Overtime – Episode #615: Chris Wallace, Chris Christie, Katty Kay

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

Okay, here we are on overtime.

These are the questions people send in.

This one is for you, Governor.

Governor, it's rumored you're considering another presidential run in 2024.

Is there any truth to that?

Sure.

Oh, I love that.

Very.

I'm telling you, this show's rubbing off on him.

He's getting very bold.

Yes, loose.

Yeah, that was me.

I never had the reputation of being bold.

Raw flower type.

So you are considering it?

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, you should.

I mean, why not?

Because we need a normal Republican.

I mean,

as good as it gets Republican.

You know,

by the way, I may have just figured out why you never had kids.

You're such a sweet talker.

I mean, but really, I mean, but do you think you could really take the party away from the clutches of the Trump cult as it is now?

Because even if it's not Trump, it's going to be a Trumper.

I would like to see what happens in the midterms.

I think, you know, all I heard in 2016 was that we're going to do so much winning that we're going to be tired of winning, and we're going to ask him not to win anymore.

And then we lost the House and the Senate in 18.

We lost the presidency in 20.

We lost two Senate seats in Georgia in 20.

It's a lot of losing.

I think they might want to go back to winning again.

Okay.

Caddy, as a Brit, what's your perspective of the U.K.'s parliamentary system compared to our mode of governments?

Oh, well, there's an academic question for you.

Professor Kaye, it's irrelevant because most democracies are not what we have.

I mean, they have at least managed to get rid of leaders they didn't like.

Yeah, it's a lot of people.

They took on Boris Johnson.

Johnson, they felt that Boris Johnson wasn't good for the party, and he was out the next day.

Right.

Which certainly doesn't happen here with the Republican Party and Donald Trump, despite all the losing that might have happened.

No, and they seem to have elections.

And the other thing, you know, I was over in the UK for the Queen's funeral, and I'm not particularly a royalist or a Republican, but I don't have particularly strong feelings either way.

But it has made me think, being here, there's something to be said for separating your head of state and your elected officials and not investing in the presidency, all of the kind of ceremonial stuff that goes with having a head of state.

You You give your elected head of state with the prime minister a grilling, you make sure they're held to account, and then you have your queen or your king.

Right, and you can

handle the gossip.

No, really.

It's relevant because the other day I had Chris Kardashian on my podcast, it hasn't dropped yet, but I was saying that the Kardashians kind of became like the royal family of America.

They're not governing, of course.

Oh, my God.

But it's like the royal family of America.

Yeah, because

like everybody just wants to follow one family, just like the royal family.

But it's not that family.

I mean, some people want to, but...

Well, I mean, that's the problem.

Was the royal family in England any better or different?

You're Lily and Megan.

You're fine.

You've got a royal family.

Exactly.

Living in Montecito, they're fine.

You're good.

Right, exactly.

It's the same thing.

You gave us the one.

I mean, come on.

You just need...

People need some family that they can follow and sort of like project themselves onto or follow their gossip or their craziness.

How about Fred Barney?

You just put them up there.

Be helpful.

Chris Wallace, your new show explores a wide range of interests unrelated to politics.

Like this.

What triggered this shift for you?

Did you become burned out from politics after the past six years of Trump madness?

I didn't become burned out, but I became a bit bored.

And I will actually say, not in the Trump years, because as much of a show as it was,

it was always interesting.

And you'd wake up on Sunday and we had somebody who was literally in charge of the tweets because when I got in at six in the morning between then and nine when I would do the show, things would change depending on a Trump tweet.

But I spent so much time, for instance, in 2021,

each week,

slicing the salami thinner and thinner about what was the marginal difference between the Build Back Better plan this week versus last week.

And it became kind of a bore.

And conversely.

Good.

Politics should be a bore.

No, really.

It's not supposed to be a show.

Well,

you're also supposed to deal with big issues and resolve them and get things done.

And that's boring.

That's why Biden's good.

He's doing it.

That's why we elected him.

Let's get back to boring and normal.

Yes,

that's, I mean,

you're right.

Covering it, Build Back Better was boring because they, but, you know, they started with this number and then guys objected and manchin and this and cinema and everybody.

And then it came down to a better number and a better program and they passed it.

That's the way it's supposed to work.

Boring and effective.

And you know, people's lives are better for it.

No?

No.

But let me just say.

Well, as the host of a Sunday Talk Show, boring is not good.

But the other thing was, I'm interested in a lot of stuff.

I mean, I look at the people you have on this show, and they're not all politicians, right?

No.

And, you know, with your script

talking point.

He has always been one of the least boring politicians in America.

Right, he's right.

Which is why you put him on this program.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

I guess.

So did you vote for Trump?

You know, there's a secret ballot.

I don't know.

Some people don't care about that.

That's the question.

Yeah.

It was worth a try.

Was it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

why not?

I'll have a better question.

Did you vote for Trump?

I did.

Both times?

Yep.

Wow.

Wow.

And you would again?

Good try.

You've got more honesty out of me than you've gotten anybody else.

I'll take my winnings and go home.

Okay, this is for everybody.

