Overtime - Episode #358 (Originally aired 6/26/15)

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

To no one's surprise, lots of questions because so much happened.

I guess they were watching the last segment.

Which Republican candidate will emerge from the crowd?

So if it's not going to be Trump.

I think that there are three top-tier candidates.

You've got Walker, Rubio, and Jeb.

They are consistently, with the exception of this last poll with this Trump blip, they're the three that have been atop almost every poll.

And I think that if you take a look, say the state of South Carolina, in the 2012 primaries, only about a third of voters actually said they were very conservative of Republican primary voters in South Carolina.

So we talked about, said that they were very conservative.

But people don't know what those terms mean.

Liberals don't know what liberal means either.

Well, the fact, so actually what's really interesting is conservative among Republicans has never been like a bad word.

In fact, now you have to call yourself conservative.

So it's not like on the Democratic side, you have a lot of folks that that are probably liberal, but they just call themselves moderate because it's been kind of demonized as a term upon the right.

Progressive.

Now it's progressive.

But on the right, that's not the case.

Conservative is the label we love.

And so the fact that you have only about a third in South Carolina in a Republican primary that say, I'm very conservative, I think is really notable.

And I think it means that you don't have to be a firebreather

to win this primary.

Yes.

Okay, I read recently that pollsters...

are having a very hard time.

They are.

Because it's not like the old days when everyone had a landline.

Yep.

And people just don't answer the cell phone.

And when you have a cell phone, of course, you can see who's calling.

When it says pollster, they don't answer.

Everybody, please pick up if a pollster calls you and take our survey.

They cited the British election, they got way off.

The Israeli election, they got way off.

And we may be entering an age where we really don't know what people think until they go to the United States.

And it's about to get even tougher.

This is something, this is...

Is that a good thing?

Well, the FCC actually has just handed down a new rule.

The text isn't out yet.

But it will make it illegal to use an automatic dialing technology to call even landlines.

So even all of those, like all those robo polls are going to be gone.

So a lot of the polling that we have now.

So lots of people really like this.

But I have started to like online polling, which isn't perfect, but is getting much, much, much better.

That's going to be the thing that takes over.

So I'm not weeping too much for the death of the robopoll, but I think we've got to figure out how to do new things because otherwise we're going to stop being able to study voters.

All right, Mary Catherine Hamm.

Are both political parties guilty of policing free speech?

Now here's the place I've been with you.

I mean my closing thing last week was, and I've said this before about the liberals, they're shutting down free speech and too much political correctness.

I would say they're the guiltier party.

I'm sure you would agree.

But perhaps I will surprise you by saying yes, both sides are guilty.

I think the argument we make in our book end of discussion is that this kind of stuff is sort of born on

campus, no right-wing organization, and sort of proliferated through the media and weaponized in Washington, has gotten to a point where it's like we can't just even see things that are offensive to us or deal with them and move on as adults.

I think the Confederate flag issue is interesting because I think it's right and smart to take it down from government-endorsed areas, but I do think the impulse to eradicate this symbol from American life in every way, shape, or form, which it feels like is what's going on, is an odd impulse.

I agree.

People should have the right to have a Confederate flag in their house.

That's so un-American.

You have the right to be an asshole.

Apple got in trouble.

Well, they got a little blowback because they took all games out of the Apple, the iPhone App Store, if it had a Confederate flag in it at all.

So a bunch of these educational games about the Civil War were removed.

Now, they say they're putting the educational ones back, but I mean, that's how far it got.

That if your game at all had a Confederate flag in it, it took it out.

I think it'll wash out.

I think the point is, of course, before two weeks ago or whenever this, a week ago, when this argument got hot, it was politically incorrect, so to speak, to even engage the flag issue and to challenge somebody.

The president stood today at a eulogy and said that you were on the side of what was wrong, which was slavery.

I mean, that's one of the few times that we've heard a high-ranking politician of that ilk tell the truth about what he felt, and people have to at least agree with it on all sides.

I mean, I think that's progress.

Okay.

Should

Jokar, is that right name?

I don't know.

Sarnaeev have been allowed to apologize at his sentencing hearing?

You know what?

Let me ask another question about that.

Not that that's not a good one.

But he got the death penalty, but he may wind up in solitary for his whole life.

I think solitary is just way worse.

I mean, I would much rather ISIS,

you know, cut my head off.

It's a bad 10 minutes.

And then.

Pretty bad.

A miserable person decapitating you if it takes 10 minutes.

Well, that, but they.

Have you seen those videos?

No, I don't watch those videos.

Me neither.

But

I haven't.

But it's a slow,

it's not like in the movies with a,

you know.

But I'm saying, as opposed to 60 years.

You know, they say that people expect when they go through the solitary confinement area of a prison to be quiet, it's actually people wailing because they're driving them slowly out of their mind.

If that's not a violation of cruel and unusual punishment,

I don't know what it is.

I mean, and you know, I'm someone who says if you absolutely know somebody did it, it's okay to kill them.

And this is a case where we absolutely know.

He admitted it, we had been on tape, he did it.

Well, I think there's a couple issues with solitary.

One is that sometimes it can be because the prisoner cannot be in the general population without endangering them.

That is one of the reasons you get removed from that population.

So we need to keep that in mind.

But it should be used extremely sparingly.

And the thing that really bothers me is these stories about Rikers Island where people are being held awaiting trial and they're in solitary for huge young man the other day who killed himself after he was falsely accused, nothing ever proved.

