Overtime – Episode #645: Ari Melber and Andrew Sullivan

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

All right.

Great to be back on CNN.

Happy New Year.

We've got with us today the guy who hosts MSNBC's rebeat with Ari Melber.

Ari Melber is over here, and he writes the weekly dis newsletter, Andrew Sullivan.

Okay.

All right, Ari, what do you make of the recent study that found that half of inflation in the U.S., oh yes, I saw this, is due to high corporate profits.

They're calling this greedflation, which I think is right.

I mean, what impact does greedflation have on our economy?

Right.

So people,

you know, there was a legitimate reason why prices rose for a while.

But then of course they used that as an excuse to raise the prices.

Now that stuff is coming down, somehow the prices don't come down too, because the profits are fat now.

Yeah, the price gouging is documented.

They brag about it in earnings calls to Wall Street.

It's allowed.

There are other places that make it much harder.

France has rules that actually make this a lot harder to do.

But here it's legal, but it's outrageous.

And at the time, they're giving themselves big pay raises in the boardroom, too.

Well, here's my question is, what do you do about it?

I remember two things.

Gavin and I talked for a second about jawboning.

I mean, presidents did that in the past.

They literally just did it by the power of presidential coercion.

They got people in the Oval Office and they said, look, you knuckleheads, you're doing something bad for the country.

And sometimes that worked.

Nixon, as I recall, maybe I got this wrong, but I think he had price controls.

I mean, they literally that's something very foreign.

Even I don't barely remember that.

They work.

No, they don't.

And they don't work in the long run.

Right.

But the best way to bring prices down is competition, right?

So if these companies, if there's a cartel involved in keeping prices high when they should be going down, then the cartel needs to be broken up.

I haven't read the study, so I don't know.

But it's not like inflation hasn't been explained by a variety of factors.

Obviously,

the supply-side stuff that constrained supply of goods.

Then you had the big overspending of the Biden stimulus, which really did.

I understand why they did it, and they got a good deal of growth from it, but they did.

Some of that was

Trump, too.

Yeah, absolutely.

We overspread.

Everybody got together to spend $6 trillion

to lock ourselves in the middle.

But what's interesting now is the most resilient

high prices are food, right?

Yes.

Food corporations bragging about this?

Well, I think.

Yeah, they are in the earnings calls because they don't think they're really going to get heard that much.

They're even doing it on diaper sales.

And it's not a cartel, but there aren't a lot of diaper providers.

So, if the three main companies do it on the national basis, then no, there's no price.

There are certain products you can't live without.

I'm sure, if you have someone who needs diapers,

either at the beginning or end of life.

You definitely want.

Sure.

I mean,

I always hear people bitch about plumbers.

You know, they charge an arm and a leg.

Have you ever needed a plumber?

If plumbers only knew what we would pay them?

Yeah.

When it's coming up through your bathroom.

Okay.

Andrew, this is for you.

What are your thoughts about the Pope's recent declaration that sexual pleasure is a gift from God?

Thanks, big man.

But that pornography must be avoided.

Well, that's contradictory.

No, I'm kidding.

He's stating actually Catholic doctrine.

We're not supposed to hate our sexual pleasure.

We're not supposed to.

I mean, this is not the case with Protestants, of course, but Catholics were allowed.

Right.

I remember when I first realized I had this between my legs, it was the best day of my entire life.

And I never really could understand it as a sin.

Masturbation and that pleasure was just something that seemed so obviously, self-evidently natural and great.

Why would God be punishing me for it?

And I actually, I was very devout.

I just decided, well, that's obviously not true.

The way I decided that, well, the Virgin Mary wasn't physically ascended into heaven.

There were certain things you said, okay, no, that's not right.

I remember when I was first masturbating, and I did not know what it was.

We didn't have...

I didn't either.

And I remember thinking, is this bad for me?

But then it was like,

nah.

Really, it's like,

I didn't know.

Really, I thought it was urine.

I did it in the dark.

And the only thing I'd ever seen come out of there was urine.

I know.

And it seemed like, this doesn't seem right, but.

The fact that you remember that moment, I remember that.

Yes, I do.

Just shows you how natural it is.

And how naive we were compared to kids today, because I'm sure they know everything before they're seven years old.

They do, and there was no porn either.

