Overtime - Episode #420: Leakers, Pence, Privacy, Obamacare

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 Moss.

Okay, we're back, and the albino assassin has rejoined us.

I think you got to take that, Roger.

That's a pretty fucking awesome nickname.

Albino Assassin.

Yeah, you should.

You should take it.

You should use it as a handle, tweet it.

We'll see it in an hour.

Have Gusever tattoo it on your back.

Roger, would you defend Edward Snowden's leaking of classified information the same way you defend Julian Assange and Gussifer?

What do you think about Ed Snowden?

No, I probably wouldn't.

I think the situations are somewhat different, but I also continue to reject the idea that Assange is an asset of the Russians.

I think he's an opponent of the deep state.

All my liberal friends loved him when he was leaking on George W.

Bush.

What do you think about that, General?

I was pretty consistent in my view about Assange.

Okay.

I disliked him then, I dislike him now.

And he may or may not be a winning agent of the Russian Federation, but he is an agent of the Russian Federation.

He seems to have changed.

Why?

He seems at the beginning to be a little bit different, but it only seems to be America that he finds shit on.

Like, we're the only country in the world that has shit to be found out of.

I mean, there are a lot of other societies out there that really do have secrets that are very, very harmful.

And he continues to push only American secrets out the door.

And what do you think?

And why is he defending Trump now?

I mean, WikiLeaks is actually going out of its way to defend the Trump administration.

If you check their Twitter feed, they're spending a lot of time doing that.

But why did we learn today that the CIA has malware that can mimic transmissions from the Russians?

Why would we need such a thing?

Oh, I can give you lots of reasons why.

I'm sure you could, Roger.

You guys did a bang-up job in the Iraq war.

And said said they used it to destabilize the American democracy.

So what do you think should happen with Snowden?

He should continue to live in Moscow.

Exactly.

Okay.

And

okay, well we'll leave it there.

Rick, do you think that Mike Pence can continue to help Trump sway evangelicals in his favor?

Look, I think the biggest thing that Donald Trump has done to help with religious voters, evangelicals, is the appointment of Neil Gorsches to the Supreme Court.

I mean,

that was the reason that many folks lined up behind Donald Trump, why he did as well as any Republican with the evangelical community, because they knew a Supreme Court seat was open.

They wanted someone who was going to be like Anthony Scalia.

Trump promised he would do that, and he delivered.

I don't think, actually, Mike Pence has to do a lot to

rally evangelical support.

I think they're very happy with the biggest issue on their plate.

And if Trump would, by some crazy quirk, wind up not being president because of impeachment or something.

I hear liberals, some say, well, Mike Pence would be worse.

And this infuriates me.

Mike Pence would not be worse.

We know who Mike Pence is.

He's a down-the-line, you know, he would be somewhat similar to a Rick Sanchez.

And you probably don't have to worry about like North Korea or something.

You don't have to worry about crazy wars.

Exactly.

Like if you were president, Rick, I wouldn't go to bed every night nervous.

I mean, I might.

Why do you say that now?

I might.

Where do you say that?

Why do you ever say anything like that?

No, seriously.

I mean, I.

Everyone's dangerously unstable, right?

The concern about drugs might be unstable.

I mean, there's policy and there's personality.

And

it's the personality part that worries me way more.

I hear that.

I mean, that when you think about what's happened with the Pentagon or who he's, the kind of forces at the NSC, you know, they are, they are people who, you know, should worry all of us about stability in the global order.

But, you know, I just, I think that, you know, Mike Pence is no walk in the park either.

No, he's not.

But I'm glad we agree that he is preferable to Donald Trump.

Anyone is Trump.

Donald Trump is the worst person in America.

So like anyone is

not even close.

There's other people.

There's other people.

Not even close.

There's other people.

Okay.

All right.

Did anyone hear that it came out that during the inauguration, George Bush, when it was over, whispered after Trump's speech, that was some weird shit.

And if you've seen his painting, he doesn't have much room to talk.

I never thought I would like him so much, honestly.

I mean, after that statement.

You see, I've been consistent on that, too, though.

I liked him then.

I like him now.

Oh, yeah.

Well, look, I mean, Donald Trump is not your typical Republican.

