Overtime – Episode #518: Michael Eric Dyson, Mitch Landrieu, Mikie Sherrill, Rick Wilson

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

Member of Congress here, we defer.

Do you believe the House's passage of the No War Against Iran Act yesterday will effectively curb Trump's ability to take military action without congressional approval?

So this has always been a kind of gray area.

So we passed two resolutions.

One was ending the 2002 AUMF, the authorization to use military.

That's why we got into Iraq, right?

That was widely seen as we got in,

there was 2000 and the 2001 AUMF, which is fighting al-Qaeda and terrorists, so we're fighting under that.

The 2002 AUMF was largely seen as

set out to take out the Saddam Hussein regime.

That's the one Biden's always having to explain his vote for, right?

That.

So he's, yeah, so Barbara Lee

was about the only person to vote against.

That is

Representative Barbara Lee from Oakland.

Oh, no, I'm thinking of the one that many, like 27 Democratic senators voted for to give Bush orthodox.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm talking in the House.

Yeah.

So in the House, Representative Barbara Lee was the only person to vote against that,

if I recall correctly.

No, I think that's the one that was right after Afghanistan.

I think more people were for the Iraq war, right?

Because by then they had sold it as a result of the U.S.

So that's the one.

We repealed the 2002

she led that.

So now you've repealed this one, the 2002 one?

Well, the House has.

The House has.

The House has.

It won't pass the Senate.

But you would like it to?

I would like it to pass the Senate because I don't think we need these long, outstanding authorizations to use military force.

I think Congress has abdicated many of its responsibilities, including with respect to war powers.

Forever.

And so, you know, to have these unending war powers out there,

you know, I think we should definitely stop the 2002 AUMF.

I think we need to actually modernize the 2001 AUMF, but I've been hesitant to repeal it.

I'm not co-sponsoring that until we have a sense of what a new authorization would look like.

I think we need, like many people, that we need to find a pathway to ending our fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

However,

I don't think it's healthy for a country to do that precipitously, to simply pull out.

And then we voted to not authorize funding for a war with Iran specifically saying the president does not have the authorization to go to war with Iran.

We had passed both of these as amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act.

They were both stripped out in conference when we went to conference with the Republican Senate, so we passed them both on the House floor now.

Okay.

Rick Wilson, will the

Will the Lincoln Project formally endorse a candidate for 2020?

Lincoln Project is, you explained it, it you're

me and a bunch of other former Republican guys who,

the Liam Neeson joke is a little tired, but we have a specific set of skills.

We do the things that you talked about just now about going after

the dirty stuff.

Well, and it's the effective stuff.

The effective stuff.

And

it's the group of us that put it together, we're going to target both Donald Trump and Donald Trump's enablers.

Now, we're not trying to pick the Democratic nominee.

We're not trying to run their race or tell them how to do their policy or their ideology, but as an outside force that can do things that the Democrats have demonstrably failed on doing a lot of the time, like actually getting in people shit,

we're sort of a pirate ship in that regard.

And so

we're going to go at a lot of folks on their support of Donald Trump.

We're going to go at a lot of folks in the Senate who have now put their heads on the chopping block by following these votes

that basically empower Donald Trump to be a lawless, reckless, corrupt president.

But will you put up a candidate, I think, or endorse them?

We're not going to run a candidate.

There's not a candidate.

You're not going to endorse one.

Well, that's a matter of weld is running again.

You know, immaterial.

Look, the math doesn't exist right now for a Republican candidate to win the primary, and Donald Trump has shut off all of the state caucuses that matter, or state primaries that matter, so you can't really get to the nomination.

So

we're on the outside of that, so we're going to do as much as we can to make sure that Donald Trump is not re-elected using all the tools in our toolbox, and some of them are pretty freaking nasty.

Mitch, what do you think of the DNC adjusting its debate qualifications?

Is it fair to the other candidates that Bloomberg may be able to qualify?

I don't think.

I think the rules ought to be the same for everybody.

But they shouldn't change them.

They said them.

They had a big argument about them and they ought to stay the way that they are.

Mayor Bloomberg is out there spending a ton of money in areas that are not going to and doing a pretty good job from what I can tell from the state.

They're

standing up.

Yeah, at some point in time, but I know there was a dust up with this early on about some of the other candidates not being able to get in.

And at some point in time, I suppose so, but it's a really difficult case for them to make today after taking the position that they took a couple of months ago.

I feel like when people lose, they just fight about the rules.

Yeah, in many ways.

I mean, what do you think about, I mean, Corey Booker dropped out, Kamala Harris dropped out, and

there was some support for that, obviously.

And I mean, they were, I didn't know what the argument was because it's not like they're in a party that isn't trying to be diverse or that, you know, banned them from the ballot box.

They didn't get the votes.

Yeah, but they couldn't get in on, speaking of the change in those rules, they couldn't get in on that, right?

They would like, hey, we have less than 1%, but we got to reach out to the grassroots.

So to change the rules for Bloomberg right now is kind of tricky.

But I think, now, here's my theory.

Probably I'm the only person that thinks this.

Part of

the blowback against Kamala and Corey had nothing to do with them.

They were perfectly fine candidates.

I think it's the kind of delayed reaction of grief over some Democrats to Obama.

Love him as a person, still a great hero, but his policies, not so much.

So

they see Kamala and Corey, who kind of look like Obama politically speaking, and they go, yeah, we've had that enough, and we need to go on to the next one.

And that's my theory about why.

Is there that much disappointment about Obama policies?

I mean, saving the economy,

bailing out the

industry and the, you know,

health care.

I mean,

but they were complicated.

It was not just policies.

The art of the possible politics.

Well, the art of the possible.

That's what people don't get these days.

But he went around the country also picking on black people in a particular kind of fashion.

Obama did?

Oh, yeah.

Picking on.

Oh, yeah.

Like, let me give a quick example.

So he went to Morehouse College, and he's lecturing them, and he's telling them that they're graduating from college.

And he's saying, you know, nobody's going to give you anything you didn't deserve or that you didn't earn.

Well, the only person who got an unearned degree that day was you, Obama, because they worked for theirs.

And then he really kind of excoriated them.

But when he went to Barnard College, he had none of that.

So he was like, I was a young person.

I know what it is.

I claimed the white man was being racist against me.

I doubt that.

But then he turns around and goes to Barnard and doesn't excoriate them for the sexism.

He went to the Congressional Black Caucus and said, stop complaining, stop bitching, put on your bedroom slippers, go out there and war because they were com they were saying to him you got to have policies that are at least more respective of 14 percent black unemployment so yeah there was a there was

no i'm not sure

here's my point

here's my point

would i take him right now no damn right

but notwithstanding what the professor said who i love the polling data reflects that the democrats in this country have a very high opinion of president Obama's attention.

And they would take it back in a second.

I too would hear him.

I will too.

I will too.

All right.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Appreciate it, audience.

We will see you next week.

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