Like, I used to, honestly, I had a scrapbook.

I would draw the dudes I wanted to have sex with.

That's all I could do, draw them.

But that meant that my imagination was kind of set off.

When I first discovered sex, it was like, oh, this is interesting.

That is interesting.

Now you meet someone who's 21.

They're like, well, I'd like you to be daddy with a bad report card.

You need to be there

with a spanker and show up at this point and wear this.

And I'm like, where did you get this wrong?

Okay.

Got to remember, we're on CNN, not

club random.

For panel, who do you think Trump has on his short list for VP?

Well, Stefanik is the one that was talked about now.

She's the, isn't that the one that they were talking about?

She's the New York State, used to be a normal, and then became Trump crazy.

And the tormentor of Claudine Gaye.

Yes.

That's what I'm saying.

Right, yes.

That's what that's what makes sense.

But I think still Haley, I mean, Trump has teamed up.

I think he's teamed up with people who've said way worse things.

J.D.

Vance wrote a whole book and launched his career attacking Trump.

He doesn't care about that.

He doesn't care about any of that.

And Haley,

although there are parts of MAG, as we discussed, that might not love her, if Trump says this is it, and he's very practical and she would help in the suburbs, which is his biggest general election vulnerability, I think there's a lot of the actual numbers, people around Trump, who are trying to get him to think about that.

And it would probably give him several points.

I saw in the paper this week that he is doing better and did better with college education.

I remember when he won Iowa or was running in Iowa in 2016 and he had that famous line, I love the poorly educated.

I mean, we can't write this newsletter.

Bill, you said tonight that it looks like he could get re-elected.

He definitely could, but he got 3 million fewer votes in 16.

He got 7 million fewer votes in 20.

And they had bad midterms, and the Democrats have won every state-based special election in the last year.

If he's going to win, which he could, he can't run as the 20 or 16 version of him, and the ticket is the first, largest way to say to the suburbs, I'm a little different.

The trouble with Nikki is that she makes sort of Dick Cheney look like the Dalai Lama.

I mean,

there is not a country she wouldn't invade, not a region she wouldn't bomb.

She is the most ne the most unreconstructed neocon I've ever come across in politics.

And Trump's entire message is I'm not an un-reconstructed neocon.

I think the basic market is.

You're parsing, you're giving the voters way too much credit.

Like they are looking at neocon versus not.

No,

this is not what they're thinking about.

I don't know.

No, this is why I get back to the issues with Trump.

No, I think one of the issues that helped him was people were sick of these wars.

And when they have someone that seems like we're going to get into more wars, they were not going to like it.

It's a big issue.

I don't think voters expect the running mate to set foreign policy.

Period.

I don't think they think about foreign policy a hell of a lot, except if

the one that they care about now is Ukraine because it's holding up immigration reform.

They care about this country.

what's going on in this country, just the way most people watch local news.

They don't watch national news.

That's because they don't want the wars, which Nikki represents.

That's their position on foreign policy.

We don't want to have one, really.

Yeah, the media and Trump voter doesn't think that he's going to take the cues from her on that.

Or that's really the issue they're voting on.

Nikki Haley, what is she going to do about Pakistan?

I just don't think this is.

I don't know.

All right.

I have time for one more.

Oh,

I see they're going after Alec Baldwin again.

for the shooting.

Is this not the most ridiculous thing?

I mean, does anyone think Alec Baldwin purposely shot that person if not what is this about if if he it was an accident it was a horrible accident accidents happen maybe this is some sort of manslaughter thing but certainly he didn't go give me a loaded gun I want to shoot the cinematographer I feel this is ridiculous you want a legal view yes yeah it's very overcharged

and it's hard to imagine charging a normal random citizen, a non-famous citizen twice on this theory of the case.

Now legally the prosecutors say well look, as an involuntary manslaughter, we don't have to

prove deliberate intent.

We're saying it was so reckless and a life was lost, and that's tragic.

And it is a terrible tragedy.

And obviously, a lot has to change on however that set was ever run.

But I don't think, based on how it looks and what we know, again, always if more evidence came out, that a citizen, a non-famous person, would be double charged like this.

It seems very extreme.

Okay, that's it.

Run out of time.

Thank you, CNN.

Thank you, audience.

Thank you, Plan.

And we'll see you next week.

Good to be back.

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