Overtime - Episode #425: WH Spokesmen, American Oligarchy, Public Service

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.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

All right, we're on over time.

Matt Welch, you grew up with a chimp?

I did not grow up with a chimp, but I know someone whose father was a

taught slang language.

It wasn't me.

I didn't grow up with a chimp.

And that's not nice to talk about my brothers that way.

All right.

Hey, I repaired my relationship with my cousins tonight.

Congressman Adam Schiff, do you trust your Republican congressional counterparts to impartially investigate the Trump administration?

To impartially investigate.

Yes, do you trust your Republican counterparts?

Great question.

I think they're serious about it.

I think in particular, we have a new Republican lead, Mike Conaway from Texas, who is determined to work in a nonpartisan way.

So I'm optimistic.

I am, you know, I can't say.

They don't seem that way on TV.

They don't seem, their talking points seem to be more of what we were talking about there, like nothing to see here.

And, you know, everybody investigates everybody and the president's under attack.

Let him do his job.

So you think behind closed doors you hear something different?

Yes, in my conversations with my new Republican lead, he assures me he is determined to follow the facts wherever they lead.

He wants this done in a strictly nonpartisan fashion.

And I think he has helped us get back on track after we had the whole blow-up over Devin Nunes in the White House.

So I'm optimistic, but I have to be, or it's hard to get up in the morning.

Right.

And we press forward.

And if I get to the point where I feel at any time we can't do the job we need to do, then I'll be very public about it.

Okay.

Well, I hope that's true because, you know, sometimes they say those things, and then they get a phone call from Steve Bannon or somebody, and next thing you know, the storyline has changed.

I mean, I saw that this week.

Senator Burr sounded pretty good the first day, and then the second day he was like, well, I'm certainly not asking for a special prosecutor.

Isn't that where the rubber meets the road, special prosecutor?

Whether you either want that or you don't?

There are now a few Republicans who are coming out in support of a special prosecutor.

That has been some real and significant movement.

And who are they, McCain?

No, they're actually

Kaufman, I think, from Colorado, Republican Senator.

There are some House members that have come out in favor of an independent commission.

That's fairly new.

All of this is movement, and I think this firing of Comey and all the aftermath,

if there was any lack of diligence or seriousness about the investigation in the Bureau before it, and I'm not saying there was, I think they are doubly determined that they're going to follow this trail, they're going to do their jobs because they know we're going to be watching very carefully to make sure there's no interference with their work.

Okay.

Justin Namash and Walter Jones, two Republicans in the House, who are both pretty strong libertarian leaders, they've signed up for that independent committee.

So, how many do we need to be a tipping point?

I think the number last I saw was 201,

the 199 Democrats and two Republicans.

So you need.

The bigger tipping point may come if the President's approval drops below a certain point because where my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the House at large are going to find their voice is when they feel this president is dragging them down.

And it's no longer going to be politically palatable for them to have anything to do with him.

Okay.

Does Sean Spicer or any spokesman for the Trump administration have any credibility left?

You're saying once you talk from the bushes, it's over.

Is that the line that is gone to the end?

You don't want to come to work after that.

I mean, Deep Throat was in the parking garage.

That was...

That was fairly...

I can't imagine if you're a spokesman for this White House having to go out there every day and just like either tell these lies or protect these these lies.

I mean, you can't succeed at your job.

I would rather clean Fukushima with my tongue.

You know,

my favorite comment of the week was by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who in trying to justify the firing of James Comey said that he was guilty of atrocities.

Atrocities.

So he is now Bashar al-Assad.

Apparently he must have gassed people within the Bureau

to be compared to...

to...

That's the Trump administration definition of atrocities.

Truth-telling, fact-finding, you know, atrocities come.

Can I ask a question?

From the pessimistic proletariat, I tell my friends all the time, I was like, I don't know if anything will come of the investigations.

Not that there isn't anything to be found or any retribution to happen should something be found.

Ever since I was a kid, we projected ourselves as the absolute leader of the free world.

We projected ourselves as the strongest country.

Like, it was hard for me to accept Russia had anything to do with our election based on the fact

as I witnessed Reagan taking down Gorbachev WWE style.

And I saw Rocky beat the shit out of the Russians.

So for...

In my mind, after Red October, we had won that, and we had moved on, and then we just had to worry about fucking terrorists.

So

my question really is, you know,

to the good men at the table and lady, is this country, can we afford to be perceived as having been gotten or having been weak enough?

And if we are willing to do that, I think we can change.

But if we're not, I think that more people are involved in the protecting of the

person that we have as president than just the Republicans who are quiet about it.

I think we're all a little too quiet about it.

You know, I think, again, there should be across the aisles, there should be outrage.

