Ep. #424: John Kasich, Gabriel Sherman

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

Start the clock.

Right here, with me.

Thank you very much, folks.

How are you doing?

Okay, damn.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Great to have you here.

Frank New.

Oh,

what an excited group we have.

I know.

Well, I know it's Cinco de Mayo.

Or as Schwarzenegger calls it, Father's Day.

Oh, it's

perfect for my audience.

They're just coming down from 420.

Roll right into Cinco de Mayo.

But no, I mean, good thing California has medical marijuana because when the Republicans get done with health care, that is the only treatment you're going to have.

You saw what they did?

Oh, yeah.

I tell you.

Never underestimate these bastards.

We thought we had them a couple of months ago.

Healthcare came up in the house, didn't pass.

Oh, these fuck-ups.

Nope.

They did it.

They did it the other day.

They told Jimmy Kimmel's baby, go screw yourself.

They told Jimmy Kimmel's baby.

I didn't.

Let's start at the beginning with separating what I say with, there you go.

Little tutorial we need.

Anyway,

no, the House did it.

They passed the thing that basically lets the states be the bad guys and deny coverage of people with pre-existing conditions.

This is what got, by the way, the moderate Republicans on board, the moderate Republicans.

These are people who are like, you know, I dabble in killing people.

I wouldn't.

I wouldn't call myself a murderer, but I...

And then the nerve of them, after they did this, after they kicked 24 million people or more off healthcare, they threw a big party in the Rose Garden to celebrate it.

There they are.

Look at them high-fiving each other and congratulating.

Look at all these white assholes.

Somewhere there's an Elk's Lodge going, where's everybody?

Trump got carried away and grabbed a pussy.

Paul Ryan.

Anyway.

No, but he was feeling very good about himself.

I know, odd for him.

At one point he said,

how am I doing?

Hey, I'm the president.

Can you believe it?

No.

No, dipshit.

That's why we're investigating Russia.

And then, to cap it all off, later in the day, same day, he meets with the Prime Minister of Australia and he says to him, you have better health care than we do.

They have government-funded single-payer health care.

The very thing he just signed off the opposite of.

Any other president, this would be the stupidest thing he said all week.

With this guy, it doesn't even crack the top 100.

He had such a week, even by his standards.

In one 24-hour period, Politico quoted a GOP aide saying, he just seemed to go crazy today.

Today?

I mean, you heard, you've all heard by now, right, his tale of the time-traveling Andrew Jackson, right?

Okay.

Well, since we come on at the end of the week, I won't go through all that.

Let me just give you some context in this.

You know how in cartoons, crazy people always think they're Napoleon?

Trump thinks he's Andrew Jackson.

And when I say he thinks, I mean Steve Bannon told him about Andrew Jackson.

He didn't know who Andrew Jackson was from LaToya Jackson

six months ago.

All he knows now is that Andrew Jackson is the president that sane people think is a monster, but shit kickers love.

So ever since then, it's been old hickory all the time, accent on the hick.

He is Trump's favorite leader after Putin, of course.

And apparently, Trump thinks that Andrew Jackson is very angry that the Civil War happened

16 years after he died.

Trump said, this is his quote, people don't ask the question, but why was there a Civil War?

We got to find out what the hell was going on in 1861.

People aren't asking why there was a Civil War.

What they're asking is, why are we still using the Electoral College?

That's what we should be asking.

And by the way.

And by the way, Mr.

Trump, if you don't know what caused the Civil War and why we are talking about that, ask your supporters.

They reenact it once a month.

All right, we got a great show.

Maya Wiley, George Packer, and Philip Mudd are here.

And a little later, we'll be speaking with New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman.

But first up, he was in the 2016 presidential race for the Republican candidate for president.

He is the author of Two Paths: America Divided or United.

He's also the governor of Ohio.

John Kasich is over here.

How are you doing, Governor?

Great to meet you.

Meet you.

Thank you for coming by.

I think our audience agrees with me.

You're one of the good ones.

Oh, look at that.

That's pretty good for a liberal California audience.

So let's really get them on your side and talk about some of the things that you've done in Rafora.

First of all, you supported medical marijuana in Ohio, correct?

Well, we did it because we felt that we were going to get to the point.

No.

No.

I'll tell you what, Bill, here's my concern about it, and I know you legalized it here for recreational reasons.

But, you know, we have this big opiate problem, as you know.

Nothing to do with pot.

No, but

here's what I'm concerned about.

The drug enforcement agents came to see me.

They're like, you know, been in it for 25, 28, 32 years.

And I said, what do we do?

What do we do about this?

Because we are on top of everything, and I wanted to hear from them.

And they said, look, John...

What we have to do is educate people starting at a very early age, and we have to drive this all the way through.

Because, you know the opiates become harder to get, and then people head to heroin.

And my only concern about the marijuana issue is: I don't want to tell kids don't do drugs, but you could then do this drug.

So, that is the point.

But in Ohio, we have a medical marijuana.

I signed the bill to get that done.

Well, why do we have to bring kids into it?

I mean, liquor is legal, and we don't tell kids you can have liquor.

