Overtime – Episode #672: Bjorn Lomborg, Stephanie Ruhle, Bret Stephens

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. All right, he's a genius political scientist and author of the book False Alarm.
Bjorn Lornberg, he's a New York Times columnist, Brett Stevens, and she hosts MSNBC's The Eleventh Hour, Stephanie Rule. And next week on the show, Fran Leibovitz.
Oh, awesome. You've all known her.
How are you? I love him. And Ian Bremmer.
I'm going to have such a good time next week, and I had a great time this week. Let's get right to the things that people want to know.
For Brett, what do you think of anti-immigrant backlash in Europe

and news that Sweden will now...

Sweden, is that you?

A little bit.

I think you're Danish.

I'm Danish.

I live in Sweden. It's complicated.

Not really.

It used to be all one big Viking country, didn't it?

Don't tell the Swedes that.

Why?

We used to own them.

You used to own the Danish? No, the Danes used to own Sweden. Oh, sorry.
And they forgive, so why can't we? And news that Sweden will now offer immigrants $34,000 to leave. They're offering, Sweden is offering immigrants $34,000 to leave.

Wow, that's interesting because they come here, we give them money to stay. That's a new approach there from Sweden.
What do you think, Brett? Look, I think immigration is great for any society, in particular in Europe where they have a declining birth rate. They absolutely need immigration for labor force, for the creativity and innovation Immigrants bring.
The problem is that when you have mass unrestricted or illegal immigration that the people haven't agreed they want, it creates populist backlashes. And that's why in Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, all throughout Europe, and of course here in the United States, you have this massive backlash.
The right response is to have high walls but big gates, to have a way in which lots of people can come to this country in an orderly process through laws that have been agreed so that people understand that this is good for the country. Republicans, if you go back to 1980, there's this amazing debate between George H.W.
Bush and Ronald Reagan.

They were both running for the nomination that year in Texas.

And they're both agreeing how important it is

to have a liberal open immigration system

that brings in talented people from all over the world,

not just the Swedes, Mexicans, where I grew up,

all over the world, because we need them in this country. But if you do it in the way that we've seen in the last five years, you're going to get the right-wing populist illiberal backlash that I think is destructive for the country.
And a lot of eaten cats. All right.
There was, of course, a bipartisan immigration bill this year that two parties worked on together that they tried to pass, and it was blocked by Donald Trump. Yeah.
Well, Donald Trump is not in Congress, but he did call up his people and say, you know, I mean, that's the story. I mean, I've heard the other side, too, that apparently it was not strong enough and that what they're doing now, just through executive order, is actually a lot more.
Yeah. I mean, two things can be true.
The Biden administration absolutely dropped the ball on immigration because they were overreacting to the cruelty of the Trump administration. And it is also true, right, that we need both border security, border reform, and a way for immigrants who want to come to this country and become American citizens, assimilated American citizens, to arrive here.
And it's crazy that they have to take these insane risks of the Darien Gap and elsewhere instead of going to American consulates and having a fast track to getting into our country. Okay.
This is for you. Are electric vehicles as environmentally friendly as they are advertised to be? Oh, I was going to ask you about that.
We ran out of time. But there's another thing that I'm glad you're here to, you know, shine a light on these things that you don't hear a lot.
But I've read what you've, and I'm sure you could say it better than I can, but electric vehicles,

you know, electricity doesn't

come from a fairy in the sky.

It comes, you know, they are, and also

the things that we have to mine,

the cobalt and stuff that goes

into the batteries,

it's not as, oh,

electric, perfect, and gas, awful,

as the parity is a lot closer, right?

No.

So electric vehicles are probably better.

You have to actually drive them a lot.

So a lot of people buy them as second vehicles,

you know, just mostly to virtue signal

and drive down to the local store or something,

and then it doesn't actually work.

That's exactly why I have it.

Yes, there you go.

