Overtime - Episode #463: Post-American World, Never-Trumpers, Minority Republicans

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Thank you.

Fareed, have we finally reached the post-American world you wrote about a decade ago?

Well, you know, what I was writing about in that book was the post-American world because you had China rising, you had India rising, you had Europe that had come together.

The point I was trying to make was we're in a kind of historical shift of power where these other countries, often that had long been mired in poverty, are rising in economic growth, political power, cultural confidence.

And so that world has been going on.

You know, the emerging markets were 5% of global GDP.

25 years ago, they're now 50% of global GDP.

But what I did not predict was that the United States would sort of abdicate leadership of its position.

Because I argued the United States would still be incredibly powerful it would set the agenda it represented you know the the values it had a way of being able to be the leader and this shift where the united states has decided to literally just walk away from its own creation.

I mean, people forget this was the world that FDR and Harry Truman built after World War II.

And to see, you know, the Europeans, as I say, are sort of surprised because they don't quite understand it.

They're like, wait, you built this house and now you want to set it on fire.

I'm less surprised that a Trump could rise.

I mean, that has happened in countries as how quickly the Republican Party just completely got behind him.

It reminds me of the Neanderthals.

You know,

no, really.

I love ancient archaeology and that kind of stuff.

So, like, you have the humans and the Neanderthals who are sharing the planet from about 100,000 BC to about 40,000 BC, and then suddenly, no more Neanderthals.

I think because humans,

they figured out the blow gun so they could kill you from 10 feet away.

I'm getting this from the movie Quest for Fire.

But I think that.

So, but like, it's like there's Neanderthals, and then suddenly the faucet gone.

And that's kind of what happened to the Republicans.

I think they were just there, and then they suddenly disappeared.

I think what happened is, and this gets to the point Linda was asking what happened to my party.

I think that Trump recognized, and the primaries you see this, that the base of the Republican Party was in a completely different place than the elites in Washington thought.

The elites in Washington were still reciting the Reagan formula: free trade,

expansionist foreign policy, entitlement reform.

The base of the party is now a white working-class base that wants to hear about Mexicans, Muslims, and Chinese people.

They want to hear about how

the Mexicans are taking your jobs, the Chinese people are taking your factories, the Muslims are killing you.

Trump says, I'll beat them all up, you'll be great again.

and one line, by the way.

Let me push back against that a little bit.

I mean, the fact is, there were like 16 Republicans running in the primaries.

And Trump didn't, he did not get a majority of Republican support during the primaries.

He got

a plurality and he won and he won in a lot of places.

But the fact that it was so divided, the fact that the party had no discipline whatsoever, I mean, I'd sort of like to bring back the smoke-filled rooms.

Let's have some vetting of people before they decide to run for president, for goodness sakes.

But

you can't diminish what Trump did as a political matter.

I mean, whether you want a plurality or not, he had 16 opponents, many of them governors, senators,

and he just slaughtered them all one by one without really any impediment to anything holding him back.

And now, I think the more relevant point that Bill's making is today,

the never-Trump rump is diminished, dwindled to almost nothing.

You've got this incredibly high historic, as I said before, historic historic level of support among republicans and no one even though you could at least at the beginning of the administration you looked at people like paul ryan and mitch mcconnell and said well they're going along with trump to get their agenda done well they got their tax cut and now today they're still and they have a standard agenda

they're afraid of the bases

with it i know all right they know

the bases get another question in let's get people spend time writing these questions let's get

this for you

you said you can be you said you can be be a minority and a conservative, but can you be a minority and a Republican under this administration?

You know, that's a good question.

I think that the expectation, at least from what I get from talking to other African Americans and minorities in general, is that, sure, we don't have a problem with you being a Republican, but our expectation is that you are articulating the concerns of our community.

So yes, I'm a black person who happens to be a Republican.

That doesn't mean I don't care about police brutality.

That doesn't mean I don't care about criminal justice reform.

Those are are issues that disproportionately impact my community.

And it is my duty, if you will, when I'm at that table, when I'm in those meetings to advocate for the issues of my community because I recognize there will be moments like the moment we see now where you have a Jeff Sessions running the criminal justice system.

And he's rolling back a lot of things that President Obama did with bipartisan support that benefited African Americans.

So it is my charge to say, wait a minute here, you're not going to pass policy legislation that's going to continue to disproportionately impact not only black people, but brown people.

So I think you can most certainly be a conservative and a minority, but being a Republican right now during the age of Trump, I think is a very difficult thing.

Michael, you want to.

No, absolutely right.

I mean,

which is why, sure, Michael happens to be one of my favorite Republicans.

Because what we've seen is a lack of you.

Oh, I mean,

pretty short list.

Some of your best friends are Republicans.

You know,

y'all are taking all my good lines.

But the thing is, is that if you have black people who understand,

even if you're associated with that administration, that what Trump is doing is undercutting the value of not only black people, but Republicans, as we've been saying.

And the fact that you had William Coleman, the fact that you had a legacy of black people, Jackie Robinson for that matter, who were Republicans, who understood that it was about an economic orientation of fiscal conservatism.

It was not about the culture wars that Trump seems invested in, because one of the factors we missed in all of this, this brouhaha is the demonization of the big black boogeyman Barack Obama and that spooked a lot of people into voting for the Republicans in a serious way.

Dr.

Bicey is not a bigot.

I disassociate myself as a black conservative with what we call lily white conservatism that sort of wallows in racism, if you will, bigotry, sexism, if you will.

And I think you have to make a clear distinction between the two.

And where the Republican Party is

time and time again.

How do you do this?

I can understand how you could do it when the Republican Party was a party that was about economics and free markets and free.

Right now the Republican Party is defined by its suspicion and hostility toward people who look different, sound different, worship different gods.

So what do you that's the party?

How are you distinguishing?

Well look for it.

You know President Trump talks a lot about patriotism to the country.

When we say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, we say one nation under God indivisible, et cetera, et cetera.

One nation under God indivisible, one nation.

Rhetoric or reality?

Do we truly believe we are one nation?

And if we are, then that means we recognize and we accept that we are a country compounded of different folks from all over the world, regardless of what they look like, their sex, or their religion.

That's not how a lot of your fellow Republicans are doing.

But Donald Trump certainly doesn't look at him.

All you had to do is look at

Hurricane Maria and look what happened in Puerto Rico.

But we've allowed him, Linda, to define it.

I'm waiting for your invitation to the CPAC convention.

Well, that's not going to come anytime soon.

All right.

Thank you.

Get this at the gift shop, ladies and gentlemen.

On your way out.

Right next to me.

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