Overtime - Episode #643: Greg Lukianoff, Jane Ferguson, John Avlon

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

Okay, we're here on CNN with the co-author of the book, The Cancer of the American Mind, Greg Luthyanov, CNN senior political analyst and anchor John Avalong, and special correspondent for PBS News Hour, Jane Ferguson.

Okay, here are the questions.

That the people of America want to know of our CNN panel.

You're often on a CNN panel.

Yes, I am.

Okay, so this is just new to you, not new to you.

What does the panel think of choosing Taylor Swift as Time Magazine Person of the Year?

100% for it.

She totally deserves it.

I'm not kidding.

No, I mean, yeah, who can argue?

It's her on the cat, though.

I mean, the cat should get credit for that.

It's a phenomenal year.

I mean, we have not seen a year like that in show business, maybe ever.

What are the panel's thoughts on Hunter Biden being indicted?

Look, it just

shows that the equal justice under law exists.

The president's son is going to get busted for evading taxes, and he didn't have a lot of moment of grief.

And that doesn't really matter because he's got to obey the law, no matter whose son you are.

It does really

point point out that one side does consider the law a little more seriously than the other.

And the fact that they kind of compare it to Trump, like Hunter Biden is not our hero.

Okay.

What kind of interference can we expect from Russia as the 2024 election heats up?

None needed.

Well,

but actually actually, there's a story that just came out yesterday in the UK that the U.S.

was involved as well, that Russia is doing cyber hacking specifically with the goal of not only disrupting their election, but

eroding faith in democracy itself.

And I think that's the larger stakes.

And we've seen this on TikTok, a lot of these things that go viral.

You've discussed that.

And now you see

Trump losing no opportunity to praise she in every campaign speech.

The guy, Donald Trump loves dictators, but I think that dramatically increases the chance of interference only because people are going to want, those autocratic alternatives are going to want to degrade democracy and put us on a path towards decline.

But are we flattering ourselves in thinking that that's what they need to do as opposed to sit back and watch?

I mean, like, people, you know,

there was, of course, the misinformation campaign and bots on Twitter making us all, you know, get outraged and row and fight, but it feels like that's taken on an organic life of its own now.

And like, perhaps we're flattering ourselves by saying it must be in interference.

I mean, we've seen this, we see this in other parts of the world, you know, whenever people, you know, rise up against,

you know, their leaders and everyone says it's a conspiracy.

I mean, by all means, Russia will and would love to interfere.

But I kind of wonder if these days they really need to.

I mean, this election is not looking too tight.

In canceling, we talk a lot about what experts have done to undermine their own credibility, unfortunately, in recent years.

And that's also a big thing that Russia's trying to do as well.

And unfortunately,

they're complimenting each other in the worst possible way.

Sure.

Okay.

What did the panel think of Vivek Ramaswamy's performance at the debate this week?

I mean, I had to watch that.

Yeah.

Did you watch that?

I did.

Okay.

It's not on the test, right?

He didn't see it.

In one answer, he managed to connect every conspiracy theory from the 21st century.

Oh, that's right.

From 9-11.

Well, except it was clearly a dog whistle to folks on the far right to sort of connect 9-11, say January 6th was an inside job, to talk about the great replacement theory and saying it was at the Democratic Party platform,

and to repeat 2020 election lies, which are now a litmus test within the party.

That symbolizes everything wrong in our politics.

It's totally disgusting.

It's disqualifying.

It's pathetic, and it's pandering.

He's done.

I think it also, though, really speaks to a level of desperation.

I mean,

you have to be pretty scared to start connecting more and more and more conspiracy theories together.

I mean, there's got to be like a limit to where, you know, once you've had too many,

then you really look like you're losing.

You've got to work in Pizzagate.

Right.

Well, he did with the Chris Christie joke.

Oh, did he, really?

Well, he worked in pizza.

Or something.

Didn't he say something?

I mean, he made

a fat joke by Chris Christie.

I just want to, I tried to like this guy.

I had him on my podcast, he had him on the show.

He's a personable guy.

But I just got to say,

youth shows itself.

I mean, he kept saying, the debates I watched, he kept saying, it's time for a new generation, which they all say when the young guy comes along.

