Overtime – Episode #610: Rob Reiner, Sen. Amy Klobuchar

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 Firestone tires.

Go to TireRack.com to see their Firestone test results, tire ratings, and reviews.

And be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

What up, y'all?

It's Joe Button, here to talk about Prize Picks.

PrizePicks is the best place to win real money while watching football.

You can get up to 100 times your money.

PrizePicks will give you $50 instantly when you play your first $5 lineup.

You don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus.

It's guaranteed.

Just download the PrizePicks app and use code Spotify.

That's code Spotify on PrizePicks to get $50 instantly when you play a $5 lineup.

PrizePicks, run your game.

Must be present in certain states.

Visit PrizePicks.com for descriptions and details.

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

Okay, we're in overtime.

Senator Klobuchar, some of the biggest threats we see on our democracy are at the state houses.

Yet we have fewer and fewer journalists covering state legislatures and city halls.

I assume that's true.

I guess so.

You have legislation that would strengthen local journalism.

Oh, what exactly would this legislation do?

Well, I think this is what we've been talking about today: is that if you don't have coverage of things, democracy dies.

And what's been going on around the country is more and more local newspapers, local radio, TV have been folding.

And a lot of this has to do with the fact that they generate content, and Facebook and Google put it up, and they get like a little snippet of it, and they don't have to pay them for anything.

And what this bill does, and it's bipartisan, we're just introducing introducing it, it basically says you've got to let these smaller venues, these newspapers, TV stations, be able to join together and get an exemption from the law so they can join together to negotiate better rates with Google and Facebook.

Because otherwise they're just going to die on the buy.

Because their revenues, Google's went up $66 million,

billion dollars in three months, $66 billion in three months from ad revenue.

And meanwhile, more and more newspapers, thousands of them, are shutting down.

So this evens a playing field.

Australia just did it.

They're able to get better rates for their news content.

And you're able to pay the journalists that are doing the investigation and writing the stories and just plugging it in to the big tech companies.

Yeah.

It is a shame about local papers.

I mean, I remember when I was a kid, the Bergen Evening Record.

was on our doorstep and there was like an afternoon edition.

Yeah, well they cover the football games.

They cover, it's also things that bring the community together

and they know when the flood is coming.

They tell them what you're supposed to do and if there's no local media and it's all nationalized, you're going to lose that really important part of our democracy.

Okay.

Rob, you recently mentioned that you believe Archie Bunker would have supported Trump but would have condemned the insurrectionist.

How do you think he'd vote in the next presidential election?

I think he's one of those people that would have had enough of Trump at this point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you see a lot of Republicans peeling off now.

And I think that's a good thing because

this is not a

political party anymore.

I don't know what this is.

This is some, you know,

the cult, you know, whatever.

But it's,

you know, they, you know, this, I believe it's, there's a Christian nationalist movement that's very frightening.

There is.

And I've actually am finishing up a documentary on it called Christian Nationalism: The Danger.

It's called God and Country, The Danger of Christian Nationalism.

And it's basically they take somebody like Donald Trump who doesn't espouse anything that they believe in and they elevate him to godlike status and that whatever he does is okay.

So

well,

I mean, first of all,

Trump was losing steam before the raid raid at Mar-a-Lago.

The election.

I mean, he lost by 7 million votes.

Yeah, but he was not as unpopular right after the election as he was right before the Mar-a-Lago raid.

He was steadily going down.

DeSantis was stealing his thunder.

And it looked like DeSantis was going to get the nomination or at least had a fighting chance.

Then the raid came.

And look, I don't agree with you about Archiboca.

There are Republicans peeling away.

I don't think he would have been one of them.

I don't think he was not a bright guy.

And he was just, it was all based on loyalty and personality, and also that

he was an angry guy who was not happy with his life.

And

that's what fuels the business.

Well, you might be right.

Norman Lear just turned 100, so let's ask him what he thinks.

You might be right, right?

You might be right.

I don't know.

I get a hard time thinking Archie Bunker would be turn on somebody who just loved to stick his finger in the eye of the elite.

That's what Archie Bunker loved.

Did you think that Dick Cheney's daughter would turn on Trump?

