Overtime – Episode #693: Sen. Adam Schiff, Bret Stephens

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. All right, here we are with the Democratic senator from California, Adam Schiff, and the New York Times opinion columnist, Brett Stevens.
Okay, here are the questions from the people. Senator Schiff, given the ongoing political tensions and Trump's actions toward his critics, do you think President Biden's preemptive pardons turned out to be more important than initially expected? Let's first tell people what that means.
Preemptive pardons. That was pretty unprecedented, right? Before he left office, Joe Biden pardoned you and a number of people who he thought Trump would go after.
No, I take the opposite view. I don't think he should have given the pardons at all.
Really? No, I don't think he should have, and I was vocal about that at the time. Can you refuse a pardon? That's less clear, because in the case of the General Six Committee, he pardoned essentially the whole committee.
I see. But I didn't like it both because we were enormously proud of our work on the January 6th Committee, but more than that, establishing a precedent that on the way out the door you're going to pardon any number of people gave him even greater latitude on his way out of the door to pardon everyone around him.
Chief Justice Roberts, in that immunity decision, I think, which will go down in infamy, already gave this president permission to be lawless. But the abuse of the pardon power essentially gives him an opportunity to tell everyone around him, then when I'm on the way out the door, I've got your back.
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What did you read about the judge today that was arrested by, I mean, it's such a new story.

I didn't want to bring it up during the show because I don't know enough about it.

But there was a judge in Milwaukee.

I guess it was a hearing for an illegal immigrant, definitely an illegal immigrant.

And the ICE people came in to arrest this person. And apparently the judge spirited the person out the back door.
That's what I read. Don't know if it's true because I don't trust anybody until I do a full vetting of it.
And so the FBI came in and arrested the judge. Now, I haven't heard that.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever read arrested a judge. So, is this significant? Well, I think...
I'm not going to comment on something I don't know more about than what you've just told me. You read about it, too.
Yeah, I mean, I read about it, but I don't know... So you don't trust anything either, and you work for the New York Times.
Well. When the New York Times does its full reporting, I will trust them.
Okay, okay, alright. If film and TV productions continue to move out of California due to tax incentives in other states, what might the future look for Los Angeles? Is there a risk of it becoming the next Detroit? Well, there's no need to shit on Detroit in the question.
Detroit's a fine city. Detroit.
The central part of that question is that California, I'm sorry to say this, a beautiful state, has become Exhibit A in progressive misgovernance. And if you're going to tax industries straight out of the country, if you're going to continue to lose, I don't know, 100,000, 200,000 people every year who have to leave here because it's unaffordable, because housing is unaffordable, you're going to create an example of what Americans don't want from the left.
So Democrats and, you know, my colleague Ezra Klein is doing this. We're taking a good hard look at California and saying, we're not that.
We need to be a party that's from some other model. Well, you know, I don't disagree that we've got to do a lot to improve governance in California, but I don't agree with the diagnosis of why the film industry is leaving.
They're leaving because they're getting richer incentives in other states and other countries. And we haven't kept pace with that.
So if you want to film in the United Kingdom, you're going to get a tremendous tax break. And our motion picture industry has left the country.
If you want to film in New York or Georgia, there are generous tax incentives. If we want to keep the industry here, we're going to have to compete with tax incentives.
California has started to do that. But on a federal level, I think the United States is also going to have to offer incentives to keep this industry here and to compete around the world.
It didn't used to be necessary, but they're successfully wooing away

this, you know, prize economic and cultural driver

of the United States.

So I have a deep personal interest,

both because I represent this area

for a long time in the House,

and I love this industry.

I love going out to the movies.

I love watching great TV like your program.

But I think it's more

Thank you. I love watching great TV like your program.
But I think it's more that we're being out in bed. But why should it just be for Hollywood? It should be for normal people.
It should be for any kind of entrepreneur, not just celebrities whose pictures and whose faces you know. I mean, that's the problem.
It shouldn't just simply be a favored industry.

Oh, we can't lose our movie stars.

Every year, California loses people because they are being driven away by a high-tax,

high-regulation state where public services

don't reach the standards that they should.

That should be a signal that we shouldn't have

one favored industry or another. We should have a favored state.
California should be competitive. Well, a great argument for old-school republicanism, by the way.
And I certainly concur. We need to be competing for business with the rest of the country, and we need to not be complacent about whether people are going to locate here because of a business climate.
We certainly can't expect that. But I think what's driving, and the question was about the film industry, which is why I made my answer about the film industry, but I think a lot of what is driving people out of California is the cost of living is too high.
Yeah. And most particularly, the cost of housing is too high.
People can't afford to live here, which is why I think in so many central ways, housing is really key. More housing is key to the affordability problem in California.
More housing is key to the homeless problem in California. But you're absolutely right, creating a more welcoming business environment, a more regulatory-friendly environment, making sure that the ethos is how do we help you get this done, not how do we put more obstacles in the way.
I haven't forgotten about your roof. All of that is important to keep you...
And my pot store. And right? And the pot store, the woods that I own with Woody Harrelson.
The biggest problem we had was the government of California. I imagine your producers are saying, oh, God, I can't believe Schiff brought up his roof.
Yeah, I mean, we love it here. We want to live here.
I mean, you know, the West Coast has the sunshine and the girls all get so tanned. I don't know how I can...
But we just gotta make it friendlier. Alright.
That's a Beach Boys song, kids, if you didn't know. Does the panel agree with the UK's proposal to impose a social media curfew for kids? How realistic is it to enforce? I'm not familiar with what the specifics of the UK doing that, but the UK has been doing some interesting things lately.
First pass answer, absolutely yes. Being the father of three kids, getting them off social media, is the single most important thing you can do as a parent.
I don't know enough about what Britain is doing, but I like the fact that schools are increasingly taking phones out of the classroom. I think that makes a lot of sense.
Social media, it's a misnomer. It should be called anti-social media.
It is a tool for dividing people, putting people into silos,

making people feel insecure, making people feel inadequate.

In every single metric, social media has destroyed the inner lives of younger people.

I...

Apropos to the Pope's passing, perhaps,

I did a bit here one night suggesting I was going to open a place called Bill Maher's Catholic School. Let me finish.
Because Catholic schools are popular now, even with people who aren't Catholic. It's the last place you can send your kid to get an old school education.
And they just tell the kids, you know, forget about the Jesus stuff. Just, you know.
To them, that's okay indoctrination, as opposed to some of the other indoctrination that goes on. And also, the Catholics don't put up with bullshit.
They take your phone. You have to learn your P's and Q's and your grammar and all this kind of stuff.
And that's what I just don't understand, that parents don't, they don't have the whip hand anymore. Not that you should actually use a whip.
And and i don't have kids so i don't know that firsthand but every movie and tv show that has a teenager in it cannot be mischaracterizing this and the kids just they don't listen to their parents they they turn their back on them they walk out of the room things that would just get me shut down when i was a kid and and i think it starts with the phone So I don't know that I would have been ready to send my kids to Catholic school. But I will tell you that I thought...
Bill Maher's Catholic school. It's different.
I thought the Pope was such a great Pope, it made me want to be a lapsed Catholic. I wasn't ready to go to Full Monty,

but I wanted to be a lapsed Catholic.

Alright, thank you guys.

Thank you.

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