Overtime - Episode #473: Michael Moore, PJ O'Rourke, Thom Hartmann, Catherine Rampell, Steve Hilton

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

Okay, hi, we're back.

Thank you.

Loud applause for those of you watching on the computer who missed the show itself means we did good today.

All right, here are the questions.

No one walked out of a free show

with air conditioning.

Michael Moore, does the momentum of progressive figures like Betto Arourk or Andrew Gillam in Red State demonstrate that the Democratic Party needs to move further left in order to win?

There's a nice softball right down the

middle of the party for you. The party does.
The people are already there. The majority of Americans take the liberal position on nearly every single issue.
70% want Medicare for all.

82% believe women should be paid the same as men. I mean, you just go down the whole list, climate change, everything.

We're a liberal country,

and we win by 3 million votes, and we've won six of the last seven presidential popular votes.

The Republicans have won only once in 30 years. But I will add that.
That's how much they don't want.

Like you say, something like Medicare for all. American people, they do want that majority.
I didn't know it was up to 70. But they are absolutely 100% clueless about what things cost.

They have no idea. When they ask, what should we cut? Oh, yes, let's cut.
We have spent too much. What should we cut? They say, you know what, we need to cut? Foreign aid.

That's part of what makes us an American. You need a jeweler's eye to see the budget.
I said to Podesta when I interviewed him for this,

I said, why couldn't you just say free college? Well, we did say free community college, and you have to work to pay it back. I said, no, that's how we lose elections.
Do what they do.

Say free college. Yeah, but we hadn't figured out how we're going to pay for it.
Who cares? Just say it. Yeah.

Just say it. We'll figure it out later.
Right. When you buy a new car, you don't know how you're going to pay for it.
You figure it out later.

And this thing that Democrats need to move left is such bullshit. I mean, as you said, Michael, my fellow Michigander,

the people are here.

What we're talking about is the Democrats moving to the center, to America.

Yeah. Well, the people are there except for all those that want to kill you.

Who's that? Well, everybody voted for Trump. Yes.

Well, it's a large basket of deplorables. It extends to the people.
No, no, no, no. No, no, that's wrong.
We don't want to kill you. That's what makes us liberal.
We actually,

first of all, the blood would be like bad and icky.

And secondly, here's the thing. When we're back in charge, or should I say if, I'd like to believe when, we're back in charge, here's what's going to happen.

For all the people watching out there who voted for Trump, when we get Medicare for all, you're going to be covered too.

When we don't go into the next war, we won't send your children off to war either. I mean, that's that's you get the benefit from all the things.
We're going to fix climate change, you'll get to live.

We're not going to go, oh, you voted for Trump.

By the way, let him die. Michael, Trump, remember in the camp, Trump promised that.
He talked about universal health care. That's why I think he talked about it.

I know, but that's, and then he handed over the policy to the same old Republicans in Congress. But the reason he won the primary, because he was not like all the Republicans.

I think there was an issue though, but he was full of shit.

Let's just put out the slogan that's going to get the most voters because we kind of saw Republicans do that. And they won.

Yeah, and then the dog caught the car and they didn't have a plan. And they're still there.
Right. And he's not going anywhere.
Right. And Mueller.

I think Democrats should be better than that. They should not take an example of that.
No, no, I don't want to be better anymore. I want to win.
Right. I want that out.
I was in bombs.

I didn't want pens in school.

I want everything. I want it now.
Just to put a fire. I don't have a plan for it.
Just to accent the point. Remember what Trump's health care plan plan was when he was running? Something terrific.

That was

going to replace. Something terrific.

He dined on that for six months. And then he said, I'm going to give you health care that's better, better, cheaper, and covers everybody.

But is Trump your example? I mean, that's what I'm saying.

That's what people want. Exactly.

They vote for what they want.

The difference is that once we say it, we're actually smart, we're not stupid, and we will actually work to try to get people those things.

