Overtime – Episode #603: Dr. Cornel West, Kellyanne Conway, Josh Barro

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

Okay.

All right, here we are in overtime.

Kellyanne, if Trump runs again, will you help with the campaign?

Well, let's see what he decides.

I want to help get rid of Biden and Harris because I agree with the vast majority of Americans.

They're doing a terrible job on the issues that affect us most.

Americans say

in place.

Here in California, $6.

So

I'm actually going to support the Republican nominee.

All right.

I'm so glad I have a Tesla.

I don't have to buy gas.

Okay.

Cork now, with the advent of social media, political protests have certainly changed since the last century.

Is this for the better or for worse?

Depends on the quality of the character of the people who participate.

Technology is just a means means what you bring to it.

What you bring to it, you know.

But certainly, I mean, you would admit that it allows more people to hear about something going on.

I mean,

you could have the version of a flash mob.

That's true.

I mean, you can get people in an hour to show up someplace.

That's true, but in the end, it's about quality rather than quantity.

Right, and it's also, I mean, a lot of people think they do something when they just post something on Instagram.

Exactly.

Like they got a mass movement, all these likes here and likes there.

No, it's just a momentary

situation.

You got to actually get in the streets.

You got to get decent, courageous, visionary people who believe in something bigger than their own ego.

So who do you...

Boy, are you in the wrong town for that?

But I think your indictment of Hollywood was powerful.

Oh, thank you.

Powerful dope, brother.

When you think of it, just take it, bring it to public that there's roughly Canada and California have roughly the same populations.

More Californians kill each other with knives than Canadians kill each other with anything.

Right.

Well.

So that's a culture.

It's not fair to compare it to Canadians.

They're very polite.

Well,

Canadians got their problems.

They've got their problems.

Yes, they do.

No, but our dominant myth is the frontier and more liberation through violence.

No, I mean, the guns

proliferating domestic violence, violence against gay brothers, lesbian sisters, trans, violence against black people, violence against women.

I mean, that's one of the three things we have to come to terms with.

And I'm Vicker Hofstetter talks about this in the great echo, right?

Right before he died.

Violence in America, but Slotkin's great trilogy.

Gunfighter Nation, it's a cultural thing.

That's why we have to have counterfactual, I mean, counter-hegemonic and counter-availing forces against that kind of violence.

So,

and, you know, thank you for your compliment, but I'm sure the usual suspects will see that tonight and just tear it apart.

But it is

a

right every week.

I don't know about that.

I don't know about that.

I don't know.

Nobody's right all time.

Nobody's right all time.

You're right to call it.

You weren't that hypocrite.

You're right to call it hypocrisy every week.

You're right to call it hypocrisy, and that is hypocrisy.

You can't have these images in front of these kids and pretend it doesn't happen.

And what's interesting is that we used to talk about that, and then we just stopped.

But how is this different from the watch what you say stuff that you object to on other issues?

What do you mean, watch what I say?

No, I mean well people like telling comedians like don't tell these jokes about trans people That's harmful.

It can encourage violence that sort of thing.

I mean it's this it's the same sort of feedback effect argument, isn't it?

I mean that you know if entertainment matters it changes how people behave.

Right.

And so either that's something that's important in deciding what entertainment

if you're talking about trans in a way that's hateful, yes.

That should be called out.

But if you're just talking about it as a subject

Well, but I mean, that's that's sort of it that that then you get into definitional questions people who are objecting find whatever they're objecting.

The problem is that the left has moved the goalpost to if you just bring it up you're a bigot.

And that's not no, I can't get down with that.

And also

we're talking about

telling people here.

We're talking about

you're talking about an industry that does tons of polls and focus hoops to figure out what sells.

And apparently what sells is having all this gun violence and we know who the customers are.

And you're absolutely right.

Look, you quantified it tonight.

If people want to disagree with you, they're going to say, now you sound like a conservative.

Why would you dare talk about mental health?

Well, there's a reason we talk about mental health.

Generation Z tells pollsters that they are suffering from emotional connections, mental health, lost learning.