I don't know why that always has to enter into the debate.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know why

an entire nation of adults has to be deputized into the fight for parents to keep their kids away from drugs or guns or their sex toys.

You know what?

You're the adults.

You're supposed to be smarter than your kids.

All I'm saying to you is we have an enormous problem.

You know it.

We all know it.

Yes, opiates.

We see opiates, which then leads to this problem of heroin and fentanyl, which is deadly.

And all I want to do is tell the kids at an early age and all the way through school, reinforcing their parents or reinforcing anybody in this audience who doesn't want to see a kid destroy their lives.

And so what I'm saying to you is I just don't want to be confusing, but we have a medical marijuana in Ohio.

And you also expanded

Medicaid, which a lot of Republican governors did not do.

It's part of Obamacare.

Because, you know, you care a lot about the poor.

It's part of your faith, is it not?

Yeah, well, look, they came in to me one day.

They said we can cover 700,000 people who are either mentally ill, drug addicted, or chronically ill.

A third of the 700,000 either have a drug problem or they're mentally ill.

And frankly, how do you say no to that?

And it is a partnership with the federal government.

I think Medicaid expansion can be changed to some degree, but we don't want to do it overnight because where are those people going to go?

Okay, and that's not appropriate.

And I want people to have health care.

And I'll tell you another thing.

thing.

It is very important for both parties, not just the Republican Party, but both parties.

The easiest thing to do is to run over the weak, those who live in the shadows, and those who don't have much.

And it is not right.

And part of my faith is, I mean, that's.

That doesn't sound like most Republicans.

Let me tell you.

You are out of step with your party when you say that.

No,

I mean that as a compliment.

But wait a minute.

Maybe I'm trying.

No.

No, what I'm saying is maybe I'm trying to define what my party ought to be.

I wish someone would.

Because,

yeah, no, there used to be, I mean,

I wasn't a big fan of George Bush, but when he said compassionate, conservative, and by the way, he looks better all the time now.

He does.

Still not good, but better.

Okay.

But Jack Kemp, you know, there was, you know, Republican classic, I would call them.

And I think you are in that school.

Well, and you think about not just somebody like Jack Kemp, but you even think back to JFK, who said a rising tide lifts all boats.

I mean, we want to have everybody in our country believe, first of all, that people people care about them, because there are many people in this country who think nobody cares about me and I don't matter.

And that is not healthy.

And secondly, you want to give people a chance to rise.

And if they have bad health, they can't get work.

They can't have anything.

And by the way, did you know As you know,

I've been very forceful on this health care bill, and I have spoken out against it.

But you see, people are focusing on the pre-existing conditions, which they should.

And what they do is allow states to opt out of that requirement.

I don't know any states that will.

But the problem is not just that.

The problem is bigger than that, Bill.

The problem is there is not the resources in this bill to help people on the exchange.

Some people would get no more than a $3,000 or $4,000 tax credit.

What can you buy for a health care policy?

And if you are mentally ill or drug-addicted, you have to go to the doctor all the time, and you've got your deductibles, and they don't have any money.

So I'm hoping that the United States Senate will get in this and fix this, all of it, and make it better.

So I think what Obamacare did more than anything was

changed America's view of health care, that it's a right.

But your party says it's a product.

It's a product like any other product, and I don't want to pay for you buying something that you should buy for yourself.

So let me ask you, is it a right or is it a product?

One word answer only.

No, I'm kidding.

Is it a right or a product?

Look,

I would say it's a right if you force me to choose one or the other.

But hold on, hold on, hold on.

Senator Robert Taft, who is a senator, voted one of the five best senators.

It was in the Senate from 1939 to 1953.

State of Ohio.

State of Ohio.

Here's what he said.

He said, if people can't afford health care in our country, the United States of America, the government ought to get it for them.

Now, I don't know how we went from Mr.

Conservative, Mr.

Republican, to where if I say that people need to have coverage, that somehow that makes makes me something other than acceptable to conservatives, I think conservatives ought to understand that it is important for every individual, every person, to have the hope to be able to rise and get ahead.

Now, Bill, hold on, one other thing I want to say.

This issue of the health insurance and covering people,

fine, get them their coverage.

We need to do that.

But we have to work on the rising costs of health care, which means we have to change the way

the pharmaceutical industry sells us stuff.

We have to think about transparency.

We need to know who's providing, we need to pay doctors and hospitals for quality.

How about stopping the gouging?

I agree with that.

I mean, there's got to be some cap on that.

Well, I'll tell you what, I went into...

And I know that's anti-Republican.

No, no, no, no, no.

Here's what I'm arguing.

First of all, I'm a Republican, okay?

So I have a right to define it just as much as anybody else.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Yes, you do.

Here's the thing, Bill.

When I suggested to the administration, and I believe this, at home, home, and this is what the Democrats gave me, I have to put every drug on my formulary, regardless of cost.

You know what I want?

I want the ability to take them off my formulary.

I want leverage.

I want them to bring their price down.

Now, we don't want to destroy the industry because...

hey, they may be creating something that's going to save somebody's life here, you know, and avoid invasive surgery or whatever.

