Overtime – Episode #489: Irshad Manji, Larry Charles, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Evelyn Farkas, Eric Swalwell

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

Okay.

Okay, we're back.

Okay, here are the questions.

Larry, as someone who grew up in Trump Village, you grew up in Trump Village?

I grew up in Trump Village.

Wait, there's such a thing as Trump Village?

Yeah, it's a Soviet housing complex

at the end of Brooklyn.

Seriously?

Yes, in Brooklyn.

Yes, built by his father, taking advantage of the New York housing laws at the time.

So do you have any memories of the younger Trump that you can share?

We had a Little League field that was built, and he came with his father to christen the Little League, and he was still in exactly the same shapeless suit and the weird hair, even at 14.

So I didn't understand that.

So he was a kid?

When he was a kid, he was wearing a junior.

And he was wearing a suit?

He was Trump Jr., yeah.

He was very, he was like the guy he is now, only like the mini-me version of it.

He grew into the

full

thing.

Little individual one.

Wow.

Yes.

Okay.

Evelyn, how should the U.S.

best deal with Venezuela?

Ah, that's a really good...

That's a good one.

First of all, don't invade it, okay?

Because there are all kinds of hints.

Half the time I think the vice president wants to take us into Venezuela.

But we have to support the opposition.

I think the president is right to divert the money to what we have declared is the legitimate government.

the outgoing government, so Maduro, is not legitimate.

And then, you know, come up with real assistance, work with the international community.

As always, this administration doesn't do enough diplomatically to keep this issue and others front and center.

Okay.

Here, Shad.

How do you recommend people stand up for what they believe while also avoiding the behavior that you criticize in your book?

Well, we criticized a lot of people.

I don't know know what that is.

Yeah, so

answer anything you want.

All right.

Stop it.

That's an open shot for you.

You can stay anyway.

So, as I said earlier, right, we live in this hyper-polarized time, and so often we throw labels at one another and then roll our eyes and walk away, which changes nobody's mind.

Rather, we should be actually starting conversations where none would have existed before, especially with people who disagree with us.

For one thing, you can actually glean information from the other person that helps you reframe your argument in a way they can understand.

Last week at the end of the show, I mentioned you in my editorial because it was about how Democrats should go on Fox News, which they don't.

They're invited, they just don't go.

He goes.

Donna Brazil.

Yeah, you're the only one who goes.

Don't want a nice...

And then...

That was Friday night.

I pick up the paper the next day, and it says Donna Brazil

has joined Fox News.

And she said exactly the same thing I was saying saying the night before, that you got to go where the people are, and you got to talk to people who don't agree with you.

And it's, again, it's another,

sorry to say it, it's another way the Democrats look weak.

Talk to people who don't agree with you, but also don't discount how many, I've seen this, the number of people who come up to me and say, I love watching on Fox News, especially women, and they'll say, I'm not a Republican, but my husband makes me watch it.

That's all that's on the TV station, or the bartenders who have that in their bars because the owner wants it.

Why would we want to dismiss that?

My husband makes me watch fuck.

There's a human rights issue

we've got to get to.

I hear that a lot.

Is it all Muslim women?

I'm totally.

But yeah, I have lots of people come up.

Conservatives often come up to me.

I watch your show.

I don't agree with everything you say.

But you have conservatives on, and sometimes you express a point of view I agree with, and, you know, and funny.

You know, funny makes up for a lot of it.

They respect you for it.

And they respect you for it.

What do you think, Congressman, of Devon Nunes' lawsuit against Twitter, parody accounts?

Oh my God.

The one against the cow?

I mean, they got their snowflakes on the right, too.

Boy, boy, do they have some snowflakes.

That cow has more followers than he does now.

Right, the cow has more followers.

But I think the most important...

What an idiot to step into that.

Couldn't he see that coming if he announced the lawsuit that it was just going to create that?

Yeah, the good news is we took the gavel out of his hand.

Right.

And yes.

He should focus on utter things.

Let me add.

Ah, utter things.

Utter things.

Boy.

You really milked that one.

Oh.

I'm going to chew on that all weekend.

But

fake moves.

All right.

That's the last.

Fake moose.

I'm not getting involved in this.

Don't look at me.

But let me ask you this.

I mean, we hope, some of us, that, you know, if justice really is done, some people will be going to jail right up until the

person of number one.

What about these people like Devin Nunes, who were just incredible enablers, Lindsey Graham, people like that.

What is the appropriate punishment for them when this is all over?

Former congressman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's it.

But is that all?

Is that all?

I mean, weren't they also obstructing this as much as they possibly could?

I think Nunes has been.

Obstructive justice.

Can we go further than just voting them out of office?

He had to shovel us out.

He had to have a lot of people.

Buried the evidence.

We saw that for two years.

You know what?

Let's just make him a former congressman.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Definitely not what they would say.

Lock him up.

You're hanging people.

It goes both ways, though.

It has to be a dangerous precedent that can be used against anybody.

All right.

