Overtime – Episode #403 (Originally aired 09/16/16)

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

We're back on.

Ralph, many churches are taking in Syrian refugees, but Trump has called for a ban on Muslim immigration.

What side do you take on that issue?

I think that we ought to take a serious look at who's coming in before we decide who comes in.

I think I know personally Christians who have had to flee Syria and are staying.

They're in Lebanon or they're in Jordan.

I

have a humanitarian organization that I have good friends that support, and they've had to get out of there because it's a war zone.

On the other hand,

you've got a lot of Islamic fighters and some really bad people in Syria.

So it's a very tough issue.

And I don't know how, as people are entering, how you're going to be able to tell

the good from the bad.

It's going to be difficult.

You can't.

It's a hard issue.

You can't tell what's in somebody's head.

We have a pretty thorough vetting process, actually.

I mean, it's like.

You cannot vet the inside of a person's mind.

That's right, you you can't, but I mean, they take an extraordinary amount of resources and time to do as much background as they can.

Well, if you look at the San Bernardino, when you look at the San Bernardino killers, those people have been living in Verlin, they weren't recently from Syria.

I mean, those people have been radicalizing.

But Margaret, they were people who had been radicalized and were communicating with people online, and we didn't know it.

Right, but

that doesn't have to do with immigration.

That has to do with

hate speech that happens from people like Donald Trump, who, when he talks about the people.

I don't know if you can blame San Bernardino

the facts exist that when you encourage racism toward the Muslim community in the United States the backlash is more radicalization

two things I think worth radicalization

I agree I know you know your New Testament I try to know it a little bit too but I don't remember Jesus ever talking about carefully vetting people before you have them come to your table that's not an important concept and secondly it's unreasonable but it's I'm not saying it's unreasonable.

Bill's question was about churches and the role of the church in doing those things.

And the

second point I think that needs making always about this stuff is we do have a system in place.

You were saying as much.

This is not an emergency in that way.

And let's always remember one thing that came up this week.

I don't know if everyone saw it.

It was about

polling in 1939 about allowing Jews from Europe into the United States.

And what everybody said, huge majority, was we have to vet these people very carefully because we don't know if we can can trust them or not.

And huge numbers were never allowed into this country with the results we know.

So we have a good tradition in our country of welcoming people in.

We're letting millions in.

And a bad tradition of...

We're letting millions of Muslims into our country.

We have

millions?

Yes.

We're letting millions in.

We have a very large Indonesian Muslim community in our country.

Oh, we are large.

Wait, wait, wait.

Indian Muslim communities.

You said we're letting in millions.

Yeah, absolutely.

Currently letting in millions.

Yeah, Yeah, they're coming from the Middle East.

They're coming from Asia.

They're coming from the middle of the middle.

I don't think millions is the correct number, right?

Right, I think it is.

I don't think it is.

Not annually.

I'm not saying annually.

But overall.

But yeah, they're absolutely coming in.

And no one's being denied entry into the United States today.

Plenty of people.

Because of their faith.

No one.

And they should look at it.

No one.

Would you be?

Yeah, that's not a good idea.

Nor should they be.

Okay, all right.

Okay, okay.

I'm glad we're all against the money.

And by the way, what was going on in 1939 was not just concerns about vetting.

It wasn't just that.

Everybody knew what was going on in Eastern Europe.

Everybody.

And our government was totally insensitive to what was happening to the Jews.

We turned rescue ships away.

And it is a black

country that we're still in the world.

And the reason we did that, you're absolutely right, couldn't agree more.

But the reason we did that is because there was a huge majority of Americans who were frightened of outsiders.

And FDR thought it was politically essential that he not allow those people in in because then there would be a revolt against it from the very same, what were they called, America Firsters, whose great-grandchildren are now

moving.

Let's also not forget that in Middle Eastern countries there used to be Jews.

Yes.

And they were pretty

much pretty much...

Well, there are still some Christians.

But the Christian community in Iraq has largely

ethnically cleansed

all the Jews.

And by the way.

All those Muslim countries.

It's the Islamists who are doing that.

Of course.

They're the ones driving out the Jews.

They're the ones driving out the Christians.

They're the ones who are threatening to execute anybody that doesn't convert to their twisted version of Islam.

Let's be very clear what the enemy is.

Okay.

Can we expect more

price gouging on life-saving medication like the EpiPen?

I hope so.

Yes.

Well, of course we can because

we don't have single-payer.

You know,

we did.

I come from that horrible, radical, revolutionary country called Canada, where we had

socialized medicine and single payer for decades and decades and decades and decades.

And it's a weird thing, you know, if you actually come from Canada, if you've lived in Canada, liberty is not suppressed.

People's right to freedom is in no way.

Do your children have to shed blood to take it back?

