Overtime - Episode #453: Privitization, NRA, #MeToo Wall Street, Civil Service

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

International return.

Yes.

Andrew Ross, Sarkin, do you agree with Larry Kudlow that Medicare and Social Security should be handed to Wall Street through privatization?

Is that what he's for?

I'm sure he is.

I'm sure he is for it.

I don't think I'm for that.

No,

I'm going to take the other side of that.

Is that where you want me to go?

Well, I know.

What are you checking in with me for?

I'm asking you a question.

no i'm i'm i think i mean bush privatization

i think that's a real problem i i think the privatization of so many things actually especially when it comes to people's pension and retirement part of our problem has been that so i would i'm gonna i'm gonna take the other side

but as an economist oh wait i'm not who plays one on tv i'm just gonna give you the other argument

i've seen the chart of where money if you put your money in the stock market yes versus if you just put it in the bank or whatever that is it'll do better on the market like the the market one goes like this now you can't watch it every year because the market goes up and down.

But over the time, if you put it in when you were 20,

by the time you retired, it's 65.

Look, the money goes like this, and

if we had a forced savings program,

by the way, if we had a real forced savings program where you couldn't take it out

and somebody else, and it was effectively going to be managed elsewhere and there was a guarantees on it, I could have to go for that.

Yeah, it's not the craziest thing.

Not the craziest doubt in the world.

That Bush.

But hey, that's what.

Who is he to you?

Is he your uncle, George Bush?

W?

Yeah,

he's my cousin.

You have to think about that.

There's a lot of us there.

Cousins.

His dad's my uncle.

I'm pretty sure of it.

You guys hang out?

There's a lot of us.

No, not much.

So, Billy, how is the rest of the Bush family holding up under Trump, this card says?

Trying to take the high road, I think.

I don't know if you saw it.

Right.

I'm not sure either one cast a vote for him.

In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't.

Now, speaking of Me Too stuff, boy, the old man sure skated on the Oscar having.

Have you ever talked to him about that?

I told him, never again.

You hear me?

Don't do that.

No.

But, you know, because there's a conservative.

I mean, it sounds like the same thing that Al Franken was accused of, and that just kind of like went into the ether.

Okay.

Except he's a former president of the United States.

Right.

You know, people didn't know that about it.

And there's a whole bunch of women that said it's pretty, it's pretty messed up, pretty unacceptable.

And there was a joke that went with it.

It's disgusting and inexcusable.

Right, you are.

What a fun you are.

Well, I mean, he has it.

He hasn't.

Well, I mean, okay.

There's no upside to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm with you.

I'm not sure what Al Franken did.

I'll just say that.

I'm talking about Pappy, either one.

I mean, who's grabbing people like that in a photo op?

It's weird.

It is weird.

Especially.

Everybody wants a photo of Bill Maher.

Have you ever even considered ever.

I don't even touch people.

Every picture's like this.

Yes, exactly.

Every picture

is like

Hands up.

Okay.

Why does the NRA get a tax exemption and how do we take it away?

Elect Democrats.

That's a good one, because they do run, they would like to say that they don't run a political action committee, but they do have that wing.

And otherwise they're saying they're a grassroots nonprofit organization, but they've used illegal corporate tax loopholes to build out an entire political lobbying wing that doesn't get taxed.

So that's a corporate tax loophole, but that's also because the NRA knows how to work the system.

Boy, do they.

By the way, and they know how to use a crisis.

Never let a crisis go to waste.

Now we're arming teachers.

Not yet.

They somehow turned that around.

Sure.

It's moving ahead in many states.

Somehow they turned that around to

a way they could sell more guns.

It's moving ahead in the states where they still beat kids with paddles.

I mean, it's not, you know, I don't think it's taking hold.

Certainly it's not, there's no agreement with a bunch bunch of educators and experts about arming teachers.

Teachers don't want that.

One thing I was just going to say, on money on the NRA, you know, you can go after them on the taxes or whatever it is, but the real thing, the real opportunity, given I cover the world of finance, is the companies.

It's all the companies that do business with the NRA and people who do business with guns.