In fact, the America Rescue Plan, which passed a couple months ago, there's $112 billion in there for post-COVID school funding, and it's really meant to be for lost learning, new counselors, mental health.

About 93% of it is still unspent.

We can even shift it over to harden their schools, keep them safer, do the mental health stuff.

But let's stop pretending it's always about one thing.

And it's not saying we shouldn't make the change the gun laws at all.

It's pretending this doesn't work.

But that's part of it.

And as long as you have this out there,

where everything, every movie these kids see is about somebody picking up.

And video game.

You think you can get it?

And video games.

Right, and video games.

I mean, it's a big part of the problem.

I think the harden the school stuff is bad.

I think, you know, it's when you treat schools like a fortress and when you put kids through these shooter drills that are traumatizing, it's like sending this message.

I don't know.

I should be afraid wherever you go.

You know what?

I don't want the schools to feel like fortresses, but I'll be damned.

We have armed guards protecting our money at banks.

We should be protecting our children better in our schools.

There's a hundred thousand public schools in the United States.

Like the idea that you're going to send armed guards to every public school in the United States.

Someone was saying, send the National Guard.

You would like,

if you put, the National Guard's like 400,000 people.

You'd use a quarter of the National Guard.

I think we need a federal government.

No, but I'm saying a huge amount of personality.

I want to get back to Brother Josh's crucial point about the arts, because any time a civilization or an empire is reaching its nadir, the artists play a very important role for truth-telling, because they're in many ways the vanguard of the species in that sense.

And when Brother Bill says, well, the comedians ought to have not just the right, but they ought to be able to allow for the incongruities, the contradictions,

the falling shorts of anybody, no matter who they are, what color, sexual orientation, I think that has to be defended.

But there's a radical difference, and you all tell me what you think about

George Garland's and the Richard Pryors and the Moms Mazley.

They laughed with people.

Too many of the comedians these days laugh at people.

Who are you talking about?

You're in the legacy of George Gawlin.

You're in the legacy of the great comics.

Okay, well, who you're saying?

Because you are willing to laugh at yourself as you then laugh at others.

We've got some...

But you're saying a lot of comments.

I'm not saying the names of the people who were saying do the opposite.

I want to know what you're saying.

I forget them rather quickly when I see them because they're just

coming together.

Are you talking about Dave Chappelle?

They're not even funny.

No, no, Dave Chappelle is a great artist.

I don't know what that one, well, I don't keep track of all of them.

But David Chappelle is

a great one as well.

But the thing is, is that it's the precious humanity of the gays and husbands and trans and black folk and women and white men and

Chicanos and so forth.

Because we're all into this human project together.

And if we can't laugh at each other, then we miss something very deeply.

But when we just, all we can do is laugh at each other, that's hobbs on comedy, right?

Setting groory.

Laughing at somebody's misfortune, elevating yourself over somebody else.

That's not that funny.

No.

That's not that funny.

No one's trying to.

Put yourself as the object of it.

And that's what you all do at your best.

We're just coming at your best now, but

yeah.

I mean, we're not, no one's advocating punching down.

But.

But I've seen some comics.

They just come and look on the front row and start talking about how people look in their clothes and everything.

I said where are you going?

Where were you at that?

Where are you at?

At the fucking Laugh Factory on the Tuesdays, right?

I mean, you know, they're talking about the open

micers.

I mean, you know, yes.

Maybe it's the open mic.

Yeah, maybe it's the open mic crowd.

So

let me ask a a final question.

Trump is going to be running again.

I'm sure Kelly N will be the campaign manager because

he's going to say you stuck.

Well, I'm one for one because I had nothing to do with his $1.4 million 2020 boondoggle.

Right, okay, right, okay.

You're one for one.

And you wouldn't throw him under the bus tonight.

So, you know, you can't.

No, what I would say is that you can't.

Let me just ask you.

You shouldn't have people on here

and make this human dignity question.

Will you throw him under the bus or not?

We were talking about January 6th, and I wanted to gently remind everybody, it's in the courtroom, it's a hearing, and that they didn't even have the guts, I think I said balls, to subpoena him.

