Overtime - Episode #431: 2020, North Korea, Gay Rights, Foreign Policy Turf War

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

Okay, here we are.

Michael Steele, do you think that a Republican will challenge Trump for the nomination in 2020?

The short answer is no, but there will be probably

someone like a Ben Sasse,

a senator who will, who has been very critical of the president for quite some time,

and that whether he gets into a direct- What about a bull moose party?

I mean, well, you know, in 1912, not that I have to tell you about 1912, but in 1912, the Republican Party split.

Yeah.

Teddy Roosevelt.

If 2018 goes the way that some in the party feel it may, given how the public is really kind of roiling with all the Trump stuff, yeah, you could see someone step up to try to save the party for 2020 in some fashion.

The fact that Roosevelt didn't win, though, with the popularity he had shows you how difficult it was.

The difficulties even then.

You know, like John Kashmir Kasich.

John Kasich business.

Right, that's what I'm saying.

Somebody like John Kasich.

Well, I mean, but like some, we, it's funny, when you watch the liberal news channels, it's all Republicans like you and Nicole Wallace and Charlie Sykes and Rick Wilson, like, oh, you know, Steve Schmidt, it's all we see is great Republicans.

Smart Republicans.

Reasonable Republicans.

Reasonable Republicans who hate Donald Trump.

You'd think that was the whole party.

That's the only one MSNBC.

90% of Republicans are so.

That's the game both of the networks play, right?

Fox has these people who are just this much to the left of center as their liberals.

And, you know, the...

MSNBC has collected all six remaining sane Republicans.

Richard Clark, what would be your strategy for dealing with Kim Jong-un?

Talk to him.

You know, the president said today, as people said today, we've lost our patience with this man.

They haven't sat down at the table with him.

No one has.

You're right.

Sit down at the table.

He's doing this because he wants something.

Rodman does it?

Yeah, well, he's the only one.

Oh, really?

Yeah, you're right.

You know?

Yeah, and Rodman Trump, what's the difference, you know?

That means he's got to do karaoke.

That's not fair to Dennis Rodman.

He's got to do karaoke.

Okay.

Should congressmen get a housing stipend like Jason Chavetz suggested as we, okay, he's a congressman from Utah.

He's retired.

He's retiring.

And he said, I can't afford it.

He was sleeping in his office.

I mean, they make, what do they make?

$178,000 a year.

And they all share places, too.

Because they have to keep two homes and he's now going to go and get a lucrative contract with some television network and he'll have cashed in.

But I'm sure the public

public can be very supportive of that, right?

The idea of giving additional

health to our members in.

We're always lecturing poor Americans to live within their means.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And to go without health care.

And

Chaffitz is the very asshole who said maybe you shouldn't buy a cell phone and you should buy health care instead because a health care plan annually costs.

Chaffetz is also the one who went on television at least five times and said he had to distance himself from Donald Trump after the Access Hollywood tapes and couldn't possibly look his 15-year-old daughter in the eye and say that he was supporting this guy and then turned around and voted for him.

So fuck that guy.

Right.

We'll have him on the show and Kyron will say the very asshole.

Dan, given the way the Trump administration is trending on gay rights, do you feel confident telling LGBT youth that it gets better?

Yeah, I mean he was supposed to be pretty good on this subject and Mvanka was supposed to be a moderating influence, but it doesn't look too good on that score.

No, there hasn't been a great large sort of thunderbolt moment with Trump attacking LGBTQ civil rights, but there's been a lot of little cuts, and it's kind of the death of the thousand cuts that we're worried about.

Just today, Trump appointed to the U.S.

Foreign Aid Agency, I can't remember the name of it, to work on gender equality and gender issues someone who's an anti-trans rights activist.

So in the same way that he appoints Betsy DeVos, who opposes public education, to head the Department of Education, he's

appointing people who have control over things that are going to impact LGBT Americans, all these anti-LGBT pickets, including his first pick, Pence.

By the way, I saw a headline in the New York Times.

It was like on page 14, like buried in the middle of the paper.

I never heard anybody else talk about it.

Shows you where we are, perspective-wise.

It said, cuts to aid funding could cost a million lives.

But they're not American lives, so, you know, page 14, who gives a shit?

And one of the first executive orders he signed was the Mexico City rule to roll back federal funding of abortion providers and abortion advisors in developing countries.

That's already having a huge impact on women in developing countries and directly impacting their health prospects.

And you know who was great on that issue, George Bush.

Yeah, very much so.

And very popular.

Who I missed.

No, no, no, not so much.

Not so much.

He was good on Africa.

Can I quickly answer the it gets better question and whether we can say that?

It gets better because we get out there and we fight to make it better.

It doesn't get better by itself.

Right.

So

we can still say

to we can still say to queer youth, it gets better.

We're out here fighting to make it better.

Join the fight.

We can make it better.

Things look pretty dire under George W.

Bush, under Ronald Reagan.

And the arc was trending positive.

Things look pretty dire right now, particularly with the Supreme Court.

Queer people have the most to lose after women with his appointments to the Supreme Court.

Absolutely.

This Gorsuch guy was a liar when he testified, oh, I'm just going to be a neutral umpire calling balls and strikes.

He's Scalia.

He's to the right of Scalia.

He's to the right of Scalia.

Okay.

Caddy Kaye, what do you make of the rivalry between Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson?

You cited him earlier, Rick, as one of the people we can count on to be smart.

That's amazing where the bar is now when the head of Exxon is one of the guys.

I think increasingly I'm hearing the names Mattison McMaster more than I'm hearing Tillerson.

Jared Kushner went to the Middle East, and it seems that the 36-year-old wonder kid with no experience in foreign policy actually won't bring about peace in the Middle East as quickly as he'd thought

and that he had a hard time

with President Abbas.

And this is where the rivalry stems from, is that the White House wants to have foreign policy inside the White House.

And Rex Tillerson is discovering that.

And Tillerson, you know, lost his mind this past week as well.

It has made it very clear he wants to hire his own people.

He wants to now close that shop in a little bit more.

It took him till July to lose his mind.

Well, yeah, that's true.

That's true.

But I think that he has no one in the department.

I used to be an assistant secretary of state.

I was appointed in February.

It's July.

They haven't appointed one of them.

But that, again, that's not the Secretary's fault.

That is being held up by the West Wing itself.

Yeah, but it's the Secretary's fault for waiting until July to get pissed off.

Well, that may be true.

But I think what's pissing him off more is taking orders from Jared Kushner.

That would be.

Yes.

I mean, he was the head of Exxon,

a country.

A big country.

He's taking orders.

He's taking orders from the son-in-law.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Have a great July.

We'll see you August 4th.

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