And the fact that there's not shows me that people are doing exactly what you just said, protecting their political equity until it tips, until he drips below a certain point, and then they can come out of the fucking bushes and say, I was never with them anyway.

Thank you for that excellent

regular man's

street version of American history

after the Cold War.

You got to the truth.

All right, Annabelle, do you think Ibanka is an effective advocate for women in the Trump administration?

And is it fair to to ask her to be one?

No.

No, this is

putting too much on her.

If she had any integrity, she wouldn't have accepted an office in the White House.

This is everything.

We don't do that in this country.

That's Banana Republic.

We don't do this.

We separate family.

It's another family story.

We separate our family from our government.

Well, we don't always.

Bobby Kennedy was the Attorney General, so we don't always.

Bobby was good.

Because you liked him.

I liked him too.

But I'm just saying, we have to leave that out of it.

To not even go back to history, though, I mean, here is a woman who doesn't have any policy experience.

This is not her airport.

But she only said a few months earlier, I just want to be a daughter.

I'm not going to do anything.

They're all such liars.

This strikes me as in a lot of countries where there's a monarchy,

the graft goes through the princelings.

Sure.

All the the graft goes through the children of the king.

And here,

Ivanka's brand gets these trademarks they've always wanted.

Does anyone imagine for a millisecond that if Trump hadn't decided to reject his early impulse and adhere to the One China policy, that the Ivanka Trump brand would have ever gotten those trademarks?

Not in a million years.

And here's the real risk that we become just like these other countries where the graft goes through the kids.

Are we an oligarchy?

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

Kind of, yes.

I mean, if you define oligarchy as the opinions of the people, because they've studied this, don't really have a lot of say in what gets enacted.

They've gone down the list of the issues.

You know, the people want to raise in the minimum wage, they want like 10 different things, and it's just not even on the agenda because that's what an oligarchy is.

But this is a little different.

You're saying this is a step beyond oligarchy.

This is that kind of corrupt stuff where, I mean, we've seen it with so many of the dictators that we used to play footsie with.

Saddam Hussein, the two kids, you know.

Uday and Qusay.

Uday and Kuse.

But I would inject a note of both humility and like, let's not tear down all of our civic institutions in the name of opposing someone that we disagree with here because you're going to need those civic institutions.

What I'm saying is that when you say that we live in an oligarchy, we live in something that can be compared to Saddam Hussein's Iraq or whatever.

Everybody has their Facebook

page feeding constantly of Keith Olbermann resistance coming down from the hills.

If you tear down the institutions and say that we are totally corrupt.

We want to restore them, not tear them down.

I know, but I'm saying.

It's not us who are tearing them down.

I'm saying that have some faith in checks and balances, insist that people use them.

Have some faith in the judiciary and some things like that.

But it does.

I keep saying this.

I've been saying this since last October.

It looks like a slow-moving coup to me.

But

Faith, yes.

What's so upsetting when you say that, though?

I'm just outraged by your saying that because what I feel is that we're

hot flush

is that

what's happening right now, and the whole election of Donald Trump was a rebuke against the idea that serving your country, that government is actually,

public service is a value I mean and and to me that's what's tearing down the we should be marching in the streets 24 hours a day except for the menopause I couldn't do it I don't have the energy but no the thing is is this is I mean I mean really you think that public service is not a value that's what motivates

you because every single day the government right now is we're just we're just reacting to these it seems like it was reacting to tweets reacting to every crazy crazy thing that's been happening in the Trump administration, and they can't do their job.

There are all these unfilled positions

as if there isn't a value to the work that's being done by people in the energy department, people in the EPA.

People don't know what to do, what I understand.

Not being replaced.

The real challenge that we're facing right now is we've had a dysfunctional Congress for a long time.

We now have a dysfunctional presidency along with it.

And if you look at the issues we're talking about in terms of potential corruption or kleptocracy, In a normal Congress, in a functional Congress, we would have a government reform committee looking into the emoluments issue, for example.

Is there a violation of the Constitution going on right now because the Trump family is advertising in China that you can get

in good with the administration if you do business

with us?

We should have a government reform committee investigating that issue.

We should have a Justice Department investigating that issue.

And maybe they decide, no, it's completely copacetic, but they ought to be looking into it, and they're not.

Instead, we have private litigants.

There are scandals.

That's the thing with this man.

It's like always being in this swarm of bees.

But that committee should be doing it.

You cannot get it.

That committee should do its job every day.

How do you get things done every day?

It seems like there's something new going on.

Well, you know, what you're doing here actually is very powerful.

Exactly.

You put a spot on it.

I'm going to go to the next board here is very powerful.

May I sign my book for you, Congressman?

Pen Summon.

All right.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Please buy my book, The Art of the Meal, A Thousand and One Trump Fat Jokes.

He's fat!

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