Overtime - Episode #454: Winning the South, MSNBC vs Fox News, Useful Idiots

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

Our Mayor Mitch Landrew, what should Democrats be doing in order to win in the South?

Oh, good question.

Tell the truth.

Tell the truth.

Tell the truth.

It's important.

You know,

you don't have to go to the far left.

You don't have to go to the far right.

Mayors, we solve problems.

And I think people kind of look at Congress and say, how come you can't solve any problems?

And that's what we do.

And people are not as ideologically bent, I believe, in the country as we seem to think that they are.

And I just think you got to get things done, figure it out.

We've got a country run by all women mayors.

That's true.

I'm for that.

I don't.

But we're going to have a fight in the Democratic Party like the Republicans are going to have about center, left, right.

That's going to be a battle royal, and it'll prepare us for the future.

All right.

Chris Hayes, what do you say to people that claim that MSNBC is the liberal equivalent to Fox News?

I've defended your network many times on that point.

It makes me crazy.

And that you, well, because, you know, Fox News does not stick to reality.

MSNBC is liberal leaning, but they stick to reality.

But I'll let you answer that question.

What do you say to people and that your network only focuses on Trump for profits?

So I'll take the first the second the first question,

which is that

The way to understand Fox News is it was built by a very unique man named Roger Ailes, who had a foot in two different worlds.

He was a TV show business guy, and he he was a politics guy.

This is a guy who advised Richard Nixon, advised George H.W.

Bush.

What he was building, and the owner of that network, Rupert Murdoch, was explicitly a political project.

That was the goal from the beginning.

It was an ideological project.

It was a political project.

It was a media project.

That has never been the case at MSNBC.

Never been the case.

There is no Roger Ailes of MSNBC.

It was never, believe me, it was not built by any Ailes-like figure.

It ended up being where it is in prime time, largely because he found an audience for that.

Right, it wasn't originally

Lou Dobbs was on it, yeah,

and it was a reflection of the fact that by hook and by crook, a market demand was found, which brings us to the second point that you focus on Trump for ratings.

Donald Trump's president of the United States, and it turns out people really want to hear about what the president of the United States is doing, and there's only so much that you're going to apologize for covering the president of the United States, right?

And

I'll, yes, and

everybody's ratings are up due to Donald Trump.

And by the way, he loves that and takes credit for it.

Right.

I mean, he was just...

What's his favorite thing?

Did you see him out there?

Except he doesn't want anyone else to make money on the fact that they're using his image and persona to make money.

He wants to figure out how it can all come to him.

Did you see him in Pennsylvania before the special election when he did the robot?

And he was saying, you'd hate it if I was boring.

As if the most important thing is that the emperor tossed bread and circus out to the people.

Absolutely.

And in fact, that's how he picks people, too.

Apparently, he liked Bolton because he's interesting as opposed to McMaster, who was a little bit of a bad person.

More boring.

Yeah.

All right.

Mona, in 2003, you called liberals useful idiots of the Russians.

Would you say it applies to Republicans and Trump now?

Okay, so first of all,

so the title of my book was Useful Idiots.

It was a

title.

It was a art, okay?

It was the quote from Vladimir Lenin, who said that liberals in the West would be useful idiots for us and we could tell them all kinds of lies and they'd repeat them and you know, so that was what my point was.

I think it's still valid.

And I think, yes, it does apply to some Republicans today.

And Trump.

And absolutely.

And Trump.

Regarding Trump, yeah, it does.

Totally.

Not all, though.

You know what?

I just want to say this on behalf of the Republican Party since I've been hard on them tonight.

I do think that we can either save this great American institution or we can turn the page.

And I think we should save the Republican Party.

Well, or maybe I keep saying go back to Republican classic.

You know, I think they should be a new one.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Not the new Coke.

No, not the new one.

They need a Mitt Romney, somebody who's, you know, Mitt Romney's looking pretty good now.

Yeah.

Gina, are there any EPA regulations that you would be in favor of repealing?

That's a really good question.

Yeah, the ones about those garage door openers.

She's running.

She's running.

She's running.

She's running.

Jesus, Gina.

She's running.

I'd like to make an announcement.

Well,

I don't love every regulation.

You only regulate when you feel like there's a need to do that, when somebody is harming somebody else and you need to resolve a market failure.

Yes.

So, yeah, there are some that should go away.

And we look at them, we are required to look at them like every five or eight years.

You look at them, you make changes, you try to keep up to date.

But what you don't do is go in with a list of things that you want to get rid of, regardless of knowing anything about them or looking at them, and do it for the sole purpose of reducing business costs to certain constituencies.

That's not what you do.

Wicked, good answer.

Thank you, Ricky.

It was wicked.

How will Trump's trade war destabilize U.S.

foreign relations?

You know, he kind of went back on the steel one, right?

And then he put ones on Chinese.

It's such a great example.

It's just like a mean girl with a shit.

The steel tariffs is a great example of a very efficient means of producing corruption, which is to say, I announce a blanket tariff, but I'll make some one-on-one side deals with everybody.

Like, maybe you stay at the Trump Hotel and maybe you hook up my son-in-law with some financing.

And, like, maybe we can work out.

It's like, it really is like a classic means of using the state to produce corruption.

And now we've got all these individual bilateral deals that are going to carve it out.

Ultimately, what it's going to end up with is China's going to sort of punch us back.

Right now, we are not in a trade war.

We're at the beginnings of something that might become it.

Right now, it's actually fairly penny annie,

but if it gets worse, it's going to have real, real consequences.

I can't wait for the Trump voter to walk into Walmart and there's nothing there.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, panel.

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