That was certainly not a typical Republican inauguration address.

It refuted a lot of the Bush doctrine.

It was weird, and so I'm sure he was offended.

It had three different appeals for racial unity, which everybody seemed to ignore, but it was right there.

Racial unity.

Yes, absolutely.

Oh, my God.

How can you.

Tell me.

Gee, I don't have my copy on me, but if you throw it there then.

You just said racial unity.

Because they're there.

I was sitting 10 feet away.

They're there.

Because you're very close to the president.

Right.

I mean, a presidency that's run by Breitbart News.

I mean, let's think about this.

We have a presidency that is being run by Breitbart News.

Our immigration policy.

It's a lot of all the time.

No, as opposed to the white nationalists and the supremacists who run Breitbart News.

We have to call out what it is.

This is not alternative.

This is what the left does.

It's name-called.

Wait a second.

I'm not the left.

I'm not the left or the right.

Breitbart used the term, I'll just say, use the term kite.

Do you think that's right?

That's right, that they're on the right.

And a title.

Okay.

We'll tweet it out later.

It's anti-Semitic.

There's an important line in the speech.

And And the President said, I pledge allegiance to the American people.

That's not common in the American tradition.

You know, I take an oath.

It's to the Constitution of the United States.

It's to the process.

It's to the ideas of America.

Not the blood and soil.

And

that is a clear distinction.

It's different.

We'll see where it goes.

How would you grade Trump as commander-in-chief in light of the recent uptick in civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria?

Yeah, I will not be a harsh judge because I was complaining with regard to the Obama administration being late, light, under-resourced and over-regulated.

He's pushed decision-making down into the forward area.

And I don't know, I really don't know if there's cause and effect between the decision-making pattern and the effects.

What we've got is a lot of indirect fire and a tough fight in a heavily populated area.

Right.

I mean, we're trying to dislodge ISIS from one city, and it's taken months and months and months.

So, for the people who say the Westboro Baptist Church is the equivalent.

Bill, I'm more concerned about after we win and we take Mosul and we take Raqqa because if we could kill our way out of this, we'd have been done a long time ago.

Exactly, right.

What does the panel think of the House vote on Tuesday to roll back the FCC's Internet privacy protections?

Right.

Well,

the crowd groaned there.

Yeah.

We don't have a lot of privacy protections anyway, but this was another giant blowjob to corporations.

Yes.

Trump ran.

Yes.

I'm against it.

Oh, you're against it.

I don't think we should be regulating the net, and we shouldn't be handing control of the net to the United Nations.

Obama did.

That's not what this was.

This was saying corporations could take your browsing history and sell it.

Yeah, I'm against that.

I'm against that.

Yeah, and

they do it now.

They're doing it now.

They do it on Google and Facebook, which are voluntary.

You enter those at your own will.

This is the institution.

What other search engines, what search engines out there

don't do it.

It's not even a search.

So you say it's voluntary, but there isn't one that doesn't do it, so it's really not voluntary, is it?

Can I just say the bottom line of this is like they're all libertarian until it helps corporations.

And then they're not libertarian at all.

The theory is we've got to stop the government from protecting you until it helps a corporation.

This was a partisan vote.

Republicans were all on one side of it.

Democrats were not.

Do you want your browser history?

I mean, who knows what you want?

Our Rogers browser.

Our Rogers browser.

You guys are always the biggest freak.

Everybody knows that.

You guys, you are guys from the bottom of the bottom.

Behind closed doors.

Oh, come on, Rick.

You only knew.

If I only knew.

And now we all will.

Now we do.

Yeah.

Erase quickly.

Okay, Neera, will Obamacare explode if Congress doesn't amend it?

That's a great question.

Now, General College.

Absolutely not.

I mean, actually, it was illustrative of this whole discussion.

What we learned in this debacle of the Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act is the Congressional Budget Office did a determination and actually said

the false stuff out there is that Obamacare will die.

Well, it's in a death spiral.

All of that is, frankly, BS.

There are challenges.

They can be fixed.

And you know what?

If Trump wants to deal with Democrats to actually make progress, which he needs.

That's not going to happen.

No, it may not.

But let's try and get, let's stop trying to

get rid of coverage.

