Overtime – Episode #698: Stephanie Ruhle & Jonah Goldberg

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Speaker 5 Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Speaker 6 Alrighty, is the co-founder of the Dispatch and host of the Remnant podcast, Jonah Goldberg. And she's the senior business analyst and host of MSNBC's The 11th Hour, Sephanie Roar.
Okay.

Speaker 6 Okay, these are the questions from the people. What was the point, panel, of Pete Hegseth's move to erase LGBTQ, oh yes, icon Harvey Milk's name from a Navy ship at the start of Pride Month.

Speaker 6 I guess that happened. I saw it in the paper myself.
Yes, so there was a ship named for Harvey Milk, who Sean Penn played, remember, won an Oscar for, I think, in the movie.

Speaker 6 He was a mayor of San Francisco.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 6 And was assassinated. Yep.
Right?

Speaker 6 What was this, the late 80s, maybe?

Speaker 6 Okay. Anyway.

Speaker 6 Something like that. Anyway, this is

Speaker 6 more

Speaker 6 over.

Speaker 6 Nothing ever, like I said, pendulum never stops in the middle. You always have to go too far with everything.
And I guess they thought this made the Navy too gay.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know.

Speaker 6 How could you make the Navy too gay?

Speaker 4 I mean.

Speaker 4 There's a sodomy in the last joke in there somewhere.

Speaker 6 There's a deck full of seamen joke.

Speaker 6 There's a poop deck joke.

Speaker 4 I'm sure there's a lot of jokes. Anyway.

Speaker 4 I would not have named a ship after Harvey Milk. I would not have taken the name off of it at the beginning of Pride Month either.
It's trolling.

Speaker 6 That's a good point. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's

Speaker 6 an odd choice to name for a ship. I mean, we can honor Harvey Milk.
I'm not sure why a ship, yes. Yeah.
But then I agree. Why take it off? It just draws it.

Speaker 4 Certainly not the beginning of Pride Month, right?

Speaker 6 I mean, like, that's...

Speaker 6 It's the trolling.

Speaker 7 Okay, or how about ever?

Speaker 7 How about why waste the time? Why waste the paint? You have one of the most important jobs in the entire country. With how many people in your headcount? Three million.
And

Speaker 7 this is what you devote your time doing.

Speaker 6 Do better. Okay, so

Speaker 6 a new study shows that marijuana use among Americans 65 and older jumped near

Speaker 6 jumped nearly 50% in just two years. What's behind the rise?

Speaker 6 Well, I mean,

Speaker 6 what a good time to plug my pot store in West Hollywood. The woods, it's right on Santa Monica Boulevard.
It's the best pot store that you... I'm telling you.

Speaker 6 Woody Harrelson and my pot store. Okay.
Anyway, a big jump. I mean, no jump for me.
I jumped when I was 19, and I have not jumped back. So

Speaker 6 I don't know what that means.

Speaker 7 Seniors are older and wiser.

Speaker 6 Yep, and also they.

Speaker 6 Exactly, Stephanie.

Speaker 4 Beautiful.

Speaker 4 I don't know. They're also from, I mean, the people who are in that, I don't know why I jumped that much in two months, but like, or two years, but like that age cohort are the people who grew up

Speaker 4 smoking pot, right? So there are going to be more people in that generation. Joe Biden's generation didn't grow up smoking pot.
They grew up, you know, pushing rickshaws or something.

Speaker 6 That's true.

Speaker 6 It's what you did in your youth. I mean, when my mother was a widow, I was always trying to get her to smoke pot pot because everything she complained about would have been solved with pot.

Speaker 6 She's too skinny. You know, we helped her put on weight, give her the munchies.

Speaker 4 What?

Speaker 6 That's a thing. She said, she says, I don't laugh enough.

Speaker 4 I mean, every, every...

Speaker 4 And it would have made her cool.

Speaker 6 She needed new friends. I mean, I'm telling you, everything would have been solved.
And she just, she was World War II generated.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it just wasn't part of their thing.

Speaker 6 Speaking of which, D-Day, today is D-Day, the anniversary of D-Day. I can't believe it's over 80 years.
I mean, to kids, this is like

Speaker 6 ancient history,

Speaker 6 which they don't know either.

Speaker 6 But it's really not that far back. I mean, my father was not in it, but he was in that.

Speaker 6 right after they landed,

Speaker 6 he was World War II. That's my father.

Speaker 6 I've said this before. When my mother was born, women could not vote.
She was born in 1919. Women got to vote in 1920.

Speaker 6 It is amazing how far things come in a short amount of time, which brings me back to the robots.

Speaker 4 No. Okay.

Speaker 6 I'm telling you,

Speaker 6 it's going to be about the robots.

Speaker 6 Mr. Beast just hit a historic 400 million subscribers on YouTube, but he remains virtually unknown to most people over 40.
Well, I know him. Okay.

Speaker 6 Not us pot smokers, who are 65 and 100. What does that say about how segmented our culture has become across generations?

