Overtime - Episode #482: Dan Savage, Michael McFaul, Heather McGhee, Joshua Green

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

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

Okay.

All right.

Ambassador, how do you feel about the diplomatic response to Jamal Khashoggi's murder at the hands of the Saudis?

The Trump administration response?

I guess that's what they mean, yeah.

Pathetic.

Horrible.

Awful.

We can engage with autocrats when we have to in our national interests.

That doesn't mean we have to check our values at the door.

I knew Jamal.

I worked with him.

He was not some radical revolutionary.

He was trying to do the right thing.

And when we do that, then we undermine our values when we want to stand up for democracy.

So, you know, right now, there's these events happening in Venezuela.

You know, we have stood up for the opposition there, and I support that.

But it looks to the rest of the world like hypocrisy when we do things like that in Saudi Arabia.

Yeah, and it was only a few months ago, and it's, I don't hear it about it anymore.

Do you remember that?

It's not like he's out of power or anything happened to him.

Remember that moment when Putin and the Saudi Prince were in the same room?

5, 5, 5, 3?

Like, hey, we're both murdering journalists.

Welcome to the Murder and Journalist Club.

Right, exactly.

And Trump wants to be a member of that club so badly.

Yes, he does.

Okay, Heather, how do you think MLK would deal with Trump and the modern Republican Party?

Well, I mean, I think he would thank.

the Republican Party for how much love they show him every single year on one day, on his birthday.

It's unbelievable.

You know, you had Mike Pence on the air saying that what Trump was doing with the shutdown and what was in light of, you know, MLK's values.

I mean, listen,

Reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King was a prophet and a leader and a community organizer all in one, and we need that today.

He showed a vision of what this country could be.

He brought everybody in.

He wasn't afraid to educate people, to talk to recalcitrant white pastors and priests, and he wasn't afraid to say that this country could be better than it was.

And I don't think we have enough people laying out that vision.

And I mean, it's a joke to pretend that the Republican Party right now, which is just really remnants of sort of a racist devil's bargain,

has any claim to any part of his vision.

And they do it every single year on his birthday.

But King said on more than one occasion that the bigger problem was moderate white people.

That's true.

That's a big theme of his victim.

Right.

Right.

Right?

Because that's the problem.

It's not that they didn't disagree with him.

They just didn't want to do anything about it.

Right, that you're rushing, you're going too fast.

Yeah.

By the way, they spent two minutes at his memorial, Trump and Pence.

They didn't have anything planned that day, and then they realized they could lose their black supporter if they didn't do something.

And they rushed over there and spent two minutes.

I figure they're just going to yell out the window.

Okay, Joshua, how would you describe the relationship between journalists like yourself and sources inside the White House?

On the record, it's terrible.

Off the record, it's great.

I mean,

we wouldn't know half of what we know about what goes on behind the scenes if White House employees weren't inveterate leakers.

They all are.

And why do you think that is?

Because.

Different reasons.

Ego to stab colleagues in the back.

It's sort of Game of Thrones in there.

You know, some of them just get a charge out of seeing their blind quotes in print or trying to manipulate Trump.

That's another big reason.

If you get something on the front page in the New York Times, Trump will read it.

And you can help influence him that way.

I mean,

it's more true of television journalists than it is print like myself.

But Trump's advisors will go on TV on purpose to talk to him because they know that the likelihood is that Trump is sitting there with his TV on listening to what they have to say.

And there hasn't been a press conference since, I mean, a press briefing since December 18th, I think.

Not a formal one, but what's the point?

I mean, they get out, you know, Sarah Sanders will get out and lie to

journalists.

There really isn't any value.

So you both sort of agreed that if you're just going to lie, why do this?

Neither side wants to live.

You know, it's our job to show up.

and ask tough questions and document what happens, create a record of that, inform our readers and our viewers what's happening.

But that can't be the only line of attack or the only line of reporting, and it isn't.

I mean, I think to the great credit of a lot of people, maybe not so much during the campaign, but afterwards.

I mean, you've had fantastic journalism in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

We've done major financial investigations at Bloomberg, into Trump, into all the myriad conflicts of interest that are driving this administration and tearing the country to pieces.

But I want to make sure you understand how crazy this is.

I worked three years at the White House for President Obama.

Maybe we were too deliberative, right?

Maybe we took too long to talk about things, but we used to sit in the White House situation room and debate issues and then come up with a policy.

And then we'd work up the system and then the president would sit there sometimes for hours to talk about it.

None of that happens anymore.

They rarely meet.

He rarely spends time with advisors.

He's watching TV.

And then on occasion, he'll get on the phone with a leader and the leader will say, hey, I think you should leave Syria.

And he'd say, oh, that's a good idea.

Let's leave.

Without any process in place.

And we now know this because two senior officials resigned as a result of the broken process.

That's how, for my world about national security, it feels really dangerous that that's the way it works.

He knows more about technology than anybody.

Well, that's right.

I forgot.

I forgot.

I forgot.

I forgot.

I forgot.

He literally knows more about technology than anybody.

He literally, by the way, can I just say this?

Because people won't believe it.

He doesn't use a computer.

And he has, no, no, he has his aides go to Drudge Report and print it out on paper and bring it to him in a manila folder.

That's how he reads the internet on printed out pieces of paper.

He knows nothing about it.

He only reads when it's his name.

Putting that piece of paper that we found out he eats paper that he doesn't want to be saved to the Presidential Record Act.

He's been eating documents.

He's a lunatic.

He's a lunatic.

He is.

And the lesson of Trump, I think, for the future is if you don't want to get impeached, 12 impeachable offenses a day, and you're safe.

Right, yeah.

Any one thing this man had done, some other president had done, he'd be out by now.

All this terrific reporting, everything we've learned, somebody else would have been impeached by

do 30 impeachable things a day and you're safe.

Ambassador, how closely is social media monitored in Russia?

And do you think Putin will attempt to crack down on those platforms?

Do they have

everything's monitored, of course.

Right now, they.

But it's not like China, where they talk about.

But they don't cut it off, right?

And so far, Putin's allowed that as kind of a safety valve for the liberals, for the pro-Western forces to kind of tweet among themselves.

The lower his approval ratings get, I think the more likelihood that they'll go after those platforms.

And they like the Chinese model.

They'll eventually end up like China.

They're still really struggling with what happened under communism, aren't they?

I mean, communism made them so cynical.

Ronald Reagan, not my favorite, but when he said it was an evil empire, dead on, I think.

I agree.

There's nothing more corrosive to the soul than living under a communist regime.

And what Putin has promised them is: I'm going to make us a great power again.

Right.

I'm not going to, you know, you're going to be poor, you're not going to have goods, you know, that's the trait, but you're going to feel great again like you did during the Soviet era.

That's the trait he's given them.

Sounds familiar.

Make Russia great again.

Let's feel great again in the green room.

Thank you, everybody.

I appreciate it.

it.com.