Biden is declaring the risk of nuclear Armageddon is at the highest level since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

As Russia continues to discuss the use of nukes on Ukraine, what is the U.S.'s best course of action to prevent such dire straits?

Well, I'll start off, I hate to keep saying this, but I'm glad Biden's here for this.

I'm not some idiot or someone who's 39.

If we're talking about the worst nuclear possible crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis, yeah, I want the 79-year-old guy there who's seen it all.

Yeah, I'm not sure the use of the word Armageddon is very helpful.

I mean,

Putin wants us to be afraid, and you can, I mean, half of Europe's in uproar about him saying Armageddon, because actually, all that does is play into Putin's desire to make us afraid.

You can say there's a serious threat, and there is a serious threat, and Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, who thank goodness used to be the ambassador to Moscow, has made it very clear to the Russians that were they to launch any kind of tactical or

small nuclear weapon, as if that was possible.

Teeny, tiny, tiny, teeny, tiny weapon.

Yeah, the Americans would bomb every Russian column in Ukraine and the war would be over and sink every ship in the Black Sea.

That's great.

I'm just not sure the use of the word Armageddon.

And then what happens?

And then

you've doubled down on the guy who doesn't want to lose the war but has nuclear weapons.

Well, but

perhaps even worse than that, if he goes away, who replaces him?

And then you've got a whole bunch of nukes laying out there unsupervised, the second most in the world.

And you got to start thinking about how you deal with that.

And on your point about you want someone who's seen it all, so do I, but I'd like them to also understand it.

And when he says nuclear Armageddon, it's clear to me he doesn't understand it because he's causing alarm in a way that is not productive.

Like, you know what?

If you really think that, then go and try to start to fix it.

But don't give us some pronouncement that's going to scare the crap out of everybody.

Well, everyone should have their crap scared out of them.

And

there's no way to fix it.

I don't know if there's any way to fix it.

We could have fixed it in 1987 when Gorbachev and Reagan came that close to getting to zero.

That would have been a terrible idea.

A terrible idea.

I think so.

And I will tell you that.

Zero nuclear weapons?

Yes, because there would never be zero nuclear weapons.

And in a world where there's zero nuclear weapons,

the person with one nuclear weapon is king.

Wins the ball.

You may be right.

But we don't need, I mean, how many do we have now?

At the time, we had like 30,000 each, which is.

Look,

to me, the problem with him saying this stuff is your job is not to be a weatherman when you're president.

Oh, let me show you what the map looks like.

Or a pundit.

Right?

It's to go and come with a solution.

And to say, oh, we're as close to nuclear arm again as we've been since 1962.

Well, okay, thanks a lot.

Now, genius, what are you going to do about it?

Well, what would you do about it?

What is the solution?

Okay, look, so we're in an alternate universe now.

Chris Christie is president.

He doesn't use this terminology, but he has the solution.

Well, Fruit.

I'm all ears.

I'm so

glad to have your attention.

You've got it.

Undivided.

What he should be doing is he should be playing a constructive role between Zelensky and Putin.

Putin knows he's losing.

Putin's not stupid.

He knows he's losing.

You've got to give him an exit ramp.

He's got to find a way to get out without saving face.

Okay, but that's a non-starter business.

He has exit ramps.

He's got, you know, he's flush with cash from the high oil price.

He's about to bring on another 300,000 troops.

He controls the state media.

He can call this a win at any moment that he wants to call it a win.

So he is choosing not to take the exit ramp.

I don't think there's any negotiation, especially now, to be done between Zelensky and Putin, particularly.

Yeah, I disagree.

Well, Zelensky, the exit ramp would be some accommodation where he gets some territory in Ukraine.

And Zelensky isn't going to go for that.

He'll go for letting him keep Crimea.

Well, that's kind of a done deal.

That was annexed in 2014.

Well, but that's some territory in Ukraine.

You've got to go in in there and try to sell it, man.

Don't be setting your hair on fire and yelling about nuclear Armageddon unless you're not going to be able to do it.

I mean, on the other hand, you're blaming Biden for Putin's, what Putin is doing?

I'm blaming Biden for saying nuclear Armageddon.

Yes, but you can't blame him for the failure of Putin to take off-ramp after off-ramp that has been offered to him.

I just don't know.

You're saying, well, no, you've got to go in and sell it.

No,

Putin doesn't want an off-ramp at this point, and there's nothing you can do about it.

And frankly, I think Biden has handled, I agree, I think Armageddon was a stupid remark, but you've got to handle this as well as you can.

And right now,

bloodying his nose and pushing back in where they are

for Ukraine, pretty good strategy.

Yeah, Biden's done a good job on this.

He has.

He's rallied NATO.

He's kept it consistent.

He's supplied the Europeans with extra gas to try and get them through the winter as much as he can.

He's kept the money.

And he kind of thought Ukraine could win when nobody else did.

You know, he said, we'll just back him.

And I don't disagree with any of that, but I think that the alarmist language he's using creates an atmosphere that makes it more likely to happen, not less.

I agree with you.

Well, we will be back next week, hopefully.

Thank you very much.

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