I don't drive it a lot. I want a virtue signal, and I want to go to the store once in a while.
But for most of the electric vehicles, they are actually emitting less CO2. But, unfortunately, they're also much heavier because of the batteries than their comparative gasoline cars.
Really? Yeah. Then why do they go faster? Because they have much better torque, as I understand it.
Oh. So the point here is they're about 700 pounds heavier.
That gives more air pollution from the brakes and the tires, which is a major part of the pollution from all cars. And it makes them more dangerous in traffic.
So there's a new paper in Nature a couple of years ago that showed that because heavier cars are safer for you but much more unsafe for the people you're going to hit, they will probably end up killing more people. But Bjorn, one question.
What about mining lithium, mining cobalt, mining all the minerals that go into batteries? That's dirty, right? Yes, that is dirty. Very dirty.
But again, when you look at electric cars, people almost entirely talk about CO2, and they should be talking about many, many other things as well. That's a problem.
But again, it's one of the things we know how to fix. So again, we should, you know, if we get better regulation on mining, that's not the main part I'd be worried about.
It is much more the fact that we're going to get much better cars. If driving just an electric vehicle is virtue signaling, what are you signaling to society if you have a cyber truck? No, I'm not.
I was... Good question.
I mean, hard facts. I did try to be actually virtuous.
I had the first Prius model, not the very first one that came off the line, but the first model, and the first Tesla, and they both sucked. I felt I was taking one for the team.
They both were really terrible. It's true.
Okay. All right, speaking of dirty, this is for you, Stephanie.
What's your reaction to the revelation that New York City's COVID czar, Dr. J.K.
Varma, was attending sex parties during the pandemic while telling the public to stay at home? Well, it makes the French laundry look good. Only in New York, kids.

Only in New York.

I mean, God.

I mean, it's...

You read this headline, and you're like,

you have got to be kidding me.

But it's not just in New York.

I mean, this is...

I mean, is everyone having a freak-off?

I mean...

I guess that's the question.

Like, if it's city officials, if it's city, the question is,

what does it say about all of us if we're not getting invited?

I guess your silence means you are.

I don't know.

Yes.

But I'm not a hypocrite because I always thought COVID was bullshit.

But, you know, actually, that's the central point here,

which is why there's...

And it helps explain why there's so much resentment,

that the people who made these rules,

that made life intolerable for millions of Americans,

especially service workers who had to wear these masks all the time, were flouting them as if they had no applicability to them and as if they didn't work. Because if you actually believed that you were going to get COVID and die at a sex party, you would probably not go to the sex party.
You don't know how hard up he was. But I mean...
Listen, if you thought you had a week to live, think about what you might spend that week doing. Well, I wouldn't be in home with a mask on.
Just saying. But just in this one week, I mean, I read a story about Matt Gaetz today, that he went to a party with...
I mean, we've read this story before, maybe they have something new, underage girls.

Okay, then I read about

the guy in North Carolina, and

you know, that was just off the

charts, what this guy was into.

And then this guy.

It seems

like Puff Daddy.

It's like, is everybody out there?

Does anybody just fuck anymore?

Okay, there's only one.

There's only one question

as related to all of this.

Thank you. It's like, is everybody out there? Does anybody just fuck anymore? Okay, there's only one.
There's only one question.

I'm going to answer all of this.

There's one question.

Yeah.

How do you have 1,000 bottles of baby oil hyphen slash lube?

I'm going to tell you.

Please.

Have you ever been to Costco?

Because, I'm telling you, they get you. They get you every time.
I once went in stoned to Costco and I bought like a thousand cocktail weenies. And probably still have them.
Okay. What were the panel's thoughts on Trump saying if he loses the Jewish people will have a lot to do with it?

Well, whenever an autocrat starts blaming the Jews, I think it's a great sign.

Because when has that ever turned out badly?

Yes, I saw that.

