

frequent viewers of

Thank you. I also get a little annoyed about the media, the constant media because of the mainstream.
This is a fair criticism, but it's like it's coming oftentimes from people who are like frequent viewers of the Jesse Waters show or whatever. You know what I mean? Like there's a whole right wing mega meet.
It's not 1984, right, where there are only three networks. And if they're a little biased, if Dan Rather is telling you something that's wrong, that's like a really big deal that he's biased because 60 million people are watching Dan Rather.
It's like as many people are watching daytime MSNBC as they're watching primetime Newsmax. Right? So it's like, you know what I mean? So obsessing over the criticism.
They're not watching either of them. They're watching TikTok.
So obsessing over the criticism of it, I just sometimes think, is a little overkill. So J.D.
Vance said teens are becoming, teens are purposely becoming trans to get into elite colleges. What's that? Well, I don't think that's why teens are becoming trans.
Wow. Just to throw it all on the table, I'm not so sure that elite colleges don't want trans possibly more than they want people who are not trans.

I mean, that's just where the far left is.

But I don't think they're purposely doing that.

He also said that he wouldn't be surprised.

What's his plan for the White House on that?

I have no idea.

What's the Trump administration going to do? Is there like one case of that?

Of course not.

But he said, J.D. Vance said he wouldn't be surprised if he and Donald Trump get the normal gay guy vote.
You know. Tim? You want to take a look? You know, guys who fuck women.
The normal gay guys. I think what J.D.
Vance means about a normal gay guy vote is the guy who has a blank profile on Grindr who's messaging

actual out gay guys. I think that probably is a Trump supporter.

All right. I got to go to Vegas.
Thank you, everybody. I appreciate it.

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