Overtime – Episode #623: Medaria Arradondo, Bret Stephens, Rep. Ruben Gallego

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Tires matter.

They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy.

Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, convenient installation options, and the best selection of BF Goodrich tires.

Go to tire rack.com to see their BF Goodrich test results, tire ratings, and reviews.

And be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

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

All right, here we are on overtime.

We're on,

are we really on CNN now?

CNN, what did they go?

Nuts were putting us on there, but no, I'm thrilled.

The world needs a good CNN, so I'm very happy that we can help out any way we can.

So we have Brett Stevens of the New York Times is back, Congressman Gruben Gallego, and the chief of police of Minneapolis.

Not anymore, right?

Madeira Arandondo.

Rondo is really the name they call you, isn't it?

Rondo.

Like Rayjohn Rondo.

I love that name.

Don't have his jumper.

No, you don't.

So the first question is for you.

Do police need better training in de-escalation tactics?

Obviously, a question on a lot of people's mind this week.

You know, the actuality is that police are getting some of the finest training that they can possibly get.

I think when situations occur, like in Memphis, it certainly makes people want to resort to, well, it's the training.

And at some point in time, we just have to call it.

It ain't the training.

It's the character of the individual doing this thing.

Really?

It looks like the training sucks, too, though, sometimes.

We are constantly improving training, seriously.

Okay, but like, why always firing the whole clip?

You know, I mean,

I remember reading some statistic, I forget what year it was, maybe it was like 10, 15 years ago, like the entire nation of Germany, like the police shot 89 bullets in a year.

Whereas like, that's like

one instance, and they're all just firing the whole clip.

It seems like once the firing begins, there's no like, okay.

They are, you know, police departments are really doing a much better job in terms of use of force training.

The de-escalation piece is the critical, most important piece, because we never want our officers to get into a situation where they may have to use deadly force.

But actually, the training

is really good.

We just have to really start making sure we're focusing on the quality of the individual who's wearing that uniform.

Okay.

So this is for

you.

By the way, if the people who are seeing this for the first time,

these are from the people.

Oh, boy.

But these questions, I don't even know what these questions are.

I really don't.

I sound like a magician here.

But

we've never met, have we?

This is for you, Representative Galleo.

Why are Republicans gaining ground with Hispanic voters?

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Look,

it depends what state you're talking about.

In Arizona, that's not the case.

In Florida, it's definitely the case.

In Texas, it's not.

Nationally, I think it is.

It's a mixed bag.

The reason why...

Trump did better even after they're all rapists.

Yeah.

Not in 2016.

In 2020.

What the heck?

The biggest point that the reason why this is happening is because Democrats also need to respond to the fact that Latinos are working class and they have aspirations.

They want to be rich.

They want to be small business owners.

They want to own a home.

And a lot of times we just kind of gloss over them and we treat them as if they're just any other voting demographic.

If we don't talk to them, we don't actually deliver programs for them, you will start losing them.

First, you lose them to non-voters, and then they start voting for Republicans because at least they have some other vision.

But it has to be an active campaign.

We actually have to talk to them about the American dream, about how they can be part of the American dream.

And sometimes we don't do that.

And that's how we end up losing.

But it's also because

Latinos think for themselves.

I mean, we have this like, oh, you belong to demographic X, so you're a natural constituency for party Y.

That's just not the way in which people operate.

They're not like, oh, I'm a demographic, and therefore I must vote for this particular party.

I mean, I grew up in Mexico City.

My father was from Mexico.

You know, even the very term Latino is so misleading.

It's so wildly misleading.

We don't assume that a Brit is an American, is a Canadian, is Australian, but we somehow do assume that a Mexican

is an Ecuadorian, is an Argentinian, is a Dominican.

And so, you know, learn what this community is about.

I absolutely agree with Ruben that like it's an immigrant community, and immigrant communities are aspirational.

And if you have a Republican Party that's saying, we're going to make it easier for your small business to operate by not charging you $1.7 million for golden toilets or whatever the case may be, right, they're going to respond to that Republican message.

They're also very Christian and increasingly evangelical.

I would say, just a couple of things, right?

I think it's a big, big, big misconception that

the

Latinos, and I do call this it's a shared culture, is that they're very religious.

If you see some of the younger voters, they are religious in the sense that they're Catholic, most of them, but they vote in a very, very liberal manner.

But also Latinos vote in very different manners.