Oh, totally.

I see.

Totally.

I see.

And if a child, you know, we have...

How many children do you have left from?

Well, actually,

the Canadian government claims one child and sacrifices it in order to pay for the socialized medicine but you know the simple truth is I have a wonderful nephew who was born incredibly prematurely blessed as Carrie's not going to be blessedly and cost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to care for that child and his parents had to pay not a single dollar because that was something that we understood as a community responsibility.

That's a blessing.

It's a blessing.

And if I might say, it's a Christian blessing.

It was always supported by the churches at Canada.

Speaking as somebody who's A, the son of an MD, and B, was born severely premature at a time when many who were born, I was born six weeks premature, and most people at that time didn't survive that.

I'm not going to make any jokes, Ralph.

I say absolutely nothing.

All I say is you recover beautifully.

Just be, just.

You recovered beautifully.

Just feel free to be yourself.

Don't worry.

No offense taken.

But I believe very strongly that

health care and choices about health care is too important to be left to government.

And I think that a far better system is to allow the market to work, allow people to choose their own doctor.

And the fact is

there are Canadians who have to come across our borders.

That is just not true.

I would also say that's why they jacked up.

I'm not justifying what happened on the EpiPen.

But that's what happens when the market is telling you is because people in the market

is a reason why most cutting-edge pharmaceutical right.

Can I make my point?

Yes.

There's a reason why most cutting-edge pharmaceutical medications are not invented in Canada.

But there's a reason why they're invented elsewhere.

Ralph, because the government fixes the prices.

And once you do that, you kill RD budgets, you kill innovation, and you kill the discoveries that save lives.

And when you raise the the price of the EpiPen, you kill the patient.

I said,

Bill,

I made it clear.

I made it abundantly clear.

I'm not defending

the price gouging that they did.

Price gouging is high and short.

I believe in a sunset provision that leads to generic drugs.

But you can't have the government setting prices and expect people to

death.

Ralph, all I can tell you is I've lived in Canada, which has a single-payer system.

I've lived in France, which actually has a complicated private and public system together.

I've lived in the United States.

And let me tell you that people in Canada and France are, as a rule, far more satisfied with the way they get medical care and with the security they get, and their freedom is not limited in any way.

This should not be a political issue.

This is not a left-right issue.

This is an issue of common sense and pragmatic evidence.

It's not a left-right issue.

One more question, because Carrie's going to have her baby.

Here in the United States, not in Canada or Carolina.

Was the hubbub over Hillary's pneumonia a media creation, or was she being purposely evasive?

Well, I think she was being somewhat evasive, but I don't think it's a horrible crime to have a malady and think, you know what, I'm not going to tell anybody because I'll get over it before they even know.

She sounds like totally a catch-22 because she's sort of caught in this position where she's saying, they're saying she doesn't have enough stamina.

She's the first woman.

We don't have in this country gold of my year, like somebody who was 70 years old and became prime minister of Israel, right?

we don't even forget, we don't even have Margaret Thatcher.

I mean, she is the first woman, and she is going against all these areas.

So she does, I mean, you can understand, she was going to, she's tough, she's going to power through, except for then it catches up to her.

And so she couldn't have won one way or the other, but her secrecy

was the card that undermined her.

I disagree more strongly.

What is it?

As a candidate for president and as somebody who aspires to the highest office of the land, your priority should always be the public's right to know.

Yeah.

And the minute she was

said that I finished my point.

Yeah, finish your point.

Don't walk into a track here.

The minute she was diagnosed with pneumonia, she should have had her doctor issue a statement.

She should have come forward and issued a statement.

And if she had done that, Bill,

her having the episode that she had at that 9-11 memorial would have never hurt her

politically.

You know what I think she should have done?

I think she should have found.

I hear you.

I think she should have found a doctor who wrote a letter saying she would be the most healthy president in history.

And then I think she should have gone on like a, I don't know, like a medical daytime talk show and talked about it.

I think that's what she should do.

I think anybody who can campaign

I also love her joke, her joke about like, well, at least finally now Republicans are paying attention to women's health.

My favorite.

A deeper issue, which we none of us want to look at, is there's no real correlation between how healthy a president is and how well they perform.

FDR, let us remember, was in a wheelchair.

JFK was seriously ill throughout his presidency.

I think Woodrow Wilson would be an exception to that.

Woodrow Wilson might be an exception to that, although

not Mike.

Although Mrs.

Wilson actually did a decent job in.

Not elected.

Not a good argument.

Not a good argument.

Hey, Adam, that leads to Bill.

I'd stay away from that message.

Not the worst possible

country.

How about that?

And the other thing I think worth saying is that what Hillary has, the pneumonia can be cured.

What Trump has, apparently cannot be.

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