Overtime - Episode #427: Tech Addiction, 3rd Parties, Global Leadership

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.

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, real time with Bill Moll.

Tristan, how would you advise curbing addiction to our phones?

Do you use apps?

Well, of course you use apps.

One thing I've tried recently, if you make your phone grayscale, actually, it takes out

grayscale.

So take the color out of your screen.

So if you go to the settings, you can take the color out.

For me, I've noticed it actually makes a big difference in how addicted I am.

Just because the colorful rewards are like reinforcing this system of, I mean, the red circle, for example, that's part of this addictive element.

So when you take that out, turn off notifications is very simple.

I highly recommend that.

But grayscale, actually, for me, has helped quite a bit.

Jesus, people are such fucking chimps, aren't they?

Evolution 1.0 all the way down.

Easy to freaking manipulate.

Gee, that's depressing.

Jim, would you still advocate a third-party candidate for president?

Our system needs something different.

This thing isn't working.

Actually, I thought Ben Sass was a really, really good guest for you.

And he's like one of the few people

in there that's talking differently, thinking differently.

And I think, like, listen,

politics, the thing where Trump could have been good was that the place needed something big.

It needed an earthquake.

Washington is basically ungovernable except for when you have all-party rule.

And so the only time anything's gotten done in the last 12 years is the two years when Bush had all-party rule, two years when Obama had all-party rule.

And now Republicans are blowing it because they have all-Republican rule, but they're not actually doing much with it.

And so I think that if something doesn't change, because it's not just that repetitiveness, the addiction, it's the fact that what Facebook and social media has done is it just gives you a bunch of people that will say whatever dumb thing you say.

That's great, that's great.

I got a thousand fans, a thousand followers.

You get more incentives to be as dumb as you can possibly be.

So true.

It's really turning all human beings into rats.

I mean, it's.

Right.

No, but you're right.

I mean, in the old days of the John Birch Society, you had to go door-to-door with pamphlets and get people to come to your Bund meeting or whatever.

Right, right.

Or you just follow the red button.

Right, okay.

Will Trump block Comey from testifying?

Can he?

Legally, they can.

He's testifying Thursday, right?

Right, the day.

Legally, they can try to throw up impediments about executive privilege, but if he does, now, you know, I've been wrong a thousand times about the politics of Donald Trump, but if he does that, I think there is a nuclear explosion on the Hill, and I think even the Republicans at that point say this is unacceptable.

Jim Comey needs to tell a story in public, or else Donald Trump's credibility goes to.

They can tell you tonight they are seriously thinking about executive privilege for you.

The problem is that Comey can just go hold a press conference.

You might keep him from testifying.

He's a free man.

He can speak.

And will he?

I mean, what do we expect from him?

I cannot wait for this.

I literally.

He's very motivated to tell his side of the story.

I mean,

this is his big moment.

Right.

And I think he already has.

I mean, to a great extent, he's already told the story.

This is what what Donald Trump told me to do.

I wrote memos that

the contemporaneous memos that said here's what he told me.

That's the story.

He's going to reiterate that story, add a little bit of texture, but we already know it, so he's going to say it again.

Is he going to call it from his

memos?

I think we should have more memos.

I want him to bring them.

What did you think, Rebecca, of the recent tension in the Democratic Party over whether every supported candidate should have the same same pro-choice position.

Oh.

I think that we have this conversation every single time a Democrat loses and that the conversation, I mean, this was

the thing we did after the 2004 election.

Rahm Emmanuel decided we could get the House by ditching abortion and ditching reproductive rights as a requirement.

Now there are lots of issues that we could bring right-leaning Americans in on if we just jettison them, But it always seems to be reproductive rights that

not exclusively the men, but often the men who lead the Democratic Party or want to re-envision it, that's the first thing they imagine we can go.

Now, it's also based on really faulty polling.

It used to be that you used to poll America one way and say, do you believe in abortion?

And half the people said yes, and half the people said no, and it was like, oh, we're irrevocably divided.

But what there has been in the past couple years, and I recommend that these guys actually look at these polls, new ways of doing polls, where you first ask, are you personally in favor of abortion?

