Overtime - Episode #433: McMaster, Morality, McConnell, McCain

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Over time, for John Meacham, how would you compare President Trump's conduction?

Conduction.

A Trumpian word.

You are disqualified for finishing that question.

Or John Meacham, how would you assess Trump's grasp of history?

Give him a grade, John.

Move on.

Okay.

Will H.R.

McMaster be forced out of the administration due to the alt-right campaign against him?

By the way, that also looks like it's coordinated with Russia.

Well, and it's very sad because, I mean, the one thing you have that you hope for with Trump is that there are these grown-ups around him, and you know, they're serious people.

The odd thing about the McMaster appointment was, you know, it's sort of what you say with Trump.

The policy seems irrelevant to to him in the sense that, you know, at one point he was for universal health care, at another point he's for a total repeal of Obama.

It's sort of like anything, just give me a win.

Right?

He does it.

So with

McMaster, I mean, H.R.

McMaster is a brilliant military officer whose whole thesis is exactly the opposite of what Trump campaigned on.

Here's a, you go into these countries big, you stay there forever, you know, work with the locals, that's called this the counterinsurgency.

And I'm thinking to myself, how did you do this?

Because they met for 10 minutes in Mar-a-Lago on the sofa in the lobby, and he was like, good man, you've got a lot of medals on.

I like that.

What is the alt-right saying against him?

Who?

McMaster.

Oh, well, nothing.

That's not the thing.

The Steve Bannon wing of the doesn't like him because apparently he's been moderating Trump once a day.

He's sane.

He's got to go.

Oh.

We want action.

Richard Dawkins, why do people think of atheists as immoral?

Do they?

Do they think of us?

They do.

It's well known that they do.

And it's bizarre, actually, because if you think about why they think that, it's because they think that we don't have a God who's looking over our shoulder supervising everything, a great spy camera in the sky looking at us.

So we must be immoral.

If the only reason you're moral is you think you're being supervised,

I don't want to know you.

But also, I think it's because they think the Ten Commandments are in the Bible, and therefore that's the super-duper great list of the...

They don't know what the Ten Commandments are.

That's true, too.

Thou shalt have no other God but me, thou shalt make no graven image.

They know about thou shalt not kill.

Right.

Christopher Hitchens made a good remark about that.

Moses comes down from the mountain with this tablet and says, thou shalt not kill.

Oh, thou shalt not kill.

We never thought of that.

It's such a dumb list.

It only ever meant thou shalt not kill members of thine own tribe.

Right, that's true, true.

Yeah, only two of them are laws, don't kill and don't steal.

I mean, the first four, I think, are just about God's ego.

Yes, you know,

kind of soliciting.

If you were going to make a list of the ten absolute things you shouldn't do,

you wouldn't care about graven images or statues and swearing.

You might include incest,

you know, pederasty, you might include some of these, rape, that's not on the list, those things don't make the list.

I had a wonderful professor once who explained that, particularly in Leviticus, where they have those very careful prohibitions, thou shalt not have sex with goats.

Yes.

No one would think to write that if people weren't having sex with goats.

Right?

It's not something that we just say, hey.

And

there's the

admonition against wearing hemp.

Yes.

Things like that.

They're full of these bizarre corruptions.

Yeah, not in Leviticus.

But in Leviticus.

That was an earmark from the cotton band.

And somebody didn't like polyester or God.

And you know, we know that the Bible is an anthology.

It wasn't written by one person, but by many different authors, and they left some out.

I mean, there are like DVD extras of the Bible.

Isn't that true?

There are other books

in the book.

And if somebody decided we're going to put this in and we're going to, they could have saved themselves so much pain by not putting in Latin America.

I feel a Dawkinsian moral obligation to say that as Bill knows, and he's very sweet, I'm the diversity here.

I am an Episcopalian.

We barely count as Christians anymore.

But it's also one of the remarkable things about the Bible is it is a translation of a translation of a translation.

Right.

And those who think it is somehow or another FedExed in on Amazon Prime

from God is really that we're reading an English version of Hebrew and Greek texts that were copied.

They weren't photocopied.

These are people.

So what if a monk dropped in a knot when he wasn't supposed to?

Right.

You know,

along the century.

But that actually has made it much easier to interpret the Bible liberally over the years.

I mean, one of the great problems for liberal Muslims has always been that the Quran is seen as the direct word of God.

And so it's more difficult to claim that this stuff is less important.

Whereas with the Bible, there's this rich tradition of saying, well, these are just stories about God.

And as you say, they were put together.

And so maybe Leviticus isn't that important.

And the Sermon on the Mount is.

I mean, it's always struck me as bizarre that fundamentalist Christians pay so much attention to these prohibitions

that

are minor.

And the main point of the New Testament, as far as I can tell, is be nice to poor people and be suspicious of rich people.

Like that is the

front of the center over and over again.

And somehow that's kind of gotten to the sideline until this Pope kind of reminded people, actually, that's the big deal in Christianity.

Right, yeah.

Okay.

What does the panel think of the feud between Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell?

Funny.

Funny stuff.

Yeah.

You know,

he found out who Mitch McConnell was about three weeks ago.

And

he thought he was, you know, a country doctor from Kentucky.

It's yet another case of Washington experience can be way overrated, unquestionably, but you at least need to have an old-fashioned Facebook, you know, when you get there and know who these people are.

And I think that

it's an attempt to,

in this relentlessly solipsistic, narcissistic White House, anyone who does not come in and bow the knee is

out.

And McConnell won't do it.

Well, it's also, for people who haven't been following the story, he's mad at Mitch McConnell for not getting the repeal of Obamacare done.

And see, this is, I think, a great argument for why the

Republican theory that a businessman would be great as president is silly, because in Trump's world, I don't think he ever cared about details.

And his whole modus operandi was always just: if the guy doesn't do it right, I'll get somebody else.

You can't get the job done, I'll replace you, like I did with my wives.

For instance, so that's what he thinks.

He doesn't get into the details.

He's like, Mitch didn't get it done.

I'll find somebody to get it done.

Just like I got rid of the mooch, and I got rid of this one, and I got rid of this one.

And I'll keep throwing bodies out until I get somebody.

He doesn't realize there's no body that can get it done

because it's a shit bill.

Right, right.

Okay.

Jim Parsons, who has been your favorite guest on your podcast?

I hate that question.

It's okay.

No, it's okay.

I was most excited.

I shouldn't, that sounds awful, I'm judging them, but I did talk to John McCain, and I was very surprised he bothered.

Wow, John McCain.

Yeah, I couldn't get him on this show.

No?

You know what?

Can you talk to him for me?

I will have my people call him and tell him that you're not as bad as you seem on TV.

I don't know.

That's very funny.

I really have never figured out.

Somebody told him it was safe to come.

Right.

I really don't know who that was, but it was.

He was fine.

He's so hard to predict, John McCain.

I mean, like, you hate him one minute, and the next minute he comes through.

You know, he's got a flair for the dramatic, doesn't he?

I love that.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

You were great.

You were great.

And he was great.

See you next week.

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