Overtime – Episode #696: Scott Jennings, Peter Hamby

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Speaker 6 Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Speaker 7 All right, welcome to over time.

Speaker 8 He hosts Snapchat's Good Luck America, Peter Hamby. And he's an author and CNN senior political contributor, Scott Jennings.

Speaker 8 And he's...

Speaker 8 First question is for you, Scott. As someone who's considering a Senate run to replace him, what? You're not?

Speaker 8 Usually when someone puts out a book, it means they're going to run for office. Not always, but that always is.

Speaker 9 Isn't writing a book the fastest way to get rich in America right now?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 7 You said it was OnlyFans.

Speaker 8 No, you don't get rich writing books, I need to tell you, bro. Too late.

Speaker 8 Anyway, what do you believe, what do you believe will be Mitch McConnell's legacy? I guess that's who you'd be replacing, right? When you run for Senate, if you run for Senate.

Speaker 9 He's, yeah, he's up in 26.

Speaker 9 Supreme Court, I mean, without without question, I mean, he had a long career, 42 years, won seven elections in Kentucky, but without question, I think his legacy is the court, specifically the Supreme Court.

Speaker 9 If he doesn't hold that seat open in the 2016 election, I'm not sure if President Trump would have won, and then the cascade of appointments that followed will change.

Speaker 9 the course of this country for a generation.

Speaker 8 And if people don't remember what you're talking about, in 2015, Scalia died, was that it?

Speaker 8 Or was it 16, I think? 15. 15.
Okay, so Obama still had another over a year in office. And usually when a president is in office, he gets to choose who the Supreme Court nominee.

Speaker 8 He wanted Merrick Garland. And Mitch McConnell would not even give him a hearing.
That was unprecedented. What is the latest bullshit argument why that's okay?

Speaker 8 Well.

Speaker 9 If the bullshit you're referring to is the advise and consent clause in the U.S. Constitution.
No, no, no.

Speaker 7 That's the argument.

Speaker 9 At the time, the argument was it's too close to to an election. It was 2015.

Speaker 9 Well, that wasn't the full argument. The full argument was we had divided government, and then the American people were going to make a decision, and they did, and they chose a Republican president.

Speaker 8 Well, as I just said in the editorial, if it had been the other way around, you would have went apeshit about it. If somebody had tried...

Speaker 8 No, you would have been cool with it.

Speaker 7 Well, I lived, I mean, I lived...

Speaker 9 I mean, I lived through the Bush years when the Democrats and the Senate did everything they could possibly do to obstruct George W. Bush from putting judges on the court.

Speaker 9 So it's not the first time I lived.

Speaker 8 Judges, this is Supreme Court. And did Bush get a pick on the Supreme Court?

Speaker 7 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 8 And they gave him a hearing, and then they voted on it. They could have voted him not.

Speaker 8 We've seen that. Nixon suggested two people who they didn't put on the court.
You can do that. But you get to actually have a hearing.

Speaker 8 This was completely unprecedented and unconstitutional and illegal. And by the way, your hero,

Speaker 8 Mitch McConnell, when they asked him if he would do it again, he said, sure. You know, I mean, and then they did do it again in reverse.

Speaker 8 When Amy Comey Barrett was put on the court, it was the exact same thing. It was even closer to an election.

Speaker 9 It was literally like three weeks, a month before the election.

Speaker 9 We didn't have divided government then, we had unified government. That's what I'm saying.
It's situational for you.

Speaker 3 Right, exactly.

Speaker 8 It's just

Speaker 7 a situation.

Speaker 9 Why are you guys against the exercising of political power?

Speaker 8 The exercise of political power is fine. This is unconstitutional.
That's what we're against. We're against going outside the law.
They wrote it down. It's very clear.

Speaker 8 Same thing as some of the things Trump is saying now about a third term. It's very clear.
It's in the Constitution. Aren't you the guys who carry the little pocket constitution in your thing?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Don't you have one under your pocket square there?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And in it. And it says...

Speaker 8 Two terms. It says a president gets to pick who is the guy they're going to put up in the Supreme Court.