But they're not even hiding the fact that they are actively sabotaging.

And then he's not going to get any Democrats.

That's okay because they're against it and it's not their philosophy.

But what can Democrats do to combat that so that they can't kill it?

Well, we did defeat them last week, and they defeated themselves.

The public.

Yeah, but I'm talking about the act itself.

Yeah, so here's the thing.

I think the truth is that there are places, there are challenges, but the law is stable.

That is what the Congressional Budget Office, so you can shake your head, Rick, but that is what they found.

It's not

fault.

California is a perfect example of a state with great insurance markets where the premiums have been low.

Sure, if you support it, it works.

Yeah, if

you let it function, it works well.

States like Kansas are trying to do Medicaid expansions now because they recognize the law is here to stay.

That's what we should have.

People who are not trying to sabotage coverage for people who are their constituents that actually try to make this law work.

And if they do that.

I'll give you an opportunity to present a little alternative viewpoint.

Number one, this is a bill that puts over $700 billion.

The Democrats say, oh,

Obamacare.

Obamacare is $700 billion

taken from

the money.

It's a huge amount of money from people who will not miss it.

That's where the money comes from.

No, it is.

You know that for for a fact.

Okay.

Well, it's cataloging.

So why is this $10 a year?

No,

it is redistributed.

Rick, it is redistribution of wealth.

I don't know why Democrats just don't own this.

I know you hate that, but I don't think people do.

It is redistribution of wealth.

It is absolutely a lot of people.

But a lot of people are doing

a huge redistribution of wealth.

And it's a system where the government is controlling what access you have to insurance.

Everybody, not just the people who didn't have insurance before.

No, but

we have set forth a plan that very few businesses were able to comply with the exemption, and so now everybody, almost everybody, has to have plans that the government says are best for you and have to have coverages the government says are bad.

You know, we had a debate about essential health benefits.

I gave you a lot of chances to talk about this.

And the reality is that, yes, we dramatically expanded the number of people insured, all...

over half of which was through government programs, Medicaid.

Medicaid was the biggest part of the expansion.

People got coverage.

Even Kansas, but now even Kansas voted for the Medicaid expansion.

I don't know whether Kansas is going to expand or not.

I don't know whether

it's

a liberal state.

Well, you're right.

Because they want people to take care of it.

Because it's free money.

Exactly.

Free money to take care of people's health.

You're telling the people

that are going to be able to do it.

You're telling the state that if you take this money,

you're going to get free money from the federal government if you take it.

To take care of poor sales.

And you know what?

We had a debate about this.

We had a debate debate about this and Republicans couldn't pass their own bill because it had 17% approval, which was right to.

Don't you think

they couldn't pass this bill because they didn't fundamentally change what was in place right now.

The bottom line, what had to happen if they were going to change this, they needed to follow the path that previous Republican Congresses who made big entitlement reforms followed.

I was involved in that bill.

It was a 1996 welfare bill.

And what we did is we eliminated the federal entitlement.

We gave all the money to the states and said, states, you determine the policy that's best for you.

You design your own Medicaid program.

You design your own private sector markets.

And you go out there and innovate.

And every state will have the chance to do that.

We'll find states that do it really well.

We'll find states that do it really poorly.

And guess what?

States learn from each other.

There's a lot more experimentation.

There's a lot more innovation.

There's a lot more freedom.

And that's what works in America.

Government control from the top down does not work.

And that's what Donald Trump ran into.

So the people who get bladder cancer in a state that experiments badly, they just die.

But the people who get it in the state that's good at it, they live.

This is the farce.

This is the farce behind.

The farce is about health care.

This is always about health insurance.

There is everybody in America prior to Obamacare was legally required if you went to a hospital, the hospital must treat you.

Yes.

And the bottom line is that when the insure, and you disagree with me and they fact-checked you, and you were wrong,

which is when you gave people insurance under Medicaid, actually, emergency room visits went up.

They didn't go down.

People still use the hospital

as their primary care.

I'm just for not having insurance, but people, like you have insurance and are okay with it, I want people to have insurance, but I don't want the federal government dictating to me what my insurance is.

I want markets to work so people have freedom.

Exactly, freedom.

Thank you very much, much, everybody.

I appreciate you helping us out.

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