It depends when you came here, depends how old you are, depends how rich you are or how poor you are.

And the problem with Democrats is that we do treat them as one big monolith, and we only talk to them with about two months left in the election.

When you really need to be talking to them from day one, and you're right, not assuming just because they're brown or have a last name that ends in a vowel, that they're automatically going to vote for that.

We have to earn that.

We have to earn it and we have to earn it every cycle.

I noticed they do, there is a lot of, besides what you're talking about, that kind of lumping, there's also a lot of brown and black.

I hear that term a lot when politicians talk.

Yeah.

It's a made-up white thing.

So when you talk about brown and black,

yes, I mean, I just, I just, I, I feel like they do that.

Because obviously someone who comes from an upper class family in India has everything in common with someone who comes from a I don't know a working class family in the Yucatan.

I mean it's all it's only something that essentially an inherently racist assumption that anyone who's a slightly darker skin tone than you has something in common and they belong in an upgrading.

And it's the condescension of

I think this is a fatal flaw for the left, this kind of condescending view of other people.

Well, you're part of the BIPOC community.

I think the last people who know what the BIPOC community is is the BIPOC community.

I do think that there has to be some,

you know, at least understanding, like at least there's an actual outreach that's actually happening.

And there's an attempt, at least, a respect for that.

Now, you have the flip side, you know, we're trashing Democrats, and then at the same time, we have a party that has not also been great

to

Latinos.

We're trashing everyone here.

All right, well, let's trash away.

But, you know,

I grew up in Arizona.

I was there for SB 1070.

I was there for Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

And there was a lot of opportunities where Republicans had an opportunity to actually reach out to Democrats or to Latinos, and they lost that.

And they lost that because of those types of actions.

And so, yeah, sometimes there is this language overreach that is designed to

try to get people into your coalition while avoiding some of the real issues that are happening.

It happens on the other side.

And, you know, I'll give you a good example.

Now that I've recently announced I'm running for Senate, once in a while I'll get a Twitter message that, hey, well, why am I going to vote for something that's owned by the cartels?

Or you should be president, you should be a senator in Mexico.

Like, I was born in this country.

I served my country, and yet I still get accused of not being a true American.

And it's disgusting.

And it's coming from the conservative right.

Yeah, it is gross.

Okay.

This is for the whole panel is Kevin McCarthy, who's your new leader in Congress, not yours.

He's something, yeah.

He's something.

Well,

he's the leader in the House.

Yeah, yeah.

It took 15 ballots, right, which is almost unheard of.

Has Kevin McCarthy already made too many concessions to be an effective leader of his party?

Well, I guess, for people who haven't followed the story, Kevin McCarthy, who is a very far-right Republican in my view, still was not conservative enough for like the 20 really, really, really right people in the Republican

caucus.

And they stopped him until they made him.

I mean, I think they did everything but make him wear the Viking hat.

The Dunce cat.

The Dunce cat.

But like, I think one person can get rid of him by objecting to something he does.

I mean, how can this function?

Because the Republican Party basically is split between reptiles and invertebrates, right?

I mean, you've got

the Marjorie Taylor Green.

No, there's some honorable exceptions.

I'm generalizing.

But

what Kevin McCarthy said is, I will do anything to be Speaker.

I will agree to any compromise.

At some point, he should have said, you know, take this job, Marjorie, and shove it.

Let's give it to Hakeem Jeffries if this is the way you want to play.

And then they would have backed out.

And the spinelessness that he,

the tone he set right there is going to be the tone of this Congress for the next two years.

Look, it is dangerous.

I'm afraid that he's going to get us into a debt limit situation where we're going to end up tanking the world

because he gave up so much power to them to have this title.

But it's a title now.

That's all it is.

It has no power.

More importantly, now he has very zero responsibility, but he's going to end up, and the country ends up dealing with the consequences of that.

It was not a great study in leadership, which none of us should be surprised by, but it is what we're dealing with right now.

Let's hope the economy won't be tanked.

Yes.

Can I have one question very briefly?

Very quickly.

Rondo, yes.

What percentage of cops are good cops?

Old.

The vast majority of the men and women who put on that uniform and serve their communities.

Okay, but he said 99.5 in the show.

So I don't know if we could.

I don't know how.

It's just a number we need to do.

It's no figure of speech.

That's not a figure of speech.

That's a number.

It was intended that way.

It was intended that way.

All right.

We got to go.

Thank you very much.

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.