It's the credit card companies that allow the transactions on the cards.

It's Apple TV and Amazon and everybody who allows this stuff over their airwaves.

Washington, unfortunately, is not going to do anything, I don't think, anytime soon.

I could be wrong.

I hope I'm wrong.

But I think in the meantime, there's a huge swath of stuff that can actually happen, but it depends on everybody actually doing things.

And that goes to the action related to your pocketbook, right?

Consumers have to wait about two years before we can use our power as citizens to kick somebody out of office.

I can make a decision tomorrow if I want to go to a different store.

If I don't like Walmart, Walmart,

they get in your business.

They got the business of a lot of people out of that day, right?

But Dick Sporting Goods did.

Yeah.

I got paddled a couple of times and

didn't seem to destroy me.

Only when you do something really bad, you know.

I wasn't sure what kind of paddling you're talking about.

I'm not quite sure what kind of paddling he's talking about, but maybe we should move on.

I'm just saying.

If you worked in the White House, would you resign on principle or stay to help minimize the damage Trump causes?

Oh, so

I don't think there's there's any heroism in serving in this White House anymore.

I think initially people really did think that,

like John Kelly, he's like, I'm going to serve my country and do this.

But

you're not serving the public at this point, right?

You're serving Trump and his personal Trump interests.

And that's just not the same.

And you don't know what they are.

Right, but although it's actually very clear what they are, actually, they're advancing his family and whoever else is willing to line his pocketbooks, whether it be Russian oligarchs or any other dictators that he may or may not want to emulate.

But there is,

and I, yes, I did work in the White House, and there's absolutely no question that I would ever work in a Trump White House.

And the sad thing is everybody who's walked out has walked out tarnished.

Like it's, it's a dead end, it's a dead end job.

Igoris, fly close to the sun.

Yes.

But anyone who's...

I think Monica Lewinsky has a better reputation than Sean Spicer has.

Would you want John?

Monica Lewinsky is doing better breakthrough-wise than Sean Spicer, the former White House.

No, anybody, as you can attest, anyone who gets in contact with, he's a human wood chipper.

People just

in the

touch

right you don't have the courage to say no to a job to Donald Trump you shouldn't be running a McDonald's

I do want to throw in

I do want to throw in about public like public servants who are I was a political appointee there are public servants in the Foreign Service the military civil servants who keep the day-to-day function of government running the fact that they are feeling demoralized is a massive problem because they're the ones who make sure we you know get things like our social security checks all i was going to say is the real problem though is if look you can call all the people who showed up in the beginning opportunists, which they are.

Today the new people are believers and fortunately or unfortunately, fortunately for Trump and unfortunately they're not.

For cartoon villains.

But the opportunists, to the degree you thought that they were saving the country from Trump, those people don't exist anymore.

And so I think

there has to be some thought about whether you do want some diversity of thought in the room, even if it's going to tame people.

I don't know what the right answer is.

He has to want the diversity of thought in the room.

He doesn't.

Exactly.

So what do you get out of serving?

He doesn't want How are you going to fix anything?

But that's what they're claiming these days all over TV is that he wants.

That's why there's this turnover, because he has this.

But he said he likes to see people go at it.

And I'm like,

this is the guy who's going to negotiate with Kim Jong-un?

Like, I like to just see people go at it.

But this is how we know him.

The boardroom.

I mean, this is how he's the host of The Apprentice.

He instigates.

He's

all about selling lemonade on a corner in West Avenue.

But it's not.

It's not like it wasn't all there for us to

judge.

But he made voters think he'd be able to to take business savvy and apply that to politics and all these other things and policy.

Maybe businesses are

in that, though, don't you think?

It is, and it's shady business deals.

That's the problem.

It works in real estate.

It doesn't work in

your policy.

How many of those voters that he convinced?

This is my question.

How many of those voters that he did convince

have changed their mind?

Or more importantly, has anybody said since Trump was elected, you know, I was really against him the whole time, but these 14 months, he's really impressed me.

I think I'm going to reconsider my vote for November.

That's like one guy who's a pig farmer.

There are.

I think there are people.

I think there are.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Prime.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

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