Overtime – Episode #622: Frances Haugen, Bari Weiss, Tim Ryan

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Luck there.

They're asking for an encore.

All right.

Here are our overtime questions.

This is for you, Francis.

Why did Congress fail to hold social media companies accountable for their role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol?

It's interesting.

So

despite, I did a huge amount of testimony for the January 6th corporation.

I know you did.

And I believe none of it was included in the final write-up report.

It wasn't one of the attributable things.

And I think part of it was that the January 6th Committee felt it needed to educate the public on a very broad set of issues.

And that I think they had to pick and choose on how many things are we really going to walk people down that road.

Which was smart.

Which was, I mean, that committee was smart.

Yeah.

I mean, it didn't do anything.

I mean, I've seen their interviews with Republicans.

Nothing changes anybody's mind about anything.

But

you can't blame the committee.

They put out a show that was a good show, and that was a smart decision.

I'm sorry, but they had a lot of fish to fry, and that one, okay.

But I want to be super clear.

Facebook could have had on the safety measures that were available on the day of an election.

They could have turned those on on a day sooner than after 6 p.m.

on January 6th.

Because they had them all, they had none of them on at 6 p.m.

on January 6th, and they had them all on by 24 hours later.

And they all threw Trump off, right, Twitter, right after January 6th.

And this week he got back on.

He's reformed.

It's a miracle.

He's a completely different guy now.

What happened?

It's hysterical.

Okay.

Barry, given the attack on the synagogue in Jerusalem today, are we looking at a potential intifada in Israel?

God, I hope not.

But, you know, it was...

Hamas, I believe, already called it a heroic operation.

And

you don't make peace with your friends, obviously, but it's very hard to make peace when your enemy is not actually trying to fight for territory, but is trying to fight to eliminate you.

The attack happened earlier today, you know, as people were praying.

It happened to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day that Auschwitz was liberated.

And it turns out that some 80 years later, people still want to hunt Jews down.

Yeah, not just there.

Yeah.

I mean, anti-Semitism has been on the rise all around the world.

I mean, there are people leaving France because they don't feel comfortable in France.

I mean, you know, places we didn't think this was possible.

Yeah, I think that people don't.

I came on the show after the attack on my synagogue in Pittsburgh, and I think a lot of people, and there's no reason they would know this, don't realize that, you know, for me to walk into a synagogue, even here in LA,

there's armed guards at Jewish day schools, at synagogues, it's just at JCCs, it's just a normal normal part of life as an American Jew, and that's a very, very strange reality.

Okay.

Should Alec Baldwin be facing involuntary manslaughter charges and the fatal shooting of the cinematographer on the set of his film last year?

No.

I mean, look, I mean, I don't know Alec Baldwin very well at all.

He used to do this show.

He stopped doing it years ago.

So I'm just setting this up.

Like, I have no personal, I have no, I'm not for him or against him.

I like him as an actor.

I don't really know him.

But unless you think Alec Baldwin purposely shot this cinematographer, what the fuck are we talking about?

You know, it's like,

yeah.

It's a horrible tragedy.

And then, you know, there may be someone to blame, whoever whose job it was to have that gun there, but I don't think it's the actor's job.

No, the only, well, there's two additional things.

One, I think he was a producer on the film.

It's not the producer's job either, to check the guns.

I mean, you have to be able to delegate some things in life, no?

Well, but the only thing that he

said that he didn't pull the trigger.

And the gun can't go.

I mean, I don't know enough about this case, but he said he couldn't pull the trigger.

But how does a gun go off without pulling the trigger?

That is a...

That's the one thing that I was like, that's a little odd.

Right, he did say that, didn't he?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know.

He's an actor.

You know, it's all like it's funny.

I mean, I just guard them on a judgement on a different way.

But are they going after him because he is a celebrity?

Like, what is the.

I just think we live in a culture where someone always has to take a blame.

Nobody can ever just throw up their hands and go, oh my God, this is a terrible tragedy.

You know, Democrats always have to say, this can never happen again, no matter how rare something.

We have to spend a zillion dollars so this will never happen again.

They want a boogeyman.

And Republicans will be like, well, now they're going after your prop guns.

You know.