But you cannot have something like EpiPen jack their prices up.

Exactly.

And so, you know, I'm a believer in a free enterprise system, but I also believe it has to be underlaid with a set of values.

And that's the great theologian Michael Novak who laid that out.

Okay.

But

I don't think a lot of people in your party, including Paul Ryan, even understand how insurance works.

I read a quote from him last week on the show where he said, well, the problem with Obamacare is that you have young people paying for old people's health care.

Of course, that's how insurance works.

And when they get to be old, then young people will pay for them.

Now they want this high-risk pool.

They want to put all the people at high risk in one pool.

This is like marrying young people.

You don't,

you want a mixture.

You want the young, healthy people in with the older, sicker people, not a high-risk pool.

Well, that's the problem.

The problem was that Obamacare, because of the way they changed the insurance market, it made it harder for young people to buy insurance.

The cost was too high.

And so the pools have not been healthy.

And we need to make sure that we have healthy pools with both young people who are healthy and other people who who are sick.

In terms of the issue of preexisting conditions, there would be no excuse, no excuse I can think of in America that somebody who has a preexisting condition has to ever worry about getting health care.

That would be outrageous.

Okay, so I mean, everything you say sounds so reasonable, but you said it as a candidate last time,

and it didn't fly.

The guy who's not very reasonable kicked your ass.

Let's be honest.

That's right.

So let me present a scenario to you.

Now, it's only been 100 days with Donald Trump.

Let's say two years down the road, I can see a scenario where he's in a lot of trouble because he's an idiot.

There could be a foreign affairs disaster.

He doesn't know anything about that.

Russia could explode in his face.

People could be dying from his health care bill.

I could see a challenge in the Republican Party for 2020.

Would you be up for that?

No, no, no, no, no.

Look.

You wouldn't challenge that as a sitting president?

It's so speculative.

And

look,

I'm going to finish my term in 18 months as governor of our state, pull the state together and get it to do better and better and better.

That's what I'm all about, and giving everybody a shot.

And then I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to keep a voice.

But I can't predict to you.

I never thought I would be governor.

I never thought I'd go back into politics.

So what I look for is what is it I'm supposed to do?

What is it I'm supposed to do in my lifetime to build a better world or build a better community or whatever?

And so I can't tell you what that's going to be.

And I'm not plotting and scheming.

I'm rooting for him to do well, Bill, the same reason why I root for a pilot on my airplane to do well.

Okay?

He's the president.

But he's not sully.

Well, he's not sully.

That's a good line.

That's right.

You're good at this.

But look, if we want to have a president that unites us, not a president that...

But you famously made a statement about not voting for him, not to do it.

I didn't.

I didn't.

And it was a statement of integrity because it was hard to do at that time within your party.

I'm just saying.

Somebody in your party needs to stick up for the classic Republican.

Well, I'm doing it all the time.

Thank you.

And it aggravates me.

And we appreciate it.

You know, it aggravates some people, not necessarily them.

Not us.

And look, part of that election was I was like a Ugandan swimmer.

I was so far to the right side of the stage, no one could even see me.

And then in order to get attention, Bill,

you know, to the Olympics.

I'll have to Google that analogy after the show.

Do you remember?

Did you ever watch the Olympics?

Like, that was a great thing.

No.

Okay, but it's a really good thing.

I'll send you tapes.

So I was way out on the end.

But here's the thing.

What I didn't want to do, seriously, what I didn't want to do, and this is a problem with, and I love the media, but this is one of the problems.

You call somebody a name, you have this clever soundbite, and then you're on the morning news.

I wasn't going to do that.

I mean, I represent 11.5 million people, but you see, a lot of people want to look for that.

That's what they absorb.

And that is not the way we should be picking presidents on sound bites.

Let's make America decent again, right?

Yeah.

Thank you very much, Governor.

I wish you the best of luck in the future.

Governor Kasich.

All right.

Thank you, John.

Let's meet our panel.

Okay, hey, everybody.

All right, here they are.

He is a former deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center and FBI National Security Branch, Philip Mudd.

Hey, Philip, how you doing?

He is a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of The Unwinding, an inner history of the new America.

George Packer, great to see you, George.

And she's the senior vice president for social justice at the new school and chair of New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Maya Wiley.

Welcome to our show for the first time.

Okay, so obviously we have to start with health care.

The bill that they passed halfway through to home, not that different from the one that didn't pass in March.

I want to give you the basics.

Could lead to 24 million people losing insurance altogether.

The individual mandate, which makes the whole thing possible, that of course goes away.

Ends Obamacare premium subsidies.

This would mean higher overall out-of-pocket costs.

Allows insurers to charge older customers higher premiums up to five times as much.

Obama copped that at three.

Lets

states obtain waivers for essential health benefits.

This is like covering pregnancy, hospital visits, prescription drugs, you know, health care.

And of course, pre-existing conditions.

They kick back to the states this is and and and don't ever forget this one I mentioned this last week but it never never gets old this is really a tax cut for the rich people because it cuts $880 billion from Medicaid and cuts taxes by $765 billion most of which goes to higher earners so I saw the Democrats

chanting at the Republicans who voted for this nana hey hey goodbye they think this is political suicide for them.

