Overtime - Episode #512: Zach Galifianakis, Chris Cuomo, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Dan Carlin, Donny Deutsch,

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

Okay.

So here are the questions. Zach, are you encouraged by last month's ruling that North Carolina's legislative maps are unconstitutional?

Yes, I know you spend a lot of time working on the gerrymandering issue.

Yes,

that sounds like a joke to the audience.

It is true. It is true.
Yes, I'm very, very

care. Well, North Carolina, listen, both sides have done it for many years, but I think in North Carolina,

it was so

crazy that people had to step in and say something.

Well, just to give the stats, I think there were 13 legislative districts, nine were Republican, and the state was dead even. Yes.
So I mean, right there. It really is the summary of

what is happening there. It's politicians.
picking the voters. Yes.
And that's all it is versus the middle way right now. Right.

I mean, it's a, you know, that's another reason why we have to worry, is that the Democrats don't have to just win. They have to win so big to overcome the cheating.
The Democrats don't play dirty.

They need to learn to play a little dirty. I mean,

when they go low, we go high. People go low, go to the side and give them a noogie when they're not looking.
I mean, that's the answer. I mean, you know,

you don't come to a gunfight with a knife. If the other guy's got a gun, you got to bring a gun.
That's it. I mean, simple.

But I think they're working on this, don't they? They're bringing a covered dish.

I think with Trump looking so much like he's a combination of unhinged and not polite and all these kind of other things, I think the opposite is, in fact, don't go down to that level because you're selling yourself as the alternative to that.

If you want to have a country where we don't treat each other that badly anymore, vote for me. If you want the country where we call each other scum, vote for the other people.

By the way, there's a way of playing dirty without using terms like human scum. When I say play dirty, play to win.
Play to win. Play hard.
That's a win.

And they just don't,

there's a wimpiness to the Democratic Party.

And you said something from so truth Donald Trump's essence of his brand is strength whether you like him whether you hate him right there is a strength there and that's what people follow and the Democrats I have never seen a Democrat in this iteration this group that projects strength and that's concerning okay depends how you define strength I think it's a fall a false strength that Trump

I think that's all false that strength oh it's oh he's a he's a boy he's a cloud underneath it yeah he's a wimp coward but he projects his right but his sorry I didn't mean this one

I'm over over it. Okay.

I think that look, I mean, you know, the whole...

I'm very sorry. Now you go.

I think that harshness is a false proxy for strength. That's what this president is.

I think that you can be strong and sweet. Compassion is a kind of strength.
And I think that

sweetness are different types of power.

I mean, you know, one of the reasons I like having the Congresswoman on the show is incredible forensic background, incredible incisiveness, but not everything is about somebody else having to suck in her analysis.

And I think that that's a big difference, and I think there's an angle for that. You know, why does Mar, you know, why do your editorial comments in that last segment resonate so much?

Because even though there's a rapier wit there, you know, there's an edge to it, it's not everybody else has to lose for you to win. And I think that that's what people are really hungry for.

They're sick of everything being a nail and him being a hammer.

And if you want to talk about how Democrats can win, it's having a positive, affirmative vision of the future instead of just harping on Donald Trump. You can harm.
Obsessively.

No, no, obsessively focusing on Donald Trump. No, you can't harp on Donald Trump because that was a losing proposition.

What you can harp on is how Donald Trump is going to hurt and continue to hurt your life. And they never made that turn.
But I think it's fair. A criticism I hear

in my district is we don't know what Democrats always stand for.

What's your hat? Like Donald Trump has his hat. Make America great again.
What's your hat?

And I think it's important that we articulate that, especially talking about people's pocketbooks and their kids.

Because for everyone who's on Twitter and the audience here, that is not where my district is. My district wants their government to run just basics, the basics.

And until we can articulate how we're going to help people, we're just going to be clamoring, clamoring to get and compete with Donald Trump.

But doesn't that get you in a question in a problem, though?

Isn't clamoring to help people things like the Medicare for all and all these other things, which are examples of trying to help people's real problems, but but they also give ammunition to the enemy or the other side who would say that's socialized medicine or, you know, we have another socialist who wants to do Medicare for all and you can't afford it.

But Medicare for all might be seen as a way to help more Americans. I'll tell you one thing, though.

You tell 160 million Americans that they can't have their choose their private insurance, you're going to lose an election. And these people are smoking crap.

Forget about

not even being able to pay for $34 trillion.

My grandfather was a cop, okay? And my mother was a school teacher, and they worked really hard to put me in a a position where I can buy the kind of insurance I want.

And if I can't, or the people on this panel, I can't buy it for my children, we are going backwards. We're fucking Denmark, okay?

But remember, the problem wasn't that you couldn't buy insurance, it's that you could buy insurance and still end up broke when you needed it at the end.

I mean, the insurance had too many loopholes, so you get the government in to help that, and then we end up, you know.

And I have to say, no matter who's up on that debate stage, every single Democrat wants to protect health care and make it more affordable, whereas the Republicans want to take it away and make it more expensive, period.

There you go, that almost fits on a hat.

Yeah,

well, that brings up an interesting point. I was going to ask you this rain at a time.
I don't think the networks, including CNN, should be doing the debates.

Because I think networks have to make a profit. And I think when you have to make a profit, you have to put on a show.
And a debate shouldn't be a show.

It used to be the League of Women Voters who did it, you know, or have professors do it.

Run it on all three stations at once, too, remember? Run it on all three networks at once. Right, the old days, too.
Yeah, that's right. Except there's more than three networks now, exactly.

You have to run it on all five networks. Yeah, totally.
Stream it, and you know, it'll be a little more difficult. But what do you think about that?

I think that the party. Careful, Chris.
Zucker's watching. I think that, well, I mean, you know, the boss has made good decisions about what to do to have CNN positioned right.

But when you have the party in control of it, they have an extraordinary amount of leverage. How many people are going to be there, what kinds of questions?

And if you don't hit the targets that they're asking you to, you may not get another at-bat.

And I think that's a lot of leverage and I think that if you can decentralize it and have it be special interest groups that throw the debates, that dynamic goes out the window.

Well I would hardly call the League of Women Voters a special interest group.

What is the interest group? Voting? Yeah. Well that's

if you remove it.

I'm making your point. I'm saying that if you remove it from the parties

and put it into

these other non, you know, specifically partisan groups, you decentralize the power. Okay, Dan Carlin, what do you think of polling that says 70% of Americans believe the U.S.

is on the edge of a civil war?

I don't love polling because I thought we got burned on a couple of elections following the poll, so I'm not sure if I'm not. I say it's 60%.

Okay, well,

listen, I say it's only six out of ten Americans who think we're on the verge of a civil war. I think the problem is that

we are not a geopolitical. It's a bad thing.
Not a good thing.

It is a bad thing that we are on the verge of civil war.

You want want to see what's on the civil war, Trump loses, he will tell people to take to the streets. That's what I've been saying.
I'm saying, I forget that he's not going

one step further than that. Right, I think he's going to say

that. He's not president.
And by the way,

an umpire, I think he's working the World Series. Did you see this story? He tweeted out.
What did he say?

Something like, if they try to impeach my president, I'm getting my MAGA hat and my AK and getting in the streets. And

I can't really comment on baseball because I'm involved with it, but I don't think that's right.

Especially from somebody who's supposed to be impartial calling balls and strikes.

Yeah, but this reality show that's got a little shits and giggles in it, ain't gonna be any shits and giggles left if he loses.

We're going to Guantanamo Bay together.

You're friends with Kelly Ann Conway. I'm friends with Ann Coulter.
We're going to need these people. All right.

Thank you very much, 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.