Overtime – Episode #612: Trace Adkins, Julia Ioffe, Jon Meacham

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

Okay, we're back on overtime.

Trace Atkins is back here and his hat.

How about the first one to you, big guy?

What was it like being on Celebrity Apprentice twice?

How has it shaped your view of Trump?

Oh, what was it like?

Man, it was the most stressful thing I've ever done.

If you go on there.

Really?

Well, if you go on there and try to win, which I wanted to win, you know.

Didn't you win?

For my charities.

I came in second to the first time I won the second time.

Yeah.

Oh.

And then the money goes to charity?

Yeah, the first time it was for.

I just doubted it.

Well, you think supposed to.

Supposed to, but we're talking about Trump.

First time was for the anaphylaxis network, food allergy stuff, and second time was to the Red Cross.

So do you actually become Trump's apprentice?

Have you ever followed him around?

No.

No.

Do you learn at the master?

No.

No, no, no.

No, but you know, he was always good to me.

You know, right.

Well, I mean, come on.

That means that's because you're a 10.

Yeah.

I don't know why he was good to me.

He was just good to me.

He's good to me.

A lot of people, people say the same thing about O.J.

He was nice to me.

Yeah.

Really?

I mean, it's true.

I heard that a lot

in the 90s.

Like, O.J.

was nice.

You know,

I met him a few times, Trump.

I agree.

He was very charming and personable in person.

You know, he wants everyone to like him.

That's his big thing.

Doesn't anyway.

John,

what would Lincoln make of today's political climate?

Oh, Lincoln.

He'd recognize it, tragically.

Right.

You know,

he.

One of the things that interests me about what's going on is you do have people who think the system can't can't be saved, right?

And so that's not unlike the abolitionists in the 1850s actually burned the Constitution.

William Lloyd Garrison burned the Constitution in 1854, called it an agreement with death and a covenant with hell, and said

abolitionists should leave the constitutional experiment.

You had secessionists from our part of the world who did the same.

It was Lincoln and it was Frederick Douglass who said,

this is the last best hope.

And

if we can't get this right,

then it's only going to be monarchy.

It's only going to be aristocracy.

And so he confronted this problem of,

again, not just differing on what the facts were, but differing on what human nature was.

Who was included in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence to him was scripture.

And it was about interpreting the ongoing meaning of that.

And I think that my sense is we've always been, if you think of the moments we commemorate, the moments where we think, if we're being, if we say openly, this is where I'd like to go back to, they're moments where we expanded the definition and understanding and access to the mainstream, not when we constricted it.

And that's what Lincoln was about.

So you had mentioned before in the show about 1965.

Yeah.

Where are you two Southerners, where is the South?

How different is the south?

I mean, I think, obviously, we have to start at, it's very different than it was in 1965.

Not completely healed in any way.

But how different

would you say

southern states are from where it was back then?

I mean, you wouldn't have done a duet with Snoop Dogg.

1965.

I feel like that's...

I don't think Snoop was alive, but.

I mean, I feel like that says a lot.

Well, I don't, you know, the way I look at it now,

I'm reading a book right now that was written by David Goldfield, who's a history professor at the University of North Carolina, and it's called America Aflame.

And he starts in the 1830s and he leads up to the Civil War chronologically going through all these facts and everything.

But he kind of wraps it all up at the end, just prior to before the war started, concluding that once each side is is pointing at the other and calling them evil,

once you get to that point,

if you truly believe that,

then compromise is off the table.

That's where we are, though.

You have no integrity if you, because how can you make a deal with the devil if you truly believe that?

And to me, it seems like, damn, it kind of seems like that's where we're headed.

People are pointing the finger at one another and saying you're evil.

And once you cross that line, it's hard to walk that one back.

It is.

And I think we've crossed it.

The well, you know,

Lincoln's insight about that was,

and he said this on his trip to Washington, he

said it on the Ohio border in Cincinnati.

He said, if we were over in Kentucky, we would probably feel as they feel.

We are not morally superior.

We have a different view of right and wrong.

And

he

insisted not,

the Civil War was not a both sides problem.

It's like January 6th was not a both sides thing.

It was a case where,

because of economic and cultural convictions,

my native region, our native region, decided that black people were less than human and were not included in the Declaration of Independence.

And Lincoln said no,

that in fact they are.

And the question, the fact that you have to clap for that is a bad thing.

I was just thinking this.

That's bad.

I was thinking this is.

Yay!

Human equality.

You know, three cheers for we the people.

The dangerous thing, and I said it earlier, and I did it with care, the problem with saying this is like the 1850s, this goes to the book you're reading, is how did the decade end with 750,000 people dying?

I grew up on a Civil War battlefield.

You live basically on one, right?

You're near Carton and all that.

And

there has to be a way for 60% or more of us to say we're going to mediate our differences and not do battle over them.

And that's, I really do believe that number is about right.

34% of the country is always wrong.

That's the number that supported Joe McCarthy a year after he'd been censured.

And we've only had three presidents who've gotten 60 percent since World War II.

Johnson in 1964, Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 84.

Biden's margin, one of the many ironies and somewhat in tragedies of the 2020 election is that was a perfectly respectable win in a polarized era.

It was better than Truman's in 1948.

It was better than Nixon's in 1968, better than Kennedy's in 1960,

better than either of Bill Clinton's, better than W.

either time.

And so it's,

I don't want to say that we adjust our expectations downward, but I do think to go to your last point, one of the things history can tell you is

total victory is not possible in politics.

And so you have to figure out, all right, what does victory look like?