No one can ever just be reasonable about anything.

All right.

What do you make, panel, of the way different Democratic mayors and governors, Laurie Lightfoot,

okay, that's the mayor of Chicago, Eric Adams, that's New York,

Jared Polis, we had him here.

He's the governor?

Yeah, governor of the color of the colour.

The governor of Colorado, right.

Have reacted to the immigration crisis.

Oh, I see where you're going with this.

In their hometown.

Yes, all those three have

said basically, it's so funny because they either,

you know, were basically saying that the thing that they're not supposed to say, which is that

I know we're

love immigrants and we're sanctuary city.

We're sanctuary city, but we can't take in immigrants.

We're all full up right now.

Yeah, what do you think about that in the Democratic side there?

Yeah, I mean, they're kind of caught in the political mess.

What did you say about the immigration issue when you were running in Ohio against J.D.

Vince?

I said that we need to know who's coming in and out of this country.

I don't think that's an unreasonable request.

I think

we have

to do that.

We have, well, I mean, you know, we are America because we take people from around the world.

That's part of our economic engine that we have.

So we've got to have an adult conversation about it.

But even Canada has restrictions.

Yeah, no, you can't have people streaming over the border and not know who they are because if you don't think there are

people who are terrorists or bad actors coming across, I think there's a way to do it in a humanitarian way and then figure out who's coming in and out.

Use the technology that we have now, which is enormous and

we could figure it out.

How do you keep the fentanyl?

You have to try to figure out how to get that shit out of here because that's killing tons of people.

And then, if you're here,

you know, pay a fine, pay back taxes, pass a background check, and welcome to the United States.

It's amazing that, you know, so many issues that you talk about, if people were just not hateful toward each other and couldn't do grand bargains like they used to,

it's not,

you know, there's got to be something in between the rural rapists and come one, come all.

Right, yeah.

And there is.

Which is why normal people are insane with what's going on in the country, because these are solvable problems, all of them.

The obesity piece, the technology piece, the immigration, it's all solvable if you fucking talk to each other.

Like, that

has to be a part of the lifting.

Okay,

a recent study found that less than half, 49.7%

of students at Cambridge University identify it as heterosexual.

What?

That's hysterical.

Because we did it, because I've seen the charts, and we did a thing where we projected, and I think we said in 2054, we will all be gay.

I guess of where it's going.

And now, apparently, Cambridge is saying, hold my Appletini.

We're going to get there way before 20.

So this is the first study I've ever seen where.

Or they're just really open-minded.

You never know.

Sorry.

Well, the mind is one thing to have open.

I mean, this is.

There is something a little more.

I mean,

the question is, is it no longer politically correct to say you're straight?

I mean, could we have changed that much?

We're now over half

non-heterosexual.

Someone asked me the other day if I identified as queer because I'm gay.

And I was like,

no, because everyone I know that identifies as queer is just straight, and they're calling themselves that to sound better.

Is that right?

So I think I should have...

Do you think people say they're queer?

Of course.

Are you kidding me?

Do you know how many people I know in heterosexual relationships that self-identify as queer?

It's a political statement.

Okay, I thought queer meant gay.

But if they're bi, like, where does that fall in this continuum?

I'm just confused.

I'm confused too.

Because, like, if you have, if you have that.

I identify as confused.

So, like,

we've known since the 60s when Kinsey came out with his first studies that most, many people identify as not purely straight or purely gay.

People will say like, oh, you have the right, the right person, who knows?

So like, is that what those Cambridge kids are doing?

Like more of them are saying, I'm bi, I'm not, I refuse to be gay or like I refuse to identify.

Also, I brought this up before, ancient Rome.

Ma'am.

They're all queer?

Self-identified.

Again, I don't know.

They did not make the distinction we do between

gay and straight.

It was more like cute or not.

Yeah.

You know, like,

you know, Mark Antonyman had a wife.

What?

She said it's Barry Birdingman, which, yes, is that what goes on in Burning Man?

Everything goes on in Burning Man.

Everything goes on in Burning Man.

I learned so much.

So much on this.

100% of the people there identify as this show was like the learning annex for me.

Okay, we gotta go.

Thank you very much, everybody.

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