What do you think?

I don't know if that we're in an age where there is such a thing as political suicide.

I have seen Republicans screw the little man over and over and then the little man goes out and votes for them.

But this is different.

This is really different.

Tell me that.

The reason it's different is because, first of all, this is a bill in its original form that had 17%

support.

In other words, the traditional Republican base isn't even liking this.

That's a very different picture.

You know, and the reality around what Governor Kasich said about wanting your pilot to succeed because he's flying your plane, your pilot's actually been trained to fly the plane.

Very, very good point.

You know, one thing that struck me listening to the governor, Richard Nixon proposed national health insurance.

Republicans used to think that this was actually well within the realm of possibility.

Romney care.

Something happened to the Republican Party that has left Governor Kasich kind of way out on a limb sounding like Republicans of old, but today

he sounds like a Democrat.

But we actually know what that was.

It's called the Freedom Caucus.

I mean it's really the gerrymandering old people.

Exactly.

We got to remember though the story is bigger here.

They didn't say repeal.

They said repeal and replace.

The significance here is what debate we're having in America.

A kid 10 years ago had roads, had schools provided by the government, had security provided by the government.

Now, even Republicans are acknowledging that somehow the government has to have a role in insurance as well.

I think that's the significance at a deeper level for American culture.

Pre-existing conditions is critical, but there's not a conversation that doesn't include replace, and I think that's huge.

Okay.

I want to say something about my friend Jimmy Kimmel, who I am very proud of because he brought this issue into American living rooms in a way it wouldn't have done before.

And Jimmy, I'm glad your baby is getting to be okay.

And I'm.

I'm flattered you're named it after me.

But here's the thing.

Jimmy said, if your baby's going to die, and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make.

I think that's something, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, we all agree on.

And fortunately,

that's not true.

And that needs to be said.

That's not true.

One side wants to tax rich people so babies don't have to die.

And one side is mostly against that.

And this lets Republicans off the hook.

Let's not fuck around with this.

We are not on the same page with this.

This is not a squabble.

Where it's about just two sides being...

I mean, what we've seen, this is a clarifying week.

Because what this vote showed was a kind of willingness to embrace naked cruelty.

People will die.

People will die and they know it, and it's a price they're willing to pay.

We are not all on the same page.

We don't all agree.

We are not all on the same page.

We do not all agree.

But I think one of the things we have to remember is 20 Republicans voted against this bill.

And the truth is we also know.

20 out of ⁇ Yeah, but we also know that it was actually the strategy of the House Republicans who were trying to knit this deal together, frankly, to get the Freedom Caucus.

Once again, thanks to gerrymandering, they have undue influence in Congress outside of the percentage of popular vote in the states they're representing.

So they're not actually reflecting a lot of their constituents.

And that's what we have to remember, particularly as we're thinking about how we go into the 2018.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if Jimmy Kimmel's moving monologue will change people's minds about this, but I think that's.

But I also think losing your health insurance might change one's mind about this.

Yes.

Being unable to have your kids covered when they're in an emergency like Kimmel's baby.

But the problem with

saying that is, and I know he's not a political guy especially, is that that's what makes people not vote.

They think, well, they're all the same.

It's just a petty squabble.

You know what we need?

We need some kind of outside deal maker who'd come in and shake things up.

And let me give you Joe Walsh's.

He's an ex-congressman, a Republican, who answered Jimmy.

He said, sorry, Jimmy, your sad story doesn't obligate me or anybody else.

else to pay for somebody else's health care.

And that is their view, that it is a product, not a right.

And in fact, health care is a stick to stimulate you to do better so you can buy your own health care.

This is the same thing with Donald Trump about why couldn't we have solved the Civil War?

Because one side thought that black people were farm equipment that could sing.

Well it's actually many of the

states of the Confederacy that refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

Right.

But what I would say about your point, Bill, which I, again, I think we have to remember, is it's not just Jimmy Kimmel.

I mean, Ben Jackson, for those who may have seen Senator Markey, had a constituent who actually posted his own video in his daughter's hospital room.

She's in a hospital bed.

He said he's been sitting there for 101 days, and that if this goes through the Senate, that he's going to watch his daughter die.

So the reality here is that it's not just Jimmy Kimmel.

What Jimmy Kimmel did is give a much bigger platform to the voice of a whole bunch of people who have all of them.

And I'm so fearful.

I'm so glad he did.

I don't buy it, though.

Look, we're violating what we just witnessed in an election.

Jimmy Kimmel, whether we like it or not, represents at least elites on the east and west coast who voted for Hillary Clinton.

They had years to determine whether they liked Obama.

They didn't.

They voted for somebody else, and there's a huge quantity of red states that said, screw you.

So we look at this and hope that this man represents

an undercurrent in America that wants change.

And the answer is they wanted change in a different direction and they voted for it.

So we don't have to like it.

That's just wrong.

Yeah, it may be wrong, but it's true.

No, Trump promised coverage for everyone and got elected on that basis.