And this just showed it's not.

This generation.

Not that guy.

What?

Not that guy.

Well, not that guy.

Because it just showed, you know, come back.

My advice to him would stop.

Just stop it.

Go away.

Come back.

He's 38 years old.

Come back in 10 or 20 years and say, oh, yeah, you know what?

I can't believe I did what I did when I was 38 because we can all relate to that.

And like, I just run for office, not just straight for president because you want to get famous, because your idiocy is showing.

I mean, it also just seems so performative.

Like, I get it.

What he's thinking is the Republican Party likes dicks.

It does.

But, you know, with Trump, it's authentic.

Now you're kind of complimenting him.

Well, he's not.

He's not really a dick.

He's not.

He's trying to dick.

I think he's playing one.

That's almost worse.

Exactly.

It is worse.

It's almost worse.

Trump can't help being a dick.

This guy is playing one.

Also, I must tell you,

a number of

Indian Americans I know who are friends of mine have said, Bill, please tell America he does not represent us.

You know, that's like, that's a bad guy to go out first.

But there's Nikki Haley.

Who, you know, like, do I agree with everything Nikki?

No, but could I easily live under Nikki Haley's America?

Yes, and I might even enjoy it.

I don't know.

I mean, look, this is all.

What's going to happen in the next two months between Iowa and New Hampshire is going to be enormously, I mean, this is a time for choosing Republicans to have one last chance to not renominate someone who tried to overturn our democracy.

So, okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Jane,

are the riots.

Dublin is your hometown?

Well, New York City.

I come from Northern Ireland, just north of the border.

Oh, Northern Ireland?

It's complex.

Yes.

Oh, I know.

Are the riots in Dublin a sign that extremist politics are gaining a foothold in Ireland?

Okay, so explain what I read it, but you have to explain what I'm saying.

It's pretty wild.

So Ireland, I mean, I had to reread the story several times.

It was about Musk, wasn't it?

It was really kind of, it's a fomenting of a sort of very, very tiny minority that's very loud and very violent,

that it basically it's anti-immigration and it's all the usual populist kind of conversations.

I think that stirred them up.

Wasn't that something on Twitter?

I refuse to call it X.

A lot of it comes down to like rumors and misinformation.

But it's grounded.

And so Twitter's a big, big part of that there in this case.

But Twitter's better, isn't it?

I feel like it's so much easier to go Twitter, I refuse to call it X, than go X, formerly Twitter.

X used to be a drug, you know, like that's what that's what people used to, you know.

But and I'm also going to call Kanye Kanye.

I'm not going to call it Kanye.

But the Ir but the Irish thing though, I mean, honestly, like, the the thing that concerns me is that whenever whenever you start having a pretty sort of violent, extremely right-wing riot in Ireland, I mean, this is just, this is unprecedented.

We've had them here.

But, yeah, but I mean, never in Ireland.

Like, I mean, Ireland is, it is so antithetical to everything, you know, we know about.

Ireland was the first country to, by popular vote, legalize gay marriage.

You know, I mean, Ireland is one of the most important things.

It's kind of late in the game, though.

A lot has changed.

What year was that?

That was 15 years ago, 10 years ago?

That's kind of late in the game.

All right.

Raise a glass to Shane McGowan, by the way, speaking of Ireland.

Yeah.

But I will say.

I'm Ireland.

The attempt to ban hate speech in Ireland that got passed recently.

We see the same thing

going on in France, and they can't seem to understand that they passed these anti-Semitism laws in the 90s, and somehow anti-Semitism got worse.

And it's because you told all the anti-Semites that they can only talk to other anti-Semites.

What did you expect to happen?

And this is actually the same thing on college campuses.

When students are not talking to one another, they're not like having civil discourse, opinions don't go away because you ban someone saying them.

We need to get like, especially students on campus, make them sit down and talk, make them debate, and make them say this to each other.

This is one of the most important things that your show is doing right now, which is defining liberal values and saying we need to stand up against illiberalism on the left as well as the right.

And there's a group of common sense Democrats, liberal patriots, radical centrists that need to start taking the conversation back.

Well said, thank you, everybody.

We'll see you next week for our season finale.

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