Overtime - Episode #513: Dr. Jay Gordon, Ronan Farrow, Christina Bellantoni, Dennis Prager, Richard Stengel

This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV Insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So, if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, pet injuries, and additional coverage and subject to policy terms.

CRM was supposed to improve customer relationships.

Instead, it's shorthand for can't resolve much.

Which means you may have sunk a fortune into software that just bounces customer issues around but never actually solves them.

On the ServiceNow AI platform, CRM stands for something better.

With AI built into one platform, customers aren't mired in endless loops of automated indifference.

They get what they need when they need it.

Bad CRM was then.

This is ServiceNow.

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, real-time with Bill Meyer.

Okay,

thank you.

Here we are with the questions.

Ronan, were you surprised that you were able to win the trust of the Black Cube agent hired by Harvey Weinstein to stalk and intimidate you?

And you're going to have to explain what that means to folks who have.

Black Cube is an Israeli private intelligence firm that touts its close connections to the Mossad.

It's run by a lot of former Mossad and other Israeli intelligence and military personnel.

And they did have a subcontractor operation where there was a Russian spy and a Ukrainian spy kind of chasing me around for a lot of the plot of catch and kill.

And look, one of the inspiring things about these events, despite all the darkness in them, is time and time again, there were whistleblowers who saw bad stuff happening and said, enough, I'm going to report it.

And one of those guys chasing me becomes a source.

How do you know when they're chasing you?

You know, for a time it's sort of its paranoia of seeing the same car over and over again, seeing the same guy over and over again, and then ultimately it is receipts.

I'm an attorney and a skeptical investigative reporter, and I get all the contracts showing exactly how the operation went.

And one of these guys at the heart of it was one of the many sources who stood up and said, I care about the free press, I don't want to be tracking reporters.

And one of the craziest things in it is you describe getting all these text messages, like just dozens and dozens at a time.

Like, that is not a way, a method I would have thought to be spied on, but now it's made me paranoid.

They use my phone to track me.

There's a lot of different methods, but it actually ties into some very high-stakes issues globally too, right?

Because Jamal Khashoggi's friends had this kind of spyware on their phones.

An Israeli company called NSO Group is one of the main personalities.

When you want to get serious with this shit, you get Israelis.

You know?

When I went to Europe to tour like four years ago, who protected me?

Israelis.

That's who we got.

We got fucking Israelis.

There's a lot of great private firms out of Israel that do good work on security.

Right, no, I'm just saying.

I mean, I was able to unmask all their agents.

So I don't know if that's a ringing endorsement.

Okay.

Dr.

Gordon, how concerned are you about the new report that says 95% of baby food contains toxic metals?

It does.

I tell people to please make their own baby food.

I don't trust the manufacturers of children's products, whether it's pharmaceuticals or baby food.

And

I worry a lot about the new vaccine laws, laws which have taken the decision about vaccines away from parents initially gave it to me and now there's going to be a government committee in California deciding whether or not you medically qualify for vaccine exemption and those laws are going to spread across the United States unless we slow them down but

and the sheep not applauding okay so Dennis how can you justify saying truth is not a left-wing value when Donald Trump has lied over 13,000 times since taking office office.

He does lie.

You would agree with that.

He does.

Okay.

On a level that no one else has ever lied.

No, that I would not say.

You see, wait, wait, first of all.

What about like when he makes a point?

Like he said he talked to Mitch McConnell.

And Mitch McConnell said, we never had a conversation.

Okay.

Has ever been a president lied like that?

So allow me to explain my comment.

Okay.

All right.

First of all, Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is not right-wing or conservative.

Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

Okay.

The left wing.

The left wing.

I'll tell you what it means.

I'll tell you what it means.

The left wing is infinitely larger than one person.

I don't choose one left-wing person who tells a lie.

The left wing says, I'll give you gigantic lies, that the United States is a racist country.

This is a lie.

This is a gargantuan lie.

This is the least racist, multicultural, multi-ethnic country in the history of the world.

That these people believe it is proof to me about how effective lying is

this is an unbelievably non-racist country have you people been to asia do you people know that the japanese did not allow one vietnamese boat person into japan okay because they're not japanese but we're we allowed them into america what what is that we're better than the giant no we're better than the japanese

dumb argument we are less racist than any country with many races okay

it is a lie

we have ever been documented of course there's race.

I'm a Jew.

There are anti-Semites in America.

It is a giant lie that America is anti-Semitic.

I taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College.

I know it.

I wrote two books on Judaism.

This is the least anti-Semitic country Jews have ever lived in.

To say America is anti-Semitic is a lie.

To say it is racist is a lie.

These are giant left-wing lies.

We're talking about degrees.

To say that men can menstruate is a lie.

And that is now, that is what is said.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, where did that come from?

You never heard it.

Ryan, okay.

Check it out, folks.

Check it out.

Anyone who says a man cannot menstruate is considered transphobic.

I missed this whole story.

Are you kidding?

I did.

Are you kidding me?

Now tell me where he was.

Where are you getting this?

Just Google it.

