Overtime - Episode #481: Marshawn Lynch, Barney Frank, Catherine Rampell, Erick Erickson

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

Catherine, which economic threat is most likely to trigger the next recession?

Trump, right now.

Normally, I would say presidents get too much credit when the economy is good, too much blame when the economy is bad.

I've been saying that for months when people ask me about Trump versus Obama and the the economy and whatever else.

But Trump is making so many unforced errors at this point.

Everything from the trade wars, plural, to the government shutdown to threatening the independence of the Federal Reserve.

I'm amazed it's lasted this long.

The economy.

I mean, in a sense, it's surprising statistically because this is now the second longest recovery on record in history, in all of history.

So it's like a little long in the tooth no matter what.

It's surprising that it's still stuck around given all of the policy errors that Trump has made.

So that's what I'm worried about.

We don't have a lot of money to bail banks out like we did last time.

Well, partly because we just spent $2 trillion on a tax cut.

Is your law with your name on it still working?

It's in good shape.

It is.

They weren't able to.

What they've able to do, particularly with the Consumer Bureau, is to not administer it, but they didn't even dare try to change it.

And

it's still mostly

in good shape.

And it has stopped the bad stuff.

But Catherine is absolutely right.

And I think that's the biggest economic problem.

We got this artificial rush from the tax cut, and that's petering out.

And by the way,

that's what happened to infrastructure.

We spent the infrastructure money on the tax cut.

That's why there will be no significant infrastructure improvement, which could give the economy the right kind of boost, because it all went for the tax cut.

Okay, Marshawn Lynch, did you try and light a blunt off Al Davis' eternal flame at the last Raiders game in Oakland?

I think you did.

I do.

You did do that.

Yes, you did do that.

True.

You know, I think it was only right to send the Raiders off

in

real Oakland in a real Oakland way.

And

were there repercussions from the NFL for that?

I mean, I don't think they caught on yet, but I mean, I'm pretty sure now at this point,

something will take place.

Wait, they got you for Skittles on your sneakers?

They let you light a blunt off of a guy's eternal flame?

That's not a very bright league, is it?

Just win, baby.

Yeah, that's Al Davis, right.

Okay, Barney, do you hope Democrats will push forward?

Oh, no, I guess I asked you that.

Do you think Alexandra Casio-Cortez is a good fit for the House Financial Services Committee?

She's doing great so far.

Boy,

what a star.

Well, I have a problem with some of this.

Having Having people do a sit-in in Nancy Pulsey's office was really stupid.

Here's the deal.

I think it's important.

I worry about people on the left picking an easy fight with their friends on the near left as opposed to fighting the real enemy.

That's what I was just saying, and you were yelling at me.

No, you were talking about signaling.

I agree on the first thing.

No, I said people should get a...

I agree people should get a second.

I think liberals have been inconsistent in saying no second chance for sexual harassment, but yes, for robbery.

I think,

so I agree with that.

But I do think

she has a problem in misidentifying.

She thinks the reason we're not doing better is that

some of the liberals haven't been fighting hard enough.

The problem is

the opposition of the Republicans.

So I hope

she puts all that energy into fighting the right enemy.

Eric Erickson, should Steve King's comments be viewed as an isolated incident or are they a symptom of racism dominating the Republican Party?

I think they're a Steve King problem, but I think there's a real problem with Republicans who weren't willing to speak up quickly about them.

You know, I've known Steve King, and I've kind of been shocked at this evolution of him.

I don't know him well,

but he's all of a sudden very blatantly about things I didn't even know he believed.

It's a common occurrence.

I find

it really is there's it's symptomatic of this presidential administration making people feel comfortable being assholes

when they didn't necessarily

openly do it in the past.

Steve Kim has been making these comments for years, if not decades.

I mean, the calves as big as cantaloupe comments.

I have never heard the, and you're right, the New York Times ran a long timeline of comments he had made.

I had never even heard it.

But this late

to see people defending him, too, saying, oh, that's not really what he meant.

It was what he meant.

And I do think the Republicans, you've got Tim Scott calling out the Republicans, and I think it's right.

If the Republicans can't clean their own house, the voters totally will.