I think when people start losing it, it's not going to be good for him.

That's right.

This is inconsistent with his campaign pledges, as many of his positions are.

And secondly, even when you look at what happened in the election, he really won this election by 80,000 votes.

You know, this notion that there was, first of all, almost 3 million popular votes to Hillary Clinton.

But secondly, it really came down to three states, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

The grand total was about 80,000 that delivered the unfortunate Electoral College to him.

So that is not quite the landslide that it was reported on.

All right.

Well, let me ask about the other issue with him that bothers me so much this week.

He apparently really likes to pal around with dictators.

Remember, Obama used to pall around with terrorists?

Well,

this guy,

I mean, just,

first of all, a couple of weeks ago, he talked about the maniac in Turkey who had a plebiscite that basically ended democracy in Turkey, and he gave him a congratulatory call.

Great dictating, man.

Okay, then we have Putin.

He loves Putin, right?

That

Duterte, don't say that.

Insane guy.

How do you pronounce it?

I would say Duterte.

Okay, he is the guy in the Philippines, if you don't know.

He's an extrajudicial killer.

He goes, he just, he brags about killing people himself.

He's killed thousands of people just because he's maniacally anti-drugs.

So if you do drugs at all, you might be dead.

Cece from Egypt, he had him over to the White House.

Great guy, because you know, he's a dictator.

And Kim Jong-un,

this is unbelievable.

Kim Jong-un puts out a video at the beginning of the week where it's a simulation of bombs.

Do we have it?

Do we show it?

Coming over to the White House.

Yeah, look at this.

Blowing up the Capitol.

I don't know what that means at the end.

I think Ratzaruck is what that translates.

And three days later, Trump says, I'd be honored to meet him.

Look, he shares their values.

It's simple.

Exactly.

No, I'm not kidding.

I'm not a kid either.

He neither looks at them.

No, he looks at them and says, you get things done without this messy business of compromising with people.

And look who he's appointed to his cabinet.

Getting those in general.

He doesn't hate Kim.

He wants to be him.

He wants to have military parades.

He wanted to have tanks in the street for his inauguration.

So my question is, does his love of dictators foreshadow him trying that shit here?

Well, didn't we already see he, look,

we saw him undermine the, at least suggest that there was something wrong with the judicial system in this country, which is a significant check and balance if it either thinks some of his executive orders are unconstitutional or maybe that one of his universities is fraudulent.

And the way he attacks the media.

And the way he attacks the media and actually tells people do not believe facts and the media is lying to you whenever he needs to deflect.

So those are two very serious signs.

So when the coup comes working because of his incompetence, I think that's the greatest safeguard against a Trump problem.

The only problem is the problem, I agree with you that it's not necessarily working, although there is some polling that suggests that Americans are starting to trust the news media less, which is troubling.

But I think it's also important to recognize that he is going to

appoint Supreme Court justices and the federal court bench.

So depending on how long he's got in office, four years, eight years, two years,

that we might see that he has some substantial influence if the Democrats aren't able to do something in 2018, which is part of why it's critically important that we see the energy building.

What do you think?

You know our internal apparatus better than us.

This story is tougher than it looks.

We all cheered as Democrats after the Arab Revolution starting in 2011 because we mirror image.

We did it in Iraq.

We said when we go in and change a government or when a revolution changes the government, the people get a vote.

Look at what we got now.

Yemen, Syria, Egypt for a while was chaos and then a dictator moves in.

Algeria is a bit of a, pardon me, Tunisia is a bit of a success story.

Libya is a mess.

I think people across the Middle East might say, hey, you Americans, you like democracy, but Trump is looking out saying the guys who can handle the people I focused on, ISIS, those are dictators.

And that's why I believe, believe it or not, you're going to end up with this administration supporting Assad in Syria.

He's going to say Assad against ISIS is better than democracy in Syria.

And part of the answer is...

That's what he always said until he saw a picture of a baby.

Remember, Ivanka came in and said, Daddy, this is sad.

Fire the missiles.

And excuse me.

And 59 missiles in four minutes isn't a policy.

Right.

And the runway was.

And the Russians said, sorry, we got to complain.

And then they went back and said, now we're going to cut a deal.

I think the danger isn't that journalists are going to get locked up or that the Ninth Circuit's going to be abolished.

The danger is that the public is going to get so cynical at hearing lie after lie coming from government that they're going to check out.

And they're going to stop believing that they can find the truth somewhere.

And it kind of becomes this destabilizing atmosphere where people think, well, there is no truth, so forget it.

I'm not going to.

61% of Republicans think freedom of the press is necessary, which would lead me to believe that about 4 out of 10 think it's not.

So

nice to have an optimist on the panel.

All right.

Like you don't need any more bad news.

Donald Trump, I'm not making this up, has already started advertising for the 2020 election.

I am not making this up.

This is a real ad.

He's running already.

Please show it.

Donald Trump, sworn in as president 100 days ago.

America has rarely seen such success.

A respected Supreme Court justice confirmed.

Companies investing in American jobs again.

America becoming more energy independent.

Regulations that kill American jobs eliminated.

The biggest tax cut plan in history.