And if we're talking about another Civil War, it's not possible there either because at least in the first one, everyone who thought one way was on one side of the border.

Whereas now we're all marbled in with each other.

And this is what I was saying in the beginning of the show about we're turning into red states versus blue states and people don't feel comfortable acting, shall we say, in a red way.

Would someone wear a MAGA hat to a restaurant in Los Angeles?

I think it was at Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where he did that.

Right, right.

You know?

Right.

Would you wear a Hillary Clinton t-shirt?

Not you.

But,

like, you know what I mean?

I don't want to live in that country.

Look, I'm basically in a

blue state and basically side with them, but I don't want to have to go along with everything blue.

No.

Because sometimes they're not right, in my view, and that's okay.

And I don't want to have to choose sides, like which side am I on?

I don't want to be,

I want to be in a country that has both in every place.

Well, it should be.

I just think

it just, it has to be both, but both have to accept the rule of law.

Right.

Otherwise,

the things to say to business people, I think,

I mean, I have lots of, I mean, we live in Tennessee, so when we say we have conservative friends, we're being redundant, right?

So

I have a ton of people who

are Republicans who don't want Trump.

And then they'll they'll say, but Biden's spending too much money.

Like, you don't get to say the second part until you fix the first.

And I didn't feel this way, and you alluded to it, I didn't feel this way until the election stuff.

I think when you launch an attack on the Capitol

and you undermine

the one thing we've got that enables this other experiment to go on, And I'm going to say the other side's perfect, but I think a lot of Republicans, see if you agree with this, I think a lot of Republicans who don't like Trump want forgiveness, but they don't want to repent.

Well, we don't have to.

I ain't asked for forgiveness for shit.

Right.

And you shouldn't have to.

We didn't do anything.

It's not personal, it's policy.

Exactly.

No, it's not.

And you just don't want to have to move because moving sucks.

You know what?

I'm too old.

Moving sucks.

And you can't do it.

I mean, I'm stuck here.

I looked at it because of the fires here and stuff like that.

We got things here that are really, you know, I couldn't get my solar hooked up for three years.

I mean, the regulations, the taxes.

Can a man get a glass of water?

I mean, you know, it's like.

Not one river in this state, not one drop of water should ever make it to the ocean without going through a hydroelectric dam first.

Yeah.

Sorry, did you?

I was going to say it is personal.

I think Trump made a lot of things personal.

And when we talk about the division in this country, we can't talk about it as if it's a meteorological phenomenon that just happened.

Right?

That's true.

There were certain things that were done by certain people in certain institutions, Trump among them,

very consciously to divide this country, to prey upon the fissures that already existed and to make them wider and wider and wider to the point where we can't see each other across them.

So it's not just like, oh my, this has happened.

This was done in many ways on purpose by Trump.

That's what Democrats do.

Yeah.

And so when we say it's not personal, it is personal.

And I do think people who supported Trump and who enabled Trump do have something to apologize for and do have a a lot to repent for.

A man who calls countries shithole countries, who tells

congress people of color to go back to where they came from, who

calls women pigs, who makes fun of their menstrual cycles, I could go on and on and on.

And that people still follow him and think that's still okay And that they, you know, that.

Well, most.

That is something that we have to talk about.

Well, you can answer that if you want to, but I would say most of the people I know who voted for Trump say the biggest mistake liberals make is thinking I like him.

It doesn't matter if you still.

It doesn't matter if you're not.

What they're saying is you get two choices in this country.

I would never vote for Donald Trump.

Nobody was harder on Donald Trump than me.

I have the records to prove it,

and

I have all.

Well, did you vote for him?

Of of course not there is my but my

visit

than that it's a little more nuanced than that I understand why people who who make the decision to vote which most people do based on not who I like the best but who I hate the least

may go there are things that are going on up

said and has done are not bad enough to keep you from voting for him to which means which means you're more okay with him being in power and him having the nuclear coats and him having control of the Army and the Department of Justice, not you, the general you.

That means you're okay with that or you're more okay with that than the other guy, no matter what he said, no matter what he's done.

Right?

It's one of the great problems with, I think, with a lot of commentary,

unfolding commentary.

Presidential politics is not a referendum.

Nobody came to your point and said, do you want Donald Trump to be president?

No, it's do you want him or do you want Hillary Clinton?

And by the same token,

nobody came to the country and said, do you want Joe Biden to be president?

No.

It was, do you want President Biden?

Do you want Biden or do you want Trump?

And then we forget that within 24 hours.

And it's as if we just, this

singular person had been packaged and chosen.

It's a choice.

It's always a comparison.

Absolutely.

But it means that all these things were not bad enough

for people to dissuade them from voting.

Well, but it depends on what your priority is.

Exactly.

In my last special, I was talking about the fact that to me, the two biggest issues are democracy and the environment.

Those are my two big, one and two.

But I don't have kids.

I know people who say, I have kids, and I don't like it when they come home and say, they divided the class today into oppressors and oppressed.

And if I change my sex, I don't have to tell my parents.

There's shit like that going on that that makes people go, you know, I agree, Donald Trump is a creep.

He is everything wrong that could be stuffed into one man.

But I have these other considerations.

That's all.

And that's why

you seem like you have such contempt for half the country.

I don't think that's going to get us where we need to go because to your point, I think we've crossed this line.

And now the question is, how do we walk it back?

How do we walk it back from

I hate you so much

that I can't live with you.

And we have to live with each other.

There's not an apartment where we can put the tape down the middle of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We have to find a way.

Okay.

Thank you very much, everybody.

That was

good of you to put up with that.

Watch 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.