Can men menstruate?

But who is saying this?

You're saying that it's saying very small.

Oh, really?

Then how do you allow men, biological men, to run against women in the races in Connecticut and set all the high school records?

Okay, I know.

But that's not.

But they're called men.

No, no, no.

The nation they I wouldn't say they're women.

Okay, but I would agree with you on that.

The way you framed it is nonsense.

No, I framed it perfectly accurately.

No, no, no, you didn't.

What you're talking about is, yes, someone who is transgendered, was a man, now claims to be a woman, is a woman, okay,

is

beating the dog shit out of other women in the race because, of course, they have more muscle mass.

And even Martina Navratilova came out and said, this is ridiculous.

You might as well not have women's sport.

This is a far cry from saying men can menstruate.

I agree.

But that's not where anyone went with that, but you.

Okay.

At the University of Berkeley men's room, tampons are given out.

Check it out.

UC Berkeley men's rooms have tampon dispensers.

Would you say that?

That's probably because men are pussywhipped and their girlfriend said, go get me a tampon.

That's why.

That's a logical.

That's a much more logical.

Okay.

Okay, all right.

Moving on to the next.

Dennis, I remember you in the old show, you were a little more reasonable.

What did I say that wasn't under you?

You said that we think that men menstruate, and no one does.

We never

had you heard about it?

I missed that one, I confess.

And this is one of the premier reporters.

I mean,

he knows everything.

These people are very.

He's a doctor.

He's one of the people.

I would make a friendly bet that the lgbtq normative statement is men can menstruate with north america generating most

with i'm glad you think that's okay all right let's let's let's talk about another kind of gusher with north

with with with north america

with north

with north america generating most of the oil that's used in the united states why is the u.s still in the middle east now i read this week that we get 16%

of our oil from the Middle East countries.

That's not much.

Only $30 billion do we spend on it.

Most of it we get from us.

Canada get half.

Canada, we get like half, and they have zero warlords.

And

Mexico.

Why are we spending

untold billions to protect this area that we're only spending 30 billion on oil for?

It makes no sense.

Well, it should be liberating for us.

I mean, we started to get involved in the Middle East in 1945 when we wanted oil, when there was oil discovery in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

We are now, as of the last two years, the world's largest energy producer, not just oil itself, but all kinds of other forms of energy.

And it should liberate us from having to be there.

What's ironic and silly about what Donald Trump has done is he's taken out a thousand special operations forces in Syria, by the way, the same guys who got al-Baghdadi.

We have 14,000 people in Kuwait, we have 13,000 people in Qatar.

Let's bring some of them home.

I agree, we should have a smaller footprint in the Middle East.

And the person who tried to do that was Barack Obama.

There's also reasons to be present strategically other than military presence, and we've talked about this before.

We have strip mined our diplomatic apparatus, and in a lot of these countries, we now have primarily a military posture that is completely needless.

It costs us in multiple ways, and it's changed the face we put forward to the world.

We need more diplomats in these places.

Look, I think the fact that we had a small number of troops in Syria, but still American troops.

All you need is a couple of thousand.

And this is why, before Trump did his thing three weeks ago, we didn't lose Syria.

Now, Iran has an overland route into Hezbollah.

I thought you were a big Israel lover.

You're okay with that?

Your boy gave Syria to the Russians and the Iranians, and now Israel is going to have Iranian

Wall Street Journal and every single Republican and conservative columnist I have read, including people I've had on my show, disagreed with the president on Syria.

So just know about the cult issue.

I don't know who's in that cult because every Republican I have read opposed the president on that issue.

Well, I would advise you to look at Lindsey Graham's comments on that because at first he said, what you're saying now, I don't agree, and then he was like, president thinks out of the box, this could work.

Okay, maybe, all right.

And he's not the only one.

I mean, this idea that the president doesn't have enablers and lackeys.

Did you read the comment from his press secretary who said General Kelly quit because he couldn't

take the genius that is Donald Trump?

Did you see that?

Okay.

I have it somewhere.

Press secretaries, it's unfair to pick on them.

They have

a credible role.

Did any press secretary ever say that?

Anything like that?

Okay, if that's what she said, it's a silly thing.

She did.

Keep talk amongst yourselves.

I'm going to find this card.

Okay, fine.

All right, I'll say something.

We are in the Middle East, not just for oil.

Wherever American troops are, liberty expands.

Look at Korea, look at Germany, look at Japan.

If they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to those who deserve it, the American military would get it every year.

Here's the comment.

She said, I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.

You're telling me that sounds like a

fucking Kim Jong-un's people sound like.

You're okay with that?

No, it's silly.

It's silly, but it's not Kim Jong-un.

It's not?

Unequipped to handle the genius of our great president?

I mean...

But we're free to laugh at it, so it's not North Korea, is it?

We're laughing at the president's press secretary.

If you laugh at Kim Jong-un's press secretary, you're dead.

We're looking at the trajectory of where we might go.

Today, we're laughing.

Tomorrow, who knows?

Thank you, everybody.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Ma every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.