Kristen, do you think Republicans will be willing to take action on anything incriminating that may appear in the Mueller report?

What are you, high?

Or will they continue to protect Trump no matter what?

Well, it's a tough one.

We don't know what's in the Mueller report, but what I can say, and you sort of mentioned this on the show, is why is it that Republicans have been so loath to criticize Trump?

That when behind the scenes, behind closed doors, they'll sort of grumble about him, oh, I wish he would stop the tweets, oh, I don't like this thing he did or that thing he did.

And I think part of the reason why you see so few Republicans say putting out press releases saying, we think that what the president said about John McCain is abhorrent, is I think there is a sense that it is futile to do so, that the Democrats are already on it, and that if they do so, all it does is make them an enemy of the president, meaning that the policy stuff they like is harder to get done, and that they're not actually changing any minds.

And those Republican voters who I talk to in those focus groups, it's only once they realize that they're inside the family that they're like, oh, I wish you would stop the tweeting.

Oh, it's so annoying.

But they feel like if you're someone, like someone like Paul Ryan, who I am sure you think did not do nearly enough to criticize President Trump.

When I go into these focus groups, they think Paul Ryan was traitorous to the president for daring to have put out a couple of press releases from time to time saying he shouldn't have said what he said at Charlottesville.

And so

a lot of these Republican lawmakers, I think, feel a total impasse that if they put out that press release, they put out that condemnation, they're not changing who Trump is fundamentally as a person.

He's still going to say crazy stuff.

He's still going to insult people.

Their press release isn't changing that, so they just don't put it out.

And it makes them look weak, I agree, but that's what they're stuck between and why you hear crickets when Trump does some of these things.

Who do you think is going to win?

2020.

Well, last time you asked me to predict, I thought Hillary Clinton was going to be the next one.

Yeah, so

we have that clip.

I know, I know.

I'm not alone.

The good news is I wasn't alone.

I mean, I think Trump will be very formidable.

His approval rating is not great, but it's not terrible.

It's above 40%, which is historically a bad place for it to be.

But for Trump, it's not the worst it's been.

And I think it depends who do Democrats nominate.

Do they listen to you, Bill?

Do they nominate someone who isn't going to turn off all of those voters in the middle who don't love the tweets, who don't love everything Trump does?

But do the Democrats nominate someone that they can potentially get president?

I don't even know who that is.

Well, he's not going to be president in 2021.

I promise that.

I've talked to the Republicans you've talked to.

If their position is...

Well, wait a second.

Do we really want to be complacent like that and tell people it's in the bag?

No, no, we're going to beat him.

And I have the confidence that what we did in Michigan, what we did in Pennsylvania, what we did in Wisconsin, we're going to beat him.

But no, no, I want to address what you said about my Republican.

Not the right message.

We may not beat him.

No, we're not going to think it's the right message.

You should have stopped him now.

Not the Republicans.

That's what we heard all the last time.

I want to talk about the Republicans, though,

that you've talked about, because if they just believed in what Donald Trump was doing and that's why they can't speak out against him, I would give them that.

But what they tell me privately is I'm afraid that if I speak up, he tweets, he wins.

And what bothers me is that I would like to think that as members of Congress, they're otherwise employable.

That this isn't the only job that they could get, that they actually could do the right thing, feel good about it, and that's what's so maddening.

It wasn't supposed to be that way, wasn't it?

But there's something even more dangerous at stake here because all tweets are not equal.

And the ones where he espouses or excuses violence, or where he speaks out against and calls the media the enemy of the people, all those things that actually get, or criticizes the Justice Department, the police, what have you, you name it, those tweets go run counter to democracy.

They're attacking democracy.

And if Republicans can't stand up and say something, then we're in real danger because the Democracy's Die Book says you can prevent democracy if the two sides can come together based on principles like defending our institutions.

Well, I,

you know.

I've been saying for over two years he's not going to leave even if he loses.

I think you're on the page with that, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I agree.

And that's what I'm afraid about 2020, because he could lose, as you're saying.

What happens then?

How can we get him out of the way?

It's like getting a tick out of your dog's breast,

you know?

I think it's about defeating Trumpism and not just Trump.

Let's start with Trump.

Okay.

All right, last question.

Are Trump's feuds with George Conway and the late John McCain, well, that one's different, but worthy of the media's attention?

I don't think that his feud with George Conway is.

And I don't feel comfortable sort of even speculating.

I mean, a lot of this has involved speculation about their marriage, and I think that's really unseemly.

And it's also, in a way, kind of like the Devin Nunes-Cal thing: it's like a streisand effect.

Most people are not following George Conway on Twitter.

And so it elevates this when suddenly the president tweets about it, and every news network goes, oh, well, the president tweeted, so now it's news, and we can talk about it.

How could a marriage like that ever get back on time?

I mean, after a week like this,

I never thought of that.

How's the country ever going to get back?

I mean, it's a big problem.

But how would they, either they have no sex or the hottest hate sex

ever, right?

It's one of the two.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

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