Overtime – Episode #699: Ian Bremmer & Rutger Bregman

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Speaker 4 Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Speaker 2 All right, welcome to Emberson with Industrial Starden and author of the book Moral Ambition, Rector Regman, and the president and founder of the Erasia Group and GZero Media, Ian Grimmer.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 here are the questions from the people. What are your thoughts on journalist Terry Moran? Oh yes, being dismissed by ABC after he tweeted that Trump is a world-class hater.
Well, it wasn't just that.

Speaker 2 I have it here. He talked to me.
He was talking about Stephen Miller. He said, Miller is a man who is rich.
This is a tweet. or an X, whatever.

Speaker 2 Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world-class hater.

Speaker 2 You can see this just by looking at him, because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.

Speaker 2 This guy's a reporter.

Speaker 2 What the fuck?

Speaker 2 This is, you know. Lots of jobs.

Speaker 2 So lots of Ames. Lots of jobs you can have and put that tweet out.
Journalism is not one of them. Exactly.
Journalism is not one of them. That's it.
Absolutely. Lots of jobs you can have and do that.

Speaker 2 That is the one job. I'm looking at you to be impartial.
Just give me the facts. Just give me.
I don't need to know this from you, Tari Moran. And if anybody's like, what about you, Bill?

Speaker 2 This is an opinion show. This is not a show where I break stories.
I break new ways of looking at stories. If you don't get that, I wasted the whole first 699 shows.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 Rector, how would you define ambition for young people in order to encourage them to pursue work that can improve the world?

Speaker 5 So moral ambition is just a desire to really use your career to make a massive difference, right? To really take on the greatest challenges that we face as a species.

Speaker 5 I often like to ask this question: what will the historians of the future think about us?

Speaker 5 Because for us, it's easy to look back on, say, I don't know, the 18th century slavery, slave trade, and think, oh, that's really bad.

Speaker 5 But perhaps we're doing some things today that are really bad as well.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, that's what it's all about.

Speaker 5 Answering that question. I would say, like, something like the way we treat animals, for example,

Speaker 5 is one of the greatest atrocities.

Speaker 2 And we'll be looked back and seen that way.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 most people are like, la la la la la, it's not happening. So

Speaker 5 I would love to see if more talented people take that on and try and transform our food system.

Speaker 2 Okay. The Democratic Socialist candidate for mayor of New York is surging in the polls.
What does this suggest about where the energy in the party is?

Speaker 2 I would say it's on the upper west side. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It suggests that Andrew Cuomo is going to be the mayor. He just got the Bloomberg endorsement.
He's way ahead of the entire field. No, Democrats.
No, no, that's the story, that he's not.

Speaker 2 He said, what, 42 the last time I saw him? And this guy is like, he's in second place. He's surging, but he's not Clomo.
No, I read yesterday he passed Cuomo. Yesterday?

Speaker 2 Well, different polls say different things.

Speaker 2 Must be Quinnipiak.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I don't get that. I just pulled that out of my butt.
They usually are far on the left. Oh, I see.

Speaker 2 I knew there was a meaning to that.

Speaker 2 Quinnipiac, that's the one that's on the

Speaker 2 Raspus is on the right. On the right.
There's always one of them. Anyway, I mean,

Speaker 2 it's, it's,

Speaker 2 America, uh, New York would have a socialist mayor, and I think a Muslim mayor, right? Is he not a Muslim? Not that that's wrong. We certainly

Speaker 2 need more Muslims who stand up for Western values. I mean, London has a Muslim mayor, and I think he's done a good job.

Speaker 2 I would like to see that example for Muslims all over the world, a Muslim politician standing up for Western values.

Speaker 2 If he's that,

Speaker 2 but I know he's very anti-Israel.

Speaker 5 So I don't care if he's socialist or Muslim, if he's the mayor that's going to make sure that we're going to build again, right? New York

Speaker 5 has it been shrinking or at least not been growing, even though it's one of the great cities of the world, right? Lots of people want to live there.