And you know, that solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment.

I mean, I stand against the death penalty as well, but that confinement, I mean, it just, it literally, the point is to drive somebody crazy.

And there's a difference between isolating somebody from the population than putting them in solitary confinement.

And it's, we used to put very,

it was for very few cases.

Right.

Like so many things, mission creep.

We just kept doing more and more of it.

They put Jesse Jackson Jr.,

remember, went to jail for like, you know, using government money to buy Michael Jackson's old cape.

This guy.

Yeah, he wound up because he was saying something we shouldn't have said to other people, whatever it was.

This guy shouldn't be in solitary.

This is for Hannibal Lecter, not Jesse Jackson Jr.

Well, there's an enormous amount of people in jail for ridiculous things.

I mean, there are people in jail due to mandatory

sentencing.

I mean, in states where pot is legal, people are in jail for selling pot.

And that's a terrible thing.

There's a great documentary about that called The House I Live In.

And that is something that the president has acted on in terms of giving people clemency who've been in jail for a really long time for things that aren't

he hasn't acted enough on that issue.

Yeah, right.

And his new attorney general is horrible on it.

I don't get that at all.

As he goes down the lists,

gay marriage and Cuba and immigration and all the things in the second term, he said he's fearless.

Now, I'm hoping last thing before he goes out the door is

we, bitches,

see ya,

wouldn't want to be ya.

It's my little fattish.

It does disproportionately affect a lot of brothers and sisters.

Let's just be real.

Yeah, that's right.

Weed bitches is actually the text of the law.

It's very simple.

And bitching weed is even better.

Judd, which was your favorite interview to conduct for your book?

Well, that's going to

be a good question.

That's going to

be a good people

who you don't mention.

Well,

you know, Harold Ramis is in.

Dead, so you could say him.

Yes.

And that meant that no one who's alive can complain.

Well, of course, he said the dead guy.

I'm not dead.

He deserves it.

I mean, he was a great guy and a real influence.

And

he was also a

existentialist.

And he often said to me, you know, life is kind of ridiculous, and so you just have to make a choice.

Do you want to be a good person or a bad person?

And I choose to be a good person.

And it was always as simple as that to him.

Good person and a great filmmaker.

Yeah, I don't think his influence is widely known.

Yeah.

How big a.

I mean, he was the godfather of his day.

He was the Judd Appentau of his era.

Yeah.

I mean, he

was involved in everything.

Yeah.

Is that the Ghostbusters?

He did Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Animal House,

Stripes, Fatty Shack.

I mean, all of that.

And I interviewed Jerry Seinfeld when I was 15 years old.

15 years old.

And

I called his manager and said I was from a radio station on Long Island, but I didn't say that I was in high school.

So I showed up at his apartment with this giant boom box, and then he looked at me like, oh, geez, you're a child.

And then he did this great interview with me.

And then I interviewed him again last year.

So I interviewed him when I was 15, and then again when I was 46,

to ask him, how did it go?

How was your ride as a comedian?

And I got two amazing interviews out of him.

Yeah, no, that's great.

Did the terror attacks across three continents on the same day mean we are losing the war with ISIS?

Look, well, I have good news.

Trump has a plan.

But he can't tell you until he's president.

Actually, I have a quote.

He's not the first guy.

Nixon said the same thing.

Right, right.

Whatever Trump says, I'm telling you, you're right.

Other Republicans have said it.

It's just their greatest hits.

I don't mean to be flippant about it, but the literal Trump quote from the Bill O'Reilly interview is: no one is bigger or better at the military than I am.

He's bigger and better at everything, I'm telling you.

He also said, nobody builds walls like I do.

What wall has he ever built?

What reason between him and the wall and the military?

He's trying to build a wall between his golf course and Univision now.

No, he really is.

He's got a feud with Univision.

Okay, so he makes his announcement, calls offhandedly because he's freestyling.

He calls Mexicans rapists.

Any other politician, the next day, would totally walk that back.

I misspoke.

I didn't know what I was doing.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

It would appear with Latinos.

Trump is like, fuck that.

And doubles down.

Univision cancels his beauty pageant.

So now he has a giant feud with Univision.

Never backs down.

Never says he's sorry.

I'm telling you, they love this.

It's like the season of The Bachelor of the Bob Guinea.

It's really good.

Every time you say Bachelor and Trump, I think of Trump in a a hot tub.

You're welcome.

Michael Eric Jackson, what did you make of Obama's use of the N-word on Mark Maron's podcast?

Well, I think it was great.

I mean, he's the only president who used it in scare quotes as opposed to using it seriously against black people.

So, I mean, LBJ, Nixon, and a whole bunch of other presidents.

But look, you know, what's amazing, you know,

there's a Civil War going on, and speaking of Bill Cosmetic, there's a Civil War going on in black America, and part of it has to do with can you use N-Word, who can use N-Word?

You use it in rap music, therefore you've made it horrible for everybody else, because predictably, our guy, brother Ted, you know, is it Nugent,

said that, you know, I can use it now, and I'm going to use it, and he started using it immediately.

I think that's a horrible consequence for everybody.

That doesn't sound like the Ted Nugent either.

You know what?

You're going to think something crazy?

My grandfather discovered Ted Nugent.

Discovered?

He produced Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes.

Ted Nugent is the Donald Trump of Rock and Rollins.

Steve Allen.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Panna.

We got to go.

We'll see you back in August.

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