Speaker 9 And it says the Senate has to confirm them. And it says the Senate gets to advise and consent on this.
And that's up to the Senate on how they do that. It's a co-ego.

Speaker 8 Oh, so that is the latest bullshit argument.

Speaker 9 All right, that was my claim.

Speaker 7 All right, I knew there was one.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 8 What did you make of Donald Trump's post this morning alleging that since I said I hate Taylor Swift?

Speaker 8 All the deals, but he still has time for this. You got to have it.

Speaker 8 Since I said, she's no longer hot.

Speaker 8 Or I don't think he means physically hot. I think he means hot in the business.
I think he should, well, she just finished the biggest.

Speaker 7 Are you sure he doesn't mean physically hot? I don't.

Speaker 3 I do not.

Speaker 9 I assume he's criticizing her looks. That was my first reaction.

Speaker 8 No, I. Well.

Speaker 7 Oh, no longer.

Speaker 9 I don't think he means that. I recall when he went to the Super Bowl earlier this year, he noted at the time that the crowd booed her and cheered him.

Speaker 9 I think at that point he started to detect that she was faltering with the public. And to me, I will say this actually.
Scott has a point here.

Speaker 9 I mean, first of all, she made over a billion, she's a billion dollars on that tour.

Speaker 7 Biggest tour ever.

Speaker 9 Yeah, like biggest tour ever in history. When she endorsed Kamala Harris right before the election, and it was a very sort of, you know, I think it was like an Instagram post or something.

Speaker 9 Her approval ratings, like people poll this stuff, her approval ratings went up with Democrats, but with Republicans and Independents, they actually went down strikingly.

Speaker 9 Like people don't like celebrities and politicians getting involved in elections.

Speaker 8 They really don't. I think it actually hurts.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I agree. But that was after her tour, like in the middle.
She's fine. She'll be fine.

Speaker 7 But I don't think

Speaker 8 she's not hot. Right.

Speaker 7 She's not unpopular.

Speaker 8 She's not as hot in the industry now because she just finished a giant tour. So she needs time to relax and be with that football player.

Speaker 7 Who is he?

Speaker 8 And by the way,

Speaker 8 they weren't,

Speaker 8 when she got booed, they weren't booing her in general. What they were booing was, we don't like you so much in football.
Let's just, let us just have football.

Speaker 8 Let us have one thing without Taylor Swift involved. That's what that was about.

Speaker 9 I support that.

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Speaker 8 sponsored by gsk uh okay uh kash patel says he's shutting down the fbi's dc headquarters and moving staff across the country should other government agencies be doing the same?

Speaker 8 That's an interesting proposition. I'm not against that from the get for any reason.
I mean, everything probably is too concentrated in Washington. It's a little too incestuous, right?

Speaker 9 I have a take on this about the media. I think news organizations should incorporate more bureaus outside of New York, LA, and Washington.

Speaker 8 Oh, totally.

Speaker 7 And Cincinnati and wherever.

Speaker 8 Because

Speaker 9 the bias in media can't, I'm sure you would agree, can be liberal, but it's like less political to me than it is cultural and class-based.

Speaker 9 And, you know, I just hire more reporters in Des Moines. Hire few reporters in D.C.

Speaker 9 It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if the Agriculture Department was in Iowa and the Department of Homeland Security was somewhere.

Speaker 9 I mean, you know, Washington, there's a concentration of people there who only talk to each other. They live in this little bubble.

Speaker 9 And I think the longer you're in it, the less you have in common with regular Americans.

Speaker 9 You put some of those government workers out in the middle of the country, they might have a little bit better understanding of how people are feeling about how their government's operating.

Speaker 8 Do you work out of Washington?

Speaker 9 No, I live in Kentucky.

Speaker 8 But you contribute to CNN out of Kentucky?

Speaker 9 Yep, I get up on Mondays, I fly to New York, I do shows there, I come down on the train, and then I go home to Kentucky at the end of the week. My house is just outside of Louisville.

Speaker 8 Sounds like you're running.

Speaker 7 All right, thank you.

Speaker 8 Thank you, people.

Speaker 6 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.