Overtime - Episode #511: Susan Rice, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Danielle Pletka, Sam Stein, Thomas Chatterton Williams

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Honey punches the votes for all.

Today,

I'm not sure what to do with the world.

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

Okay, Susan Rice, do you have confidence that all votes will be counted fairly in the 2020 election?

Yeah.

Well, here's what I have confidence in.

I don't.

First of all, the key thing is whether people get to vote and whether their opportunity, once they have voted, is respected.

So we don't want another

reprise of what happened in Georgia, for example.

But if the issue is whether interference from foreigners can manipulate the vote tally, that's a lot harder than some people might think.

And that's because our electoral systems in the states are distinct from one another.

They're not hooked up to the internet, and they've actually been reinforced.

So, in terms of foreign interference, I have some degree of confidence.

In terms of what state election authorities might do to try to disenfranchise certain segments of the population, that I have more concern about.

What do you think?

What does everybody think about the bet I was making with him?

Well, is it limited to the case?

Do you think

if he would take my if he would yeah, I mean, I'd happily give my last penny to have him?

But, I mean,

you know, I've been saying for a very long time now that I don't think he's leaving.

I mean, he wasn't going to leave the first time.

It was all about it's rigged.

He could lose by a landslide in 2020, and I still think he would say it's rigged, fake news, deep state.

I just don't think you're going to get him out of there.

But, Bill, if he left office, what would you talk about in your monologue?

I don't know.

What did I talk about the 23 years I was on TV before he came along, Mr.

Sciences?

Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, what do you think about Mike Mulvaney proclaiming that they will not discuss climate change at the G7 summit?

Yeah.

Well, climate change should be discussed at any possible opportunity.

You are gathering people in power.

And

to deny what is an objectively true

fact

about what scientists have recovered in the world is to delay what might otherwise be sensibly argued political decisions about how to address the problem.

But as long as you keep suppressing it, that is a recipe for the end of civilization as we know it.

Okay.

Can I just say one thing about the G7?

Have a good weekend.

I've been part of a few G7 summits, and I know the host country sets the agenda, but the other countries get a say.

And what I expect is going to happen is Donald Trump may not want to have a formal session on climate change, but it will be on the agenda because the other countries are going to insist on it.

And the irony here is that, I mean, Doral is right outside Miami, and it's going to be underwater in like 50 years because of climate change, and they're just not going to discuss it.

If you melt Antarctica, maybe 60.

I don't think it's 50.

In the limiting case where all of Antarctica and Greenland melt, then the sea levels will rise to the level of the Statue of Liberty's left elbow.

Right.

That's the end of Planet of the Ace.

Yeah.

It's not the end of Planet.

You blew it up, you damn stupid thing.

Oh, this.

I get chills when you do

your Charlton Heston.

Okay, Sir Thomas Chatterton Williams.

By the way,

I heard Downton Abbey is fantastic.

Can you explain why you believe Americans must unlearn race in order to transcend racism?

Sure, because racism...

It's a lot about what your book is about.

Yes, racism creates race, not the other way around.

So I think that you have to be able to do two things.

You have to fight the racism that exists in the society that we have, and you have to also keep an eye on imagining a better society that we want to have.

I don't think you can get a better future that you can't first imagine.

So I don't think it's enough to be anti-racist.

I think that you also have to be anti-race if this is not a biological reality,

which I want to know.

I mean, I don't think Neil would agree that it's a biological reality, right?

What I can tell you is that when I'm asked what race I am, I say I'm the human race.

And when you recognize that

any two people in the world actually have a common ancestor not very far back in the tree of life, that

to sit here and tribalize by whatever possible little difference we can find among ourselves rather than seeing what we actually have in common is an abomination of civilization.

It just points to the fact that we are really still a very young species.

Yes.

We are at the infancy, really.

It's embarrassing.

It's embarrassing.

Aliens will come down and say, what the hell is going on?

Right, right, right.

I also think in 100 years, doctors will look at what we are doing today, the way we look at the way they treated George Washington and Henry VIII.

They'll be like, Really?

You put wood in his mouth?

You know, oh, he had an infection, did he?

And you put dirt in it.

That was good.

There are things we're doing right now.

They'll be like,

anyway.

Okay, Sam Stein, what do you think of Shepard Smith leaving Fox News?

Well, look, everything happens for a reason.

I've been waiting to use that one.

I was hoping that.

That was very good.

You know,

first of all, I love Shep.

Shep is great, and probably one of the most talented, if not the most talented, current live news broadcasters in the business.

And his departure from Fox News, I don't know, I mean, we can all speculate with the backstories.

I think it's pretty obvious, but it's just a real loss for the industry.

I mean, it is important, if not vital, to have voices like that on Fox News.

I think it's critical.

And the absence of that voice, I think, is going to cause some real damage to our news ecosystem.

And I'm sad about it, honestly.

Danielle, is Hillary Clinton right in suggesting that Russia is grooming Tulsi Gabbard to be a third-party candidate?

I couldn't believe she said that.

Tell us what she said.

Well, she said,

Hillary Clinton said that Tulsi Gabbard, who is a.

That I can't answer.

I thought she was in the woods.

So Hillary Clinton said.

Not touching that either.

Hillary Clinton said that Tulsi Gabbard, who's one of the Democratic candidates for president,

is the best candidate for Russia and is the candidate that Russia.

She's the first to accuse Tulsi Gabbard of that.

Well, that she's a Russian asset of some kind.

She's the first very prominent person.

And

then said that

she wasn't sure that the Russians would let go of Jill Stein

and give Telsi Gabbard that crown.

It was a, I don't know what the rest of you thought.

I thought it was a very strange thing.

No, it was inappropriate, honestly.

What is she basing it on?

I mean, obviously there's anecdotal stuff that she can point to, but there's no, unless she has some information that she's not divulging, I don't think it's really fair to say.

But did you see Telsi Gabbard's response?

That was a little bit crazy.

No, she said it's a race that the Democratic primary is now a race between her and Hillary Clinton.

And she did nothing to disavow her embrace of Russia.

You mean she should have said, I'm not a Russian agent?

I mean, seriously?

Tulsi Gabbard's comments and actions are questions.

Tulsi Gabbard is unconscionable, as far as I'm concerned.

Are you kidding?

She went and propagandized for Bashar al-Assad.

She's unconscionable.

Your guy's a traitor.

He's not my guy.

But I mean, like, he sides with countries that are not.

He's not a Russian agent.

Yeah, he actually is a Russian agent.

He is a Russian agent.

He fucking has meetings with Putin and no one's allowed in the room.

He doesn't

have Tulsi Gabbard.

We're talking about Tulsi Gabbard.

I'm not here to defend Donald Trump.

Are you defending Tulsi Gabbard?

No, I'm not defending her either.

I'm attacking her.

No, I'm attacking her, like Hillary, so I guess that's what we have in common.

I thought it was weird and inappropriate.

Looks like we're all coming together.

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