You wouldn't know it from watching the news.

America is winning and President Trump is making America great again.

I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.

Well, if that's not an ad for a coup, I don't know what is.

But, you know, Chris, a lot of that is just total bullshit.

His tax plan, there's no plan.

It was one page.

Angelina Jolie has more writing on her back than that tax cut.

The Keystone Pipeline.

If you're just cutting taxes, you don't need much.

Right.

But I mean, the Keystone Pipeline, that comes from Canada.

It doesn't make us energy independent.

It's dependent.

Okay.

So I said this at the end of the show last week.

His folks don't care about facts.

It's just about feeling.

So we got a hold of his next ad, which is even more outreach.

Would you like to see it?

Because it's just about making people feel good.

All right, show his next one.

Donald Trump, sworn in as president 107 days ago.

America has rarely seen such success.

Kids are pulling up their pants.

Your dick works again.

The Supreme Court ruled that rap isn't music.

The interns at the office love your stories of the old days.

People at the grocery store think paying with a personal check is super cool.

The mother of all bombs is now available at Target.

You can grab hussy and they'll let you do it, even if you're not a celebrity.

More people are masturbating to the first lady than any time since 1963.

And you may not see the wall, but it's there.

It's been in your heart all this time.

I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.

All right, he is the National Affairs Editor for New York Magazine and author of the loudest voice in the room.

Gabriel Sherman's with us.

Gabriel, how you doing?

Great to meet you, sir.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Well, listen, you have done something very clever.

You positioned yourself as the absolute expert on Fox News.

And now every day we have new, new Fox News.

It just doesn't seem to end.

So you are very much in demand.

Roger Ale's gone.

Bill O'Reilly gone.

Now Bill Schein, the head of the network for all those years gone.

15 plus women are suing.

Plus they have a racial discrimination class action suit.

Okay, I guess my question is, could this happen anywhere or is there a correlation between being a conservative and being an asshole?

Well, you know.

It's funny when you see a network where misogyny and racism is sort of fundamental to its programming model, it's not a surprise per se that it's going on behind the the camera as well.

So there is a correlation.

Yes, there is.

So, but the viewers stay with them.

Yes.

So what is the ultimate bad thing that could happen to Fox News?

Well, I think, you know, over time, this is a sort of a dovetails with the Trump question.

You know, Trump said famously he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters wouldn't care.

I think there's a core small base of that.

But in the aggregate, over time, when people see that this network is a hotbed of misogyny and racism, you're going to see some erosion in the audience.

And that's what the Murdoch family that controls Fox News is worried about because it's the profit center.

It's what runs their entire global media enterprise.

So if this collapses, their whole business goes down the drain.

And what do you see next for Bill O'Reilly?

I guess he's got a podcast now.

I know.

It's How the Mighty Have Fallen.

Yeah.

And every time this subject comes up, I like to point out that Bill O'Reilly can't get laid.

He just can't get laid.

He tries everything and it just doesn't happen.

Do you think this will change him?

I mean, you know, he is a fully formed 68-year-old man.

I think he's sort of beyond the point where people change.

Okay.

And what about this,

I guess,

threat that Fox News has from the right that I read about in the paper this week, Sinclair Group.

That's a pretty big television.

They're not a network, but they're Sinclair.

A string of television.

A string of stations, and they're buying up stations, and they want to be to the right of Fox News.

Yeah.

That they think Fox is too liberal.

What a country.

Yeah,

that is a bigger issue, really, is that no matter how much of a frothing lunatic,

there is someone frothier.

Someone much who is like, yeah, you think you're a caveman?

I can be more of a caveman than you out there.

Now, what's going to happen with that?

So yes, as you point out, Sinclair is buying up stations.

They are trying to position themselves to be the heir to Fox if this meltdown at Fox continues.

But I think they're not the only ones.

I mean, we saw this during the election.

Breitbart and other right-wing websites really tapped into this alt-right audience that wanted an angrier, if this is even possible, an angrier sort of message than Fox was programming.

So I think you're seeing the irony is that Roger Ailes built Fox News to attack and splinter the mainstream media.

and now Fox News is being subject to that same fracturing that they themselves did 20 years ago.

Hmm, that's interesting.

What do you make of Ivanka and her efforts to sort of humanize her father?

We see all this misogyny at Fox News.

We see it in Donald Trump himself.

A lot of us thought, oh, Ivanka's going to be our saving grace.

You know, when he's about to fucking nuke Finland or something,

she's going to walk into the bedroom and, you know,

daddy.

Daddy.

Don't do it, Daddy.

You know, I do.

Is that how you see Ivanka?

No, I.

But do you see her as someone who can save us, or do you think she is part of the problem?

I think, you know, again, I think she's on the margins trying to save us, but Donald Trump,

to the degree that she can, but Donald Trump doesn't listen to anybody, including his own family.

So she can walk into the Oval Office and say, oh, you know, I saw pictures of dead babies in Syria, and maybe this time he listened.

But the next time he's going to do something else, I'll bomb a different country.

So the wrong one, maybe.

So

it's too hard to say with him that anyone can get through.