Speaker 5 But yeah, we've got this huge NIMBY problem.

Speaker 2 You know, why are you Dutch and sound like you're from Ireland?

Speaker 2 I'm just asking.

Speaker 2 Does it sound like Ireland? Okay. Don't.

Speaker 5 I guess I have this very weird mixture of all kinds of accents.

Speaker 2 Is that from Ireland?

Speaker 5 It adapts all the time. It's wherever I'm in the wolf.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 2 What do you guys sound like in Australia?

Speaker 2 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Okay.

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Speaker 2 An Atlantic article this week asked, where is Barack Obama? Should ex-presidents be taking a more public stance against Trump's increasingly brazen behavior? Where is Barack Obama? Where's W?

Speaker 2 Where's W?

Speaker 2 I mean, that's his party.

Speaker 2 You know, he's painting. He's doing good work.
But

Speaker 2 I'm continually disappointed about the fact that we have a couple of actually in good health, right, presidents from both parties that have been ex-presidents, but we always call them president, who have been completely absent in this environment.

Speaker 2 I think it's unacceptable. I mean, when you take that on, it's service.

Speaker 2 And we need that service right now.

Speaker 2 Why couldn't they be together talking about what it means to maintain democracy, talking about what it means to be civic and have engagement and care about yourselves and not think that the principal enemy in your country is actually your own fellow citizen?

Speaker 2 That's what we need Bush and Obama to be doing. Well, you're right.
I was going to say Obama served his time. He deserved to be beach-bumming it in Hawaii.

Speaker 2 And he does. But also, yeah, there's very few people who have his kind of standing.

Speaker 2 And Bush and the Republican Party, the same thing. I mean, the old Republican Party that we don't remember.

Speaker 2 And if they stood together, you know, one of the things I always appreciated about George Bush was, and I didn't appreciate too much,

Speaker 2 when Obama became president, he had him over to the Oval Office and he stood there and he said, we want you to succeed. The Republican said that to the Democrat.

Speaker 2 You cannot imagine Trump, you can't imagine Trump conceding. First of all,

Speaker 2 but can you imagine him standing there with Amy Klobuchar? We want you to succeed, Amy.

Speaker 2 You won fair and square. But people close to Obama and Bush have made this point, and they've nudged, and they've tried, and there's just no interest personally, and I think it's a failing of ours.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 What does the panel think of Trump saying that people that burn the American flag should go to jail for one year? Oh, for fuck's sake. You know what?

Speaker 2 I've been talking about this issue since politically incorrect days. It's so basic.

Speaker 2 To me, it's so clear. People who cannot see the forest for the trees, people who cannot see that a symbol is not the same thing as the reality.
Okay, the flag is a symbol.

Speaker 2 It's actually, when I see a flag burning, it says to me, I live in a country with freedom. Freedom.

Speaker 2 And he only sees the thing itself.

Speaker 2 Not that I'm going to do it.

Speaker 2 But, you know.

Speaker 5 There are always going to be anarcho-leftist douchebags, you know, summoning Waymos, setting them on fire.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I guess that's the frustrating thing, is that

Speaker 5 those people get the spotlight, even though the vast majority of people, I would say, are pretty decent.

Speaker 2 But it's no longer terrorism to put Tesla's on fire, or it is it again now that he's...

Speaker 2 I don't even know. It changes.

Speaker 2 What do you imagine is the psychology behind going after the Waymos? Like, well, there's nobody in them. We're not actually hurting any

Speaker 2 person.

Speaker 2 Is that it? Because

Speaker 2 what comes out of the fire when you burn an electric car is like the most polluting

Speaker 2 toxic thing that's going into it. You know what it reminded me of, though? Remember those anti-WTO demonstrations up in Seattle? Yep.

Speaker 2 And it was like, save the whales and no nuclear energy and also let's like go after Starbucks, right? It was so diffuse. That was my bid.
That's what it was, right?

Speaker 2 The Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. All right.
Thank you, everybody. I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.