And then you get people saying no.

And then the follow-up is, but do you want to regulate it?

And when you ask the questions like that, you get seven out of ten who want legal abortion, who want some measure of access to abortion, even in Kansas, even in Nebraska.

There's really extensive polling on that.

And none of these guys seem to have read this.

This is actually one of the more popular issues.

I've seen Republican politicians be contradictory in the same sentence.

I saw member Herman Cain.

Herman Kane was asked about that.

It was hysterical.

It was like, the government should not be in our lives unless it's my door.

Right, right.

Right.

You know, Dan Quayle.

McCain says that McCain was the same way.

It would be a choice that we make as a family.

Right, yeah, yeah.

All right.

Which world leader now best represents liberal values?

Well, apparently, we're in a big brouhaha with Germany because Angela Merkel did not kiss his ass, so Germany.

Very bad.

Very bad.

That's where we are.

If you don't do the flattery bit with him, very bad.

Your country's very bad.

But it does look like she's, you know, the leader of the free world now.

Trudeau.

Trudeau.

Trudeau.

Well, Canada's a small, not powerful.

Well, okay, you're saying not a world leader.

You know, hey, he's our neighbor.

I love Canada, but, you know, it's not a big.

But he's been good on a whole bunch.

And I like the tweet he sent out about climate change.

And to Rebecca's point earlier, he said specifically, we regret that the federal government is no longer there, basically saying everybody else, you know, mayors, governors, corporations, come work with us.

Who's looking at Canada?

I think Canada may be too nice to be legal.

I mean, Germany has a history of being a little tough.

Yeah, well.

Right.

Getting a little scared here.

No, they've channeled it in a better direction.

That's all I'm saying.

Let's hope so.

No, well, we know they have.

Come on, at least for now.

Elliot, do you think that more underdog Democratic candidates in traditionally red districts can win, like Christine Pellegrino did in Long Island last month?

Absolutely.

Obviously, the energy in the Democratic base is real.

Look, I've never believed when a candidate says, I'm going to get people to the polls who haven't voted before, I said, okay, you're a loser, because that's not going to happen.

Right now, I actually think that can happen.

The energy out there is palpable.

The desire to get rid of Trump, to get rid of Paul Ryan, to get rid of Mitch McConnell, there's no question in my mind we can actually win big in AT ⁇ T.

If we don't, it's all over.

But, you know, as I was saying a minute ago, we haven't done that.

It hasn't really happened.

Because we need the backbone that you were articulating.

The no-wimpiness, just go out and fight.

And also, what I was asking the senator from Nebraska about, why are these places in the country, Montana, you know, you can assault somebody the day before the election, Nebraska, where I just cannot imagine under any circumstance a Democrat winning.

Why are Democrats that where I do think they actually think they would rather elect a Russian than a Democrat?

They think the Russians are less of a threat than Democrats and liberals.

I really think half the country believes that.

Part of it is, and I hate to blame the media, so I'm not going to blame them, but I think part of it is 20 to 30 years of the media being so conservative in certain parts of the country that the Democratic view doesn't get heard.

Really?

Because it's so funny, because they would say the media is liberal.

And Jim may disagree with me, you're in the media, but that's my view.

No, I mean, Montana, they elected a Democrat.

I think that...

Right.

So they are electable.

A Democrat could win, but it does go down to, and this is a big choice.

People talk about 18,

2006, Rah Emanuel did have that strategy of trying to find people that fit in individual districts.

So he had a lot of moderate Democrats that helped win back the House.

The question this time is, when you look, there's fewer seats that are authentically winnable now than there would have been 12 years ago because of redistricting, because we all moved away from people we don't like, but they're icky, so we move next to people that we do.

The question is, can you then find candidates that fit those districts?

And that's still a very much an open question right now for Democrats.

It would be the thing if you talked to Ram, if you have him on your show, he would say worries him the most right now: that he worries that the party will reject people that could win in those seats.

Okay, thank you, panel.

Very entertaining.

Thank you, audience.

Appreciate you coming out and helping us.

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