And she did?

I mean Liz Cheney, I'm saying there are a number of Republicans, especially those that came forward and testified at the January 6th Commission.

Yes.

And maybe they wouldn't have even done it right after the election, but over time, it just the guilt and what they're seeing happening to our democracy and he's still out there.

Well, yeah.

People can change.

Well, I don't know if they.

People within the Republican Party, there are people abandoning their party and they are voting in places like Kansas

and independents have a strong voice here.

No, I just

don't give up on some of these people.

I give up on 30 percent, but not the rest.

Seven Republicans in the in the Senate voted to convict Trump over January 6th without all the information that we have now.

That's seven Republicans.

I mean, if they have ten more, he doesn't.

You know what I mean?

There are a lot of Republicans that are not, are fed up with.

I agree.

I can guarantee you, Mitch McConnell is not thrilled right now with having to support Trump.

He's not.

Well, I don't know if he's going to anymore because Trump came out today attacking Mitch McConnell.

In a really,

I know it's hard to believe, mean-spirited way.

It's rumored that Liz Cheney, here we go, will run in the 2024 presidential election.

Oh, we could have two women running.

Do you think her running will end up hurting Biden and helping Trump?

Would be the opposite.

I don't do hypotheticals, but what I've seen here is that, one, Joe Biden has racked up a number of incredible accomplishments in the last year.

We know them.

Semiconductors, burn pits for our veterans, you name it.

Sweden and Finland in the NATO treaty.

And then Finland.

Yay!

Oh, let's get to that.

Were you at that party with the...

Was I at that party?

I wish I was that party.

I wish I was that tough party.

No, but I mean, you didn't.

Did you think it was terribly inappropriate?

You know what I thought was interesting?

The same week that she was criticized

for that, the Australian Prime Minister was at a private concert chugged a beer and everyone thought it was the coolest thing in the world when the video came out so I do think that there is double standards and if it wasn't if there wasn't a double standard we could play a game called name your favorite woman president

well that's true I mean there have

definitely

I mean, there's no doubt about that up until the 21st century,

it probably was not really in the cards.

Things have changed a lot in the last generation about gender, sex, race.

I don't think that's the case anymore.

I don't think someone is not going to become president anymore simply because they're a woman.

That could be the case.

That's true, but they still have a bigger uphill climb than a man.

They still do.

I don't know if that's the case.

I mean, I've talked to many Republicans who did not like Hillary, and I said, look me in the eye and tell me what, and

they could be lying, but they're like, it's not because she was a woman, it's because she was that woman.

They really don't like Hillary Clinton.

Now, I don't agree, but sometimes people just don't like you in politics.

And there are things that, obviously, Hillary Clinton did that make people not like her, but in general, she, I think,

certainly would have been like a woman.

She would have been the most qualified woman ever to become president of the United States.

Qualified doesn't make you necessarily a good president.

Well, I mean,

qualified and also knowing how government works, much like Joe Biden.

He knows how it works.

And he gets things done.

I think of those four years, if Hillary had been president versus what we had in the United States,

you can't make that.

I just said that.

But this is a different issue I'm arguing here.

I'm saying just being qualified.

You know who was super qualified?

Buchanan.

Okay.

Buchanan.

James Buchanan.

You were there?

18?

No,

was I there?

What do you mean you know how qualified?

That's what millennials say.

I wasn't there.

It didn't exist.

That's not what somebody your age says.

No, there's a thing called a history book.

Yeah.

I think

the point is this, over time it's been getting better.

But for so long, people were willing to vote for women for the legislature, things like that, but they were afraid of having them run things, right?

So we had so few women governors.

We're starting to have more.

We still have a lot less than we should.

We have, including Democratic woman, Laura Kelly, is the governor, by the way, of Kansas.

We had so few women in positions of power, mayors, police chiefs, things like that.

That's changing.

Poll after poll showed that that was the step that the voters had to take.

And I would agree with you.

I think there's been a major shift.

Yeah.

Millard Fillmore, very qualified.

Terrible.

All right.

Thank you, too.

Terrible president, but very qualified.

All right.

Thank you, folks.

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.