Trump is saying that, firstly, he says he should have gotten 100% of the Jewish vote, 100% of the vote. That would be very good.
And now he's saying if he loses, he's looking to blame the Jews. I don't like it.
No, he's a really scary guy. And I don't think he's an anti-Semite, but he's anti-Semitic adjacent.
And he hangs out with people like Tucker Carlson, who are platforming Holocaust deniers. And he has Yeezy or whatever his name currently is, you know, to Mar-a-Lago on his home.
And listen, to me, anti-Semitism is always the canary in the proverbial coal mine. Ten years ago, there were about 700 recorded incidents of antisemitism in America.
Last year, there were over 8,000. A lot of them are coming from the far left, but they're also there on the right, too.
And when people start hating on Jews, other people are going to be inevitably the targets. Essentially, democracy is at risk whenever antisemitism rears its head.
And that's the point I'm thinking about. What if we go to the dog park after? You're in ahead of the UN General Assembly next week.
Oh, is it that time of year again? What should be the focus of global development work? Well, so we've actually promised, even the US have promised to do everything. We promised 169 things we should do.
We should get rid of poverty and hunger and, you know, get good education and fix climate and fix war and fix everything in between. Of course, we're not actually doing all of that.
So what I've worked on is very much to focus on saying, where can you spend an extra dollar and do the very most good? And it turns out that there are some incredibly simple, cheap things we can do. For instance, fixing tuberculosis.
Remember? I mean, we used to die a lot from tuberculosis 100 years ago. We'd die a of many things 100 years ago.
Yes. Even 50 years ago.
We still died of a lot of things. Way less than we used to.
You know why? Because of vaccines. Partly, yes.
Yeah. Yes, that's not the only reason why.
We also have refrigeration and sewage treatment. And antibiotics.
Yeah, antibiotics. So 1.4 million people die from tuberculosis.
We could fix it easily. Maternal and newborn death.
So about 300,000 moms die in childbirth each year on the planet. 2.3 million kids die in their first month on the planet.
We could save most of these at very, very low cost. We find for about $3 billion, so virtually rounding error for anything else we're talking about, we could get women to give birth in facilities, and it would mean we could save 166,000 moms each year and 1.2 million kids.
It'd be one of the best things the world could do. That's what they should be talking about at the UN next week.
Okay. What did the panel think about Kamala's interview with Oprah and her admission not only that she has a gun, but she would shoot an intruder to her home? I think I applauded it.
I mean, she had my vote, and I doubled down. It was a surprise, and I think it's great to have that, right? So people keep...
You know, you love to look at a candidate and say, I know they're this, I assume they're that. So when she's sort of speaking this surprising truth that, oh, when you look at a black woman candidate, she must mean X, Y, and Z, when she showed up and said, guess not, I'm this, I thought it was a positive.
It's also great to have a journalist ask Kamala a real question and get a substantive answer. Shall I be closer to her? Yes, but what interview did Donald Trump do this week? He did a Twitter spaces with a crypto bro.
Again, you're voting between two different candidates. Not perfect.
And said he was bigger than Elvis. We've been down this road.
But what about the substance of it?

Do you think if someone breaks into your house, would you shoot them?

Is that right?

Is that the right thing to do?

I wouldn't choose to do that.

What would you do?

I'm not a gun person.

I would hope that my husband would shoot that person.

But, um...

All right.

Final question for you.

What were your thoughts on the Fed cutting interest rates?

Will that have an economic impact before the election that could help Harris?

Yes.

Yeah, mortgage rates are already going down.

Anybody who thinks, oh, my gosh, this was so political,

if it was so political, the Fed would have done it six months ago.

And I would remind you, Fed Chair Jay Powell was appointed by Donald Trump. He doesn't choose

the rate cut. It's the Fed governors.
There are 11 of them. He just announces it.

Right. Trump's right.
Everything bad happens to him.

All right. Thank you, anytime on HBO On Demand.

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