Overtime - Episode #504: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Michael Render (a.k.a Killer Mike), Carl Hulse, Rick Wilson, Betsy Woodruff

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

All right. Betsy Woodruff.

Will Hong Kong become an issue for the Democratic presidential hopefuls? Well. Already is.
Yeah.

A little bit. Yeah.

It's the one piece of China policy where they can actually be tougher than the president because the president doesn't give a shit about human rights, which is why he hasn't talked about the mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims in China, and which is why he's acting like she is going to be able to just magically fix this problem, you know?

So, yeah, it presents an opportunity for Democrats to reach out to the community of Americans who are really pissed about China

without trying to compete with Trump on his specific. It's tough when you've got a trade war going, though.
Right. Nancy Pelosi

always made this a huge issue, human rights in China. I would totally expect them to really emphasize this and try and

put Trump in a corner on this. As it should.
It shows that he's weak.

Carl, would any gun control legislation survive the Republican majority on the Supreme Court? That's a great point. Well, that is a really, really great point.

They can pass all the legislation they want, which is tough to do to begin with. But then

Senator Whitehouse, who you had on earlier, filed a brief in the court this week, basically telling them to stay away from the gun control issue because the Republican nominees on the Supreme Court were carefully screened for their strong Second Amendment positions, and Republicans have blocked other Democratic judges because of this.

So I'm not sure it would survive. You know, the famous Scalia decision is the law of the land.
I'll make a way to get there. I would argue it weakens black Democratic state-run

people who are looking to run for statewide seats.

What does? Wait, where are we?

I bet that pushing the Second Amendment line in the deep South, pushing the Second Amendment line in the deep south, not only will turn out more Republican voter-based from the white worker class and white rural class, you begin to keep black working class people and men in particular at home.

Because again, I live in Atlanta, but that's in Georgia. Georgia's a radically different place from Atlanta.
And if I'm driving to South Georgia, North Florida, I have a concealed weapons license.

There's not a time that I don't have a weapon on.

I think in the gun conversation, I don't know that people recognize the extent to which the NRA is in chaos right now.

I've been covering conservative movement politics for years, and I have never seen people in the broader pro-gun community as pissed off and as interested in complaining to reporters about the way the NRA is operating, the way it's spending donor money, than they have been in the last six months.

It's really crazy. It turned out the NRA is pretty swampy.

Yes, very swampy.

You strapped right now, Mike? Huh? You're strapped right now? No, I'm in California. I couldn't admit if I was.
But I got homies that would knock.

I got some homies out here to touch up.

You got my ass, too, right? I got strapped right now.

Stand behind me. All right.

Mike, what did you think of Cardi B's summit with Bernie Sanders? Man,

I'd be

so encouraged because this is a country that prompted, well, this is a country of vagrants, unwanted, and protesters. In our inception, right?

We're essentially the hood of the United Kingdom.

No, that's Australia. Yeah, yeah, I know, right here.

Australia would be my ghetto.

But Cardi represents a young Afro-Latina woman from

poor and working-class background who has now used her platform when she could have become far more conservative, made her money, and walked away.

She used it to engage not only for her own self-interest, but the self-interest on behalf of her people. She's now probably in a 40, 35 to 45 percent tax bracket.

And she said, I don't mind paying my money. I just would like my my money to go other places besides military.
I'd like it to go in education.

And I think that's what my grandparents wanted when they moved from the deep south. That's what your parents want.

So for me, seeing her participate in it invigorates me because I know other young women, 18, 19, 21 years old, who may not be going to college for four and six year degrees, but maybe going to beauty school, maybe working menial jobs.

It makes them angry. Well, that's an interesting point then, because Bernie, who you support.
Yes. Okay, he's for free college.
I've raised this point before.

Why should people who don't go to college be subsidizing the ones who do? Because the people who go to college are going to be making a lot more money. College is not free.

Somebody's going to be paying for that college. I don't understand why the people who get the benefit of it shouldn't be paying for it.
College and trade school.

And this is from a dad who has had children who went to both. My oldest son went to Omni-Tech Trade and learned computer engineering and things of that nature and sound engineering.

My daughter did two years. She did the same two years twice on me in Savannah State.

You know, 21 grand.

I love her. That's my baby.
Really sticks sticks in your mind there, doesn't it? But yeah, I know.

But he offered college and trade school. Part of being an American is being a steward for the next generation of Americans.
My grandparents worked in fields. My grandmother went to college.

My grandfather toiled on a blue-collar job so that my sisters and I could then have post-secondary education. I don't mind, as an American now, investing in the greater America.

If we're going to build an infrastructure, you got to have carpenters and electricians. If that's one of your children, that's fine by me.
Okay.

Rick Wilson, would bringing the troops back from Afghanistan give Trump enough political capital to win in 2020? I haven't heard that raise yet.

No, what it's going to do is provide video of the Taliban cutting women's heads off and stoning women to death or returning to a state of medieval savagery. It's making a

making Afghanistan great again. Because that's where the real Nazis are.

I would like to

in matters of talking about immigration,

you know, there's a group of Falashe Jews out of Eastern Africa that are in Israel too.

And I would like to say in our talk about Israel, let's not forget there is a Palestinian group of people living there, and that conflict is there, and we know about it.

Many of us have Jewish and Palestinian friends. As Americans, it's something that you're constantly balancing.

But let's not forget that there's what they call Beta Israel or the Eastern African Jews that are there, and they also are not treated the best by government.

And we should be in our relation and our growth of our relationship within Israel be encouraging because there was seven, nine years ago,

women were being given in vitro and not given the full spectrum of the dangers and things that are going on.

So let's make sure that in our talks with Israel that we don't leave out that there's a bigger,

because it's government, it's not about the big exodus from Ethiopia.

Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.

And were they connected in some way? The Rastas were the Rastafarians. Aren't they from Ethiopia?

yeah but it's that's Christianity like the oldest Christian Bible is in Ethiopia but prior to European why do the Rastas worship this Ethiopian emperor

why do white people worship a Caesar who looks who looks like a beach bum I don't know but people need something to worship that doesn't look like that

but what I do know is what we know is Abrahamic religion started in that eastern horn in Africa so it affects people differently but let's just not forget that there's an old thousands of year olds group of Jewish people called Falashays that are in Israel, too, and they need to be treated with love, dignity, and respect.

Okay. Thank you, everybody.

Appreciate you coming. We'll see you next time.
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