All right.

Let me ask this of you and everybody.

George Will talked this week about the public needing to quarantine was his word about Donald Trump because Trump even as I said by his standards had a crazy week.

I mean it was super crazy.

He floated some ideas that are super liberal like because he just muses off the top of his head.

He talked about a gas tax.

He talked about breaking up the banks, which caused a minor panic on Wall Street for a while.

He talked about how the Israeli-Palestinian issue wasn't probably that hard to solve.

You know, countdown to nobody knew.

And there are people who are saying, should we just stop paying attention to the President of the United States?

And is that possible?

It's not possible.

It's not possible.

Now, I like quarantining him, and I think what's critically important is to pay attention to what the facts are.

And actually, we have to pay some attention to what he says, because he is, in fact, the president, and he may make some of that come true.

So we have to pay attention to it.

I think the difference is whether or not we are being fooled by him as like when he calls out something is fake news that's actually fact

and whether or not the news media is getting sufficient access to get the information it needs and that it should get since we know that he likes to put dark garbage bags over windows when he's golfing with prime ministers from Japan.

No way you can quarantine him.

Look, we've seen two things in 107 days that are hugely significant.

And they're two things that checks and balances don't necessarily control.

One is executive orders.

We talked about the imperial presidency, or at least Republicans did over at the end of the day.

Executive orders.

Oh, sure, they do.

No, they don't.

They're mostly just, I wish.

He thinks they're laws.

They're not laws.

If you go to DHS, Department of Homeland Security, and say, be more aggressive in interpreting the law to get people out of the country, if you look at the numbers of people who are out of this country, significant change in the past 100 years.

Absolutely, because they wanted to do it anyway.

What I'm saying is where he can take executive action without the judiciary or the Congress, he's going to do it.

The second is, look at all the action overseas.

Overseas is the area where a president can move.

You want to move ships to North Korea?

You want to engage in a deal with the Russians about safe zones in Syria?

That's the past 48 hours.

You want to talk about whether or not we make a commitment that's bigger or lesser to NATO.

You want to talk about engagement with the Russians.

You want to talk about supporting Maureen Le Pen?

You can't quarantine the dude.

Cat's out of the barn or whatever the the hell that phrase is.

I'd say also, I disagree a bit with Gabe about Ivanka, because to me, the true north of this administration is corruption.

They may go all over the map on policies.

He may be for the gas tax one day, against it, the next.

The thing he's got his eye on is quite consistent about is self-dealing, enriching his family and his associates.

And I'd say...

Where that is concerned, Ivanka Trump is the H.R.

Haldeman of this administration.

So that's what the press has to focus on.

It may seem like there's nothing to be done or the public just accepts a level of corruption in this administration.

That has to be called out every single day because if it becomes normal, it's a real threat.

But I think George, if I can

quote a little from George Will, he kept coming back to this point that it's up to the public.

He said the public has to communicate to their elected representatives that they have more to fear from the public than from crossing Donald Donald Trump.

He said it again: the public has to say, we have taken this man's measure and we find it alarming.

He said, It is up to the public to quarantine the presidency.

And what I worry about is that the public, as usual, is not up to the task.

Listen to this.

42% of the people who voted for Obama and then switched to Trump said congressional Democrats' economic policies favor the wealthy.

Only 21% said the same about Trump.

So by two to one, they're dead wrong.

Dead wrong.

They think that Trump is better on income inequality than the Democrats.

It may tell you something about the weakness of the Democrats, too.

I mean, how often did we hear?

It says a lot about it.

How often did we hear about the government?

But they did give you Obamacare.

They are for the minimum, hiking the minimum wage.

They fought measures.

First of all,

that's way too much emphasis to put on that poll.

Because one thing we have to remember that happened in this past election cycle was something that Republicans before Trump generally would not do, which is pair a message on economic populism, one that was very traditionally not very Republican,

and couple it with outward racism and xenophobia,

which was a unique message.

And actually, if you look at where Trump gained traction, for instance, winning a county that Obama had won in 2012 or 2008,

typically what happened is you had the primary conditions of increasing population of Latinos with a loss of manufacturing jobs

and an electorate that

did not have the number of college degrees that I think all Americans should have.

So when you pair all those things, it's actually a very specific set of conditions and factors that produce that kind of statement, not something that that represents all Democrats.

But poor people don't vote.

In 2014, only 25% of the lowest income bracket voted.

So three out of four did not vote.

So they don't even reward the Democrats when they do things for them.

How do we solve that problem?

We stop making it hard for poor people to vote.

Because the primary thing that we do

is we have substantially reduced the number of polling sites.

We have have significantly extended the lines that people have to wait in.

Poor people are much less likely to be able to afford the travel costs to get to the polls or to give up the wages that they have to give up to go vote because we don't have a national holiday.

We don't vote on weekends.

So everything we do is actually calculated to ensure that poor people can't vote.

Yes, sir.

I covered Trump's campaign for the magazine, and I traveled the country.

And I think when I went went to those rallies, the thing the audience was responding to was mood.

It wasn't policy.

He could almost say anything, but it's that bluster that he delivered that broke through.