We'll fail at some of it, but at least the Democrats have got to start aspiring to something and having a spine to do it. You're never going to win if one side plays by rules and the other side.

I don't think that means you should give up on having serious ideas that can be executed. I agree with that completely.
But they do have that. It's just getting into office to execute.

Well, and that's the truth.

The Democrats have no serious ideas? When it comes to things like how Medicare for all would work, for example, if you look at Bernie's math, it made no sense. I agree.
Right? Like, it made no sense.

We're liberal arts majors. We don't know math.

That's a point of economists.

We get somebody. All right, let me get to a few other questions.
We'll get somebody.

Steve Helton, given what you now know, would you have advised David Cameron? You were an advisor to former Prime Minister. I was.

I liked him a lot. British Conservatives are not crazy conservatives like in this country.

That's one thing that's really nice. We work very hard at that.
Yes, I know you. Except Maggie Thatcher.
Would you have advised David Cameron not to hold to the Brexit vote? Yeah,

I did actually advise him not to do that.

But I had a different view, which you probably won't agree with, which is that rather than having a referendum, which I was certain would be divisive and end up in a mess, that the better thing to do would just be to say clearly in an election in your platform, we think we need to leave the EU because we believe in democracy.

We believe the people that make the decisions in a country should be accountable to the people. And the EU is an unaccountable bureaucracy.
That's what we believe. So that's what we're standing on.

Rather than leaving this open question where no one really knew what would happen at the end of it, if you'd have put it in your official party program, you could have developed a plan and a policy and you wouldn't have this mess.

That's my view.

Okay, I was hoping it'd be a little more bloody than that.

What bloody? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Okay, Tom, as far-right, media personalities such as Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson

are they gaining influence or losing it? That's a good question.

A lot of it has to do with the platforms. You've got most of the radio stations in this country owned by corporations that have an explicit and overt right-wing bias.

You've got a television network created by a billionaire who did this in two other countries, did this to two other countries before he got to our country, and

lost $100 million a year for the first five years. Major investment.
Air America lost $17 million.

Oh, you know, it was a terrible thing.

They are willing, the conservatives are willing to invest in the infrastructure.

You've got entire teams of people who are just scrubbing Wikipedia all day long on behalf of right-wing thinkers. Play on the ball.
I mean, it just goes on. Play the long game.

Yeah, but the other thing that

they're crazy. Conservatives are much more interesting when they're crazy.
They come up with, like Alex Jones comes up with like great little green men things.

I don't know where he gets. Alex is a performer.
Yeah, and whereas if you, when liberals go crazy, it sounds like NPR. I don't know.
I can do pretty good crazy.

But the other thing, I think

there's a couple of things I just want to say.

You really can't put Tucker Carlson in the same category. No, I really think that is not okay.

He's getting there really fast.

The second thing is that, you know, again, from the other side of the fence, people would say, we've got to have this because the rest of the mass media is so dominated by the other argument.

It's just about...

That's, again, bullshit. The rest of the mass media is dominated by facts.
Well, that's an opinion. That's why you've got to have that.

That's why you've got to build, you've got to use billions of dollars to build a right-wing infrastructure because the rest of that itself is an opinion.

That's your opinion. Final.
That's true. Well, it's an opinion show.
Right, there you go. Exactly.
It's my opinion. Exactly.

In light of the article written by, this is for you, Catherine, written by Reagan's daughter Patty Davis, how do you imagine, I don't know what that is referring to, how do you imagine she said she was sexually assaulted.

Okay, how do you imagine

how do you imagine the Kavanaugh accusation would be handled if the accuser were a conservative woman rather than a liberal?

I think we kind of already saw this happen. Weren't some of Roy Moore's alleged victims conservative victims? Yeah, I think so.
They were.

That's my recollection. I mean,

so, and what happened was that people rallied around the accused child molester. Right.
You know, because he was in their party. He was, he had, he had a little R next to his name and not a D.

We have a Democratic senator in Alabama, which just shows anything's possible if your opponent fucks children, huh?

All right. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.

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