And they never do.

But I mean, you say you'll support a Republican nominee, but we don't have a Republican nominee yet.

Why not?

Why don't you president right now?

Why don't you want them to nominate somebody?

We don't even know what she does.

Her weekend schedule always says the vice president has nothing on her public schedule this weekend.

I want to get a vice president who's working

for the country.

Why shouldn't they nominate Ron DeSantis or Glenn Youngkin or some other governor who's popular in the state

who doesn't have the baggage that Donald Trump has and who

dissolve.

So the Republican Party should nominate who it wants to nominate.

But I will tell you, in this case,

I'll give you an opinion, too.

And I'll vote for whom I want.

I absolutely will, and I'll keep that private.

But listen, because that's my right.

But listen.

It's a right.

Here's the thing.

They're all running as America First.

They're all running on energy independence,

better tax cuts,

no, they're all running on that right now.

I am curious.

I would like to know, since you're telling the Republicans they should nominate Josh respectfully, I would like to know how this party that had 25 Democrats running for president last time, you had an openly gay man, a very impressive person, you had an African-American man, you had a black woman in Kamala Harris, you had an American Samoa, that's Tulsi Gabbert, not Elizabeth Warren, you had a female socialist, you had a male socialist, and you ended up with the old white guy from Washington.

How did that happen?

How is the Democratic Party, this party,

Black voters in South Carolina picked the guy who could win.

That's what happened.

That's what happened.

And he's a terrible president.

Well,

but the sad thing was, he's

a terrible president.

For the first time in American history, the most progressive voting bloc of black people did not vote for the most progressive candidate who was Brother Bernie Sanders.

Right.

That's very important to keep in mind.

Right.

Because Bernie was much more tied to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

than Brother Joe Biden was.

Oh, for sure.

But the black leadership with Clyde Byrne and others tied to the pharmaceutical company so he can't go for Medicare for all.

No, he's tied to big money, like most of these milquetoast politicians.

They're tied to big money.

So you got Bernie out there

laying out his vision and we were winning in November.

Do you remember?

What do you mean that's the first time?

You had in 2016 you had the black voters lining up strongly behind Hillary Clinton over Bernie and in 2008 you had them behind Obama who was not not as far left as John Edwards.

I think it's a long tradition of pragmatism.

Yeah, I think I'd like to say that.

We can say pragmatism or

concerned perception.

And in surveys, how do you get white liberals having moved to the left?

But the difference was that

this last election, though, brother, when we were winning

in Nevada, in that sense, we could have had a major push for black voters for Bernie.

The first time he ran, it was an interesting kind of project.

They didn't think that he really had a chance.

and i mean i suppose obama in 2008 maybe at four percent the black folk were not voting for him but maybe early on they shifted later you maybe people just are not that in love with socialism no that's not socialism well bernie is a socialist he's a new deal new limb he's a he likes to call himself a socialist call

a lot of people like to call themselves things he wants to

call a socialist project why would you want to call yourself

why would you want to call yourself a term that doesn't have a positive because he's in love with eugene debs and he's in love with normal Thomas and

people don't know who Eugene Debs is.

And if they did, he wouldn't be popular.

He's a great man.

He's got to teach people who to

socialist views though.

I think he's very proud of that, frankly.

And he just primaried a guy, a Democratic Congress in Oregon, who was backed by Biden and

the more socialist candidate wants to.

We have polling on this.

I mean, the white liberal is to the left of the average Democratic black voter.

No question.

Right?

Every time.

On social issues and on economic issues.

And education.

Right.

Most black voters are moderate, not liberal.

More white than you're Democrats.

Take the Poor People's Campaign

with William Barber and Thea Harris.

We're going to be sometimes.

The black community is very supportive of William Barber and company.

The Poor People's Campaign.

Okay.

Just as, or even more, than the white brothers associate with the camera.

Well, why is Joe Biden losing their support right now, though, Clarity, to lock the polls in office?

Fucking gas.

He says.

Oh, he likes bad motion.

I got to go.

We like bad boat.

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