I don't think they're paying attention to the fact that he wants to transfer a trillion dollars to the upper class.

They don't follow the policies.

They just like that their guy is in office and he happens to be a white guy.

Well, and he said he wasn't going to benefit the wealthy.

He actually said what he was going to do.

But this is the ultimate bait and switch, that if you look on a policy basis.

They see him as a strong alpha man, which is amazing to me because he's such a whiny little bitch.

All right.

We have to end it there.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

All right, new rules.

This couple in Scotland who took their dog in for gender reassignment surgery

has to move to America just to see Republicans freak out over which fire hydrant it uses.

New Roll, someone has to explain why the only child stars to never go bankrupt and on drugs always look like they're bankrupt and on drugs.

New Roll, the South Carolina woman with the black eyeballs who was arrested for inviting a man to her home so she could rob him at gunpoint, has to answer this question.

Will you marry me?

All these years I've worried that marriage would get old.

Not with this chick.

When you walk through the door, she doesn't say, How's your day, hon?

She pistol whips you, zip-ties your legs, and says, Now make me a meatloaf, faggot.

New rule:

DJs like Daft Punk, Deadmouse, Marshmallow, and Cassette, who wear helmets when they perform, have to take them off.

You may not be the best-looking rock stars ever, but if Axel Rose, Iggy Pop, and Marilyn Manson could go on stage without a mask, so can you.

New rule, Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin need to move on to the next speed date.

Clearly, this one is not working out at all.

Then again, Putin doesn't want to have a mature relationship with a smart, powerful woman.

He wants a bitch.

And finally, new rule, now that the media, the White House, and political junkies have made such a big deal about the first 100 days, let's stop doing that.

100 days?

It's such an arbitrary number, like waiting a half hour to swim after you eat, or waiting for the third date to have sex, or not having a drink until five o'clock.

Who

can make that up?

But in the case of Donald Trump, I will say this: about a hundred days.

It does give us enough evidence to ask those liberals who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary because she was the lesser of two evils

quite a bit lesser, wouldn't you say now?

And no, this isn't about reliving the last election or about my great love for Hillary, which never was.

It's about winning the next election.

And that begins with learning the difference between an imperfect friend and a deadly enemy.

Jill Stein said of her electoral rivals, Hillary and Trump, to me one is death by gunshot wound and the other is death by strangulation.

Well, I'm sure with Trump in charge and a racist attorney general, there'll be a lot more of both.

My dear friend Cornell West said during the campaign, I think Trump will be a neo-fascist catastrophe and Clinton will be a neoliberal disaster.

I don't even know what a neoliberal disaster even means.

But whatever it is, isn't it better than a fascist one?

Have you people lost your fucking minds?

Now, I can't possibly list all of the lies, fuck-ups, reversals, conflicts of interest, and embarrassments Trump has committed in 100 days.

I'd have to stop halfway through to shave.

But honestly, under Hillary, would we have Attorney General Foghorn Leghorn

or Montgomery Burns in charge of the EPA

or Rick Perry guarding the nukes?

Would she have a cabinet made up almost entirely of rich, straight white men?

You know, Hillary,

she knows quite a few black people.

Trump knows two.

I'm sorry, three.

Oh, and we also might have a Secretary of Education who was smarter than a fifth grader.

Before the election, Edward Snowden tweeted, 2016, a choice between Donald Trump and Goldman Sachs.

Yeah, so what happened?

The anti-Wall Street crowd that was too pure to vote for for Hillary ended up putting Goldman Sachs people as Trump's top political strategist, the head of his economic council, and our Treasury Secretary, the trifecta.

The only people he hasn't hired from Goldman Sachs are Goldman and Sachs.

If Hillary was president now, would we be turning the clock back on the one issue for which there is no more time, climate change?

Would we be having to wonder if our president's love of dictators foreshadows some kind of coup here?

Would anyone have to wonder if she was Putin's bitch?

And instead of trying to kick millions off health care to pay for a tax cut for herself, she'd be trying to raise her own taxes to get more people covered on so many issues.

She wouldn't be complaining.

It's complicated.

Who knew?

She knew.

She loves complicated.

She's a reader.

Do you really think if just as evil Hillary had been elected, conservatives would now be in control of the Supreme Court as they will for decades?

Just wait until the five to four decisions start rolling in, gutting unions, making it harder for minorities to vote, siding with polluters, overturning abortion rights.

Then maybe you'll join me in saying to the liberal purists: go fuck yourselves with a locally grown organic cucumber.

And I haven't even mentioned the insulting, the feuding, the whining, the tweeting, the family.

Would she want her spouse to be living hundreds of miles away?

Okay, that one might be true.

And if none of that has swayed you so far, how about this?

If we elected Hillary Clinton, finally, we'd have a president who didn't play fucking golf.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage.

Oh, I love the Mirage in Vegas, May 19 and 20, at the Soaring Youth Casino in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, June 3rd.

I want to thank my guests, Philip Mudd, George Packer, Maya Wally, Gabriel German, and John Kasich.

Joining us down for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

Oh, I appreciate it.

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