Overtime – Episode #520: Senator Amy Klobuchar, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Katie Couric, Van Jones, Bret Stephens

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

Katie, do you think the media has learned its lessons from 2016 and will cover the election differently in 2020, or is Trump destined to suck up all the oxygen again?

I would say Trump's destined to suck up all the oxygen again.

Pretty hardened.

Yeah,

he's a genius at it.

That is his genius.

He games the press, I think.

And

that is

one skill.

He is such a good marketer and such a good manipulator of the message, right?

But I think also, from the very beginning, I think we fell into a particular kind of trap where we said, we don't want to normalize him.

So anything he does, it's outside the norm, we're going to react to aggressively.

Well, he loves that.

So he knows now that we're going to respond.

I sometimes think, what if you just had a week?

It was that no matter what you do, we won't cover you.

And just like

that.

it couldn't work any worse.

He thinks all attention is good attention, but I think that media outlets have to make a concerted effort not to fall into that.

You know, the problem is something called the most popular list, because the moment you have a title that says Trump, whatever, it is going to pop.

The more outrageous, the more.

If I write a column about the oppression of Uyghurs in Western China, you're talking about a million people in gulags, but people aren't going to care.

If it's Trump's latest bad tweet, it will pop.

And so some kind of self-discipline is required by journalists.

Exactly what you said, a week of a Trump kind of purge.

Outrage on both sides sells, and that's why both sides does it.

They manufacture it.

Probably keep trying to do worse and worse and worse things until he finally gets that attention.

But I agree it's hard every single day to figure out what you do and don't respond to because some of the things are really horrible.

And, you know if he's gonna fire Vinman and his brother and interfere in in Roger Stone's sentencing and I mean you have to say something about it you can't let that go but it's tough okay what do you think about Trump's 2021 budget

it is horrible

he is a liar He goes into the State of the Union and says, I'm not touching your Medicare, I'm not touching your Social Security, I'm going to invest in education.

And then he comes out with a budget that cuts Medicare, cuts Social Security.

He takes money from the Pentagon.

He takes money from the Pentagon for the wall, which now, by the way, remember when Mexico was going to pay for the wall?

I mean, Mexico is definitely not paying for this wall.

It is the American taxpayer.

His fans have goldfish memory.

They really do.

I hate to say it, but you know that goldfish, they'd say they go around the thing and they see the little palm tree every time they go, hey, look, look, a palm tree.

And his fans are like, Mexico will pay for the no.

I never said that.

He's amazing the way he can pull that off.

Brett, were you surprised to see Rush Lumbaugh make derogatory remarks about Pete Buttigieg kissing his husband so soon after receiving his Presidential Medal of Freedom?

No.

Van, do you share some Congressional Democrats' concerns that a Bernie Sanders ticket might impair their chances to hold onto the House in 2020?

That's a part about Bernie Sanders we didn't discuss is the down-ticket drag, perhaps.

Some people, I'm sure, are not going to want to run with a socialist at the top of the ticket.

Yeah,

it's hard to know.

What I do know is that Bernie's particular brand of socialism is probably better described as grandparent envy, right?

If you're a young person, like think about it, your grandparents went to college for like four bucks, right?

You say, I want that, right?

Your grandparents,

they get sick, if they got Medicare, they want to see a doctor.

I want that.

Like, it's not the socialism that we remember from the 70s, where like you want to nationalize everything.

It's literally just young people want what their grandparents have.

I wish you would just call it that.

But here's what I don't understand about

Bernie.

I mean, one of the themes that he and his supporters make is we don't want Venezuela, we want Denmark.

And the Danes will tell you we're a highly socialized economy, but we're also a very vigorously capitalist economy.

So what part of capitalism does Bernie like and why doesn't he ever talk about it?

Well, because I think he's trying to right some of the things that have happened over the last 30 years where we have really seen this economy go towards the biggest corporations and the wealthiest.

So he has to call that out, right?

Yeah, but he can also say we want a dynamic economy,

we want world-class companies, we want to be leaders in various areas.

Why doesn't he say that?

But he's not taking on any of those things.

He doesn't not say them.

He's talking about the root causes of what's out there.

You know, when I talk about Medicare for All, I say, well, look, I'm not asking to buy my computer from the government or my coffee from the government.

I come from Seattle.

But I do want my health insurance guaranteed and paid for by the government.

And I think that is a distinction that's really important to make.

But you have to understand how threatening he is because you, I been reading for quite a while and you do not like Donald Trump.

You think he is an existential threat, blah, blah, blah.

But your recent column said, but if it's Bernie?

I'm not going to vote for Trump.

I didn't say that.

I did not say I was going to vote for Trump.

I will vote for a giraffe.

But that's kind of, that's a bit of a cop-out.

Well, of course not.

That's a bit of a cop-out.

Either he's so existential, there's only two choices.

That's, yeah, I'm going to write in Mickey Mouse.

Okay, then.

I'm in, I mean, look, in terms of my vote, I live in New York.

Of course, Bernie Sanders is going to be the...

So you would vote for him if it was Trump or if it was Bernie.

No,

I don't want the Democratic Party

to put the country to a choice where people like me will say these are two bad alternatives and too many voters will say, you know what?

It's like the meatloaf song when it comes to Bernie Sanders, like I will do anything for love, but I won't do that.

But

that

is Bernie Sanders Sanders for most Americans.

But you know what?

I don't know that that's true.

I mean, we have gone the same route of putting up somebody who is much more moderate, who plays to independent voters, you know, a tiny slice in the middle.

And here we are with Donald Trump.

I mean, you got, you know, Jim Messina saying in 2016, give me, I wake up every morning and I drop to my knees and pray, God, give me Donald Trump.

That is the arrogance of the Democratic Party sometimes to think that everybody is just going to come out and

he wanted Donald Trump

correct.

He wanted Donald Trump to be there because he was sure that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump.

So, you know, there are probably a lot of people who are saying, you put

some, you know, a Bloomberg, some person up there.

I'm not,

I don't know.

I we never

vote for that person.

So it's our job.

It's always surprising.

Who would you like Bernie to pick as his VP?

Oh, I don't know.

I haven't gotten there yet.

We got to win.

We got to win in South Carolina.

I know who the VP is.

Who?

Stacy Abrams.

Is definitely the VP.

Her phone is probably bringing up.

Everybody wants Stacey Abraham.

I mean, Stacey is amazing.

She's a dear friend.

And

she's a fabulous politician.

And, you know,

I think she would be a fantastic vice president and hopefully president someday.

Agreed.

Okay.

Thank you, everybody.

Happy Valentine's Day.

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