And at some point, they're going to stop worrying about cleaning the Republicans' house.

They're just going to pour kerosene around the outside of the party and strike a match.

Yeah.

I mean, I've seen so many people, though, who used to be what I would call normal Republicans, who then remember.

Devin Nunes had some pretty

smart quotes.

I swear to God, I read them on this show years ago.

He became this person.

It happens a lot.

I think it's Fox News.

I think they get sucked into the Fox News wartime.

I don't think it is.

I think that it has become this cult of personality with the president.

I mean I had people show up at my house to threaten my family because I said I wasn't going to vote for the guy.

And I'm a Republican.

I was a Republican on my city council and they still showed up to threaten me, yelled at my kids in the grocery store.

These people, they feel comfortable finding the right public.

But

Trump is an extraordinary figure.

He can get away with crap that nobody else can get away with, but people don't see that.

And I think too many people think, hey look at how it's paid off for trump yes this guy a totally unqualified

long shot becomes president so he people think they can beat trump our generation is growing up with that too

right i said our generation is growing up with that too that's that's i think our generation some of these people

because he's right there

i i think the republican party has been dog whistling for decades and it was just you know couched a little bit in more politeness before and the dog whistle became audible to human ears in the last few years because of Trump but I think that strain has been there for a very long time.

Who'd you vote for last time?

I didn't.

You didn't?

No.

Oh no, that's not right.

Yeah, I know it's not, but I don't, like this politic shit, that shit is crazy.

You know what I'm saying?

Hey, look,

look, though, look, I get down and I, like, I, I mean, I respect people for what they believe in and all the shit.

But at the end of the day, like,

if you're not a solid individual, then fuck you.

That's just how I feel personally.

But whoever is president and who are our leaders in the Senate and the House, they do affect people's lives.

They do.

You're right.

They do affect people's lives.

Politics affects people's lives in a very real way.

You know, John Kasich, the Republican governor, I said to him, you did what most Republicans' governors didn't do.

He expanded Medicaid in his state.

That means hundreds of thousands of poor people got to see a doctor.

That's real shit.

Right.

And that, you know, that's the,

what happens in the voting booth downstream that so like what I know about like

because I mean like I understand that but I'm like I'm in the communities and shit though.

So like when I go to these like just me being from Oakland, but then I'll go to Miami, a hood in Miami or a hood in

Sagnaw or something like that.

Like a lot of those people don't

Even though those services are out there, for whatever reason, it don't reach all of the people and then therefore, they're still struggling from that.

And I mean, at the end of the day, like.

But that's why you need a good community organization.

You've got some great, you had Ron Dellums, who was a great man, who was Mayor of Oakland.

You have Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who's an outstanding moral leader.

You should be voting for these people because they're standing up.

Right.

Look, I get out there and I just get down with the people.

Okay.

I mean, I mean, regardless to all of that.

I get some strong allies.

You do, but then, I mean, at the end of the day, like, dealing with

like going and dealing with politicians right now, I get into a situation where I want to do something in my community to benefit more of the youth.

And if it don't come with a paycheck for some of them, they're not interested in what I say.

So, two of your open representations.

So,

therefore, what I do is I just hit the hood running myself.

I'll pack up a fucking U-Haul with...

either turkeys, toys for the kids,

and I'm out there just giving them out myself.

But that's not a long-term solution.

It's not a long-term solution.

You can't do that.

You can't buy turkeys.

Don't you want to encourage the good ones?

Some are bad.

But you've had, again, in Oakland, some very good, outstanding people who are very community-rooted.

Don't you want to encourage them?

I'm saying

some of them are good and some of them are bad.

But the same conditions in which Oakland was in back then, they're still in the same situations now.

But they're trying to make it better, and if there were more of them, they could succeed.

That's it.

So then where are they at then?

I mean, look at California.

When this state, they said about five years ago before Jerry Brown became governor, they said it was ungovernable, remember?

They said it was just

a failed state.

And then we elected a Democratic governor with the Democratic legislature, and our state did a lot better, and people did a lot better.

And we have a surplus.

And it rains now.

It rains.

All right.

Got water.

We got to go.

It's time to party with the people.

Thank you, everybody.

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