Speaker 7 That's nothing new.

Speaker 7 What was cool to the youngs was always cool to the youngs, and the old people never knew who it was. I know Mr.
Beast because I have teenagers. Right.
And so I don't think that's unique. I mean, Mr.

Speaker 7 Beast is just someone who has become so extraordinarily popular and did it without any traditional channels. That's what's amazing about him.
Yeah,

Speaker 4 I take the point at the same time. Like I'm a Gen Xer, right? The best forgotten generation.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I grew up in a world that had, you know, five, six channels.

Speaker 4 And so I grew up watching a lot of pop culture that, you know, Gilligan's Island, which did not air in first syndication, first run when I was a kid.

Speaker 4 It was all on reruns, Odd Couple, MASH, all that kind of stuff. So I grew up in a comic where there's a shared sort of sense where we all watch the same

Speaker 4 That's over and

Speaker 4 there's good things about it and there are bad things about it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I do think it's a little different in the sense that in the old days, I mean the real old days, you know, a show would get a 40 share, which means like 40% of the country, 40% of the country was watching.

Speaker 7 Now, if something gets a- That's a great point.

Speaker 6 If something gets a million viewers, it's a giant hit because we are just all in our own little niche ghettos. Okay, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 6 What are your thoughts on Trump and and President Chinese President Xi

Speaker 6 reported call yesterday?

Speaker 6 I don't know. Do we know what was said in that important call?

Speaker 7 We don't know what was said, but what I think is extraordinary is his treasurer, his Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant. So when you see Scott on TV, he always looks nervous.

Speaker 7 And it's not that he's not great on TV, he's nervous because he's being forced to defend a tariff policy, an economic policy that he knows is not rooted in truth.

Speaker 7 And so Scott just this week kept saying, yes, we've stalled out on these talks with China, but the president, he's about to have a call with Xi because Scott Besson is trying to push this over to the president because, again, this goes back to Donald Trump having a pair of deuces.

Speaker 7 In a trade war, no one wins, and President Xi is prepared for his country to be in pain. He doesn't need to get re-elected.
And Donald Trump is in a much more precarious position, I think.

Speaker 6 Yeah, because he also doesn't have friends anymore. I mean, Putin is on the rocks with him.
He's on the rocks with Elon.

Speaker 7 But even countries that

Speaker 7 our allies, in the last six weeks, during the 90-day pause, these other countries are now working together to create alliances and potentially trade with China.

Speaker 7 If we wanted to actually exert our power, we would work with our alliances instead of making an enemy out of Canada.

Speaker 4 Look, I agree with that.

Speaker 4 One of my biggest problems with the beginning of this conversation is that he didn't get to point out something. Howard Luttnick's name came up a few times.

Speaker 4 Howard Luttnick is what social science, a technical term, but what social scientists call a moron.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 he has a thumbless grasp of international trade.

Speaker 4 Scott Besent understands these things. Deeply.
And the problem is...

Speaker 6 Okay, Besent is the Treasury Secretary.

Speaker 4 Treasury Secretary. Lutnick is commerce secretary.

Speaker 6 Commerce.

Speaker 6 He's the one they call Nutlick.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 When they're being kind.

Speaker 4 But when they're not.

Speaker 4 So the problem with Besent is he's actually a smart guy guy who knows some things, but he's like one of the last Trump first administration gatekeeper types that try to keep Trump on the street narrow.

Speaker 4 Howard Luttnick is like

Speaker 4 just a total sycophant and completely economically illiterate. And so Bescent, he gets stuck in these situations where he is trying to polish turds day after day, and it's really, really hard.

Speaker 4 You know, you bring up Canada.

Speaker 4 The only reason why we have a trade deficit with Canada is that Canada, through a long-standing relationship, sells us oil at below market prices, straight through

Speaker 4 pipelines down to the Gulf Coast. So we get a deal on it.
It's lower than the global price. Great deal, right? That's the kind of deal you think Trump would like.

Speaker 4 But Trump does not understand trade deficits. If you got rid of the oil, we would have a trade surplus with Canada.
But Trump just doesn't understand how trade actually works.

Speaker 4 And I thought it was hilarious where Trump started talking about yanking stuff from Musk, you know, these contracts and stuff.

Speaker 4 The basic upshot of it was that he thinks the government has a trade deficit with Elon Musk, right? Like,

Speaker 4 we don't get rockets or anything from him. It's just any money that goes out, he thinks the government loses it.

Speaker 6 And also, we just sort of, because we're so used to this gun and stuff, we just kind of glide over the fact that a president has a personal feud with a guy and then threatens him and his government contracts.

Speaker 6 Right. Which I would just say.

Speaker 4 Which would be a scandal in the normal times.

Speaker 6 Well, I would just say to my Republican friends, that would be okay if the Democrats did it, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Nope, absolutely.
All right.

Speaker 6 You guys are a lot of fun, but it's Pride Month. I got to get to the Abbey.

Speaker 4 Thank you very much, everybody.

Speaker 5 Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.