Overtime - Episode #348 (Originally aired 3/27/15)

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 Maher.

Well, we're on overtime overseas.

Now, I have to say, I'm partly doing this because I'm going to be touring overseas there in Europe in May.

Sweden, a place I'm going, just canceled an arms deal agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Why isn't the U.S.

doing the same?

Hmm.

Could it have something to do with oil?

No.

No, it's our love of their social policies.

I mean I and you know when you look at the map and you see this Yemen thing and why did all the Sunni countries get involved?

Because if you look at the map, well the oil goes through the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran controls, and these Houthis are Irani-inbacked.

If they controlled Yemen, then they'd control the one through the Red Sea.

This is all about oil.

When oil gets involved, people care.

But I always say, I wish we had learned the lesson of the first Gulf War, which is if you're going to invade a country for oil, get some oil.

Zachary Quinto, what can you tell us about your role in the movie about Edward Snowden?

Oh, yeah.

Well, I'm playing Glenn Greenwald, who's been a frequent contributor here and many other places.

I'm really looking forward to it, getting ready to go to Hong Kong.

I'm not knowing about this movie.

This is where.

Oliver Stone's directing it.

He's written it.

Oh,

yeah.

Oliver Stone.

I love Oliver Stone.

I know, me too.

I'm really excited about it.

And to play Glenn, who's so prolific and has such a really articulate and

fixed point of view on everything that he's done with Snowden and around exposing the NSA's overreaching is interesting for me.

Looking forward to it.

He has some really stupid point of views, too.

We're not limiting on those points.

Yeah, I like Glenn, but there's a good one.

No, there's some.

Totally.

Okay, how should Europe respond to Putin's aggression?

Well, I would say, first of all, it's Europe's problem.

Once again, not our problem.

Tough sanctions, Bill.

Basically, that's true.

It is long since time for us to pull the troops out of Europe.

They've been there 67 years since World War II.

That went in when Europe was poor and weak.

Europe now is collectively able to defend itself, except the Europeans have figured out the favorite book in Europe is Tom Sawyer, because they have persuaded us to paint their fence and act like they were doing us the favor for 67 years for billions of dollars.

But I wish that I do believe what the Russians are doing in Ukraine is awful.

I think economic sanctions are legitimate.

And what the Europeans ought to be doing is joining in sanctions and probably putting some troops in Lithuania, Latvia, other democratic nations before Putin moves to kind of deter him.

And yeah, they should be taking the lead.

But yeah, I mean, you tried to pass a military reduction bill, and it's very disappointing to see even Rand Paul, who I thought was our big hero on this issue, now is reversing himself.

Something like a father would never do.

I think backing more military space.

They're misreading the American people.

The American people, I think, agree with us.

They don't want us sending ground troops back in.

This kind of scare tactic that the terrorists are going to come and destroy the country, I think is wearing thin.

And I believe if we keep pushing, you can make the case.

My book is my theory about how you get back in there, get people to write government, stop wasting $100 billion a year unnecessarily on the military.

Do it to help people go to school.

Do it to build roads.

Do it to think.

And I think if the right candidate says that, the public wins.

And one of the reasons why Germany...

among other nations, can spend so much more infrastructure on green energy is because they don't have to spend

on the military.

We covered their military.

We subsidize it.

Yeah, we basically subsidize it.

Japan also.

I want to be forgiving.

I'm not always.

40, whatever, 50, some odds, 62 years after World War II, I forgive Japan, I forgive Germany.

They don't have to be disarmed.

They don't have to rely on us.

They can have their own weapons, and we can pull back.

Right.

Absolutely.

Okay, what explains the rise of the anti-immigrant National Front Party in France, and should we be be worried?

Maybe the death of over a dozen Jews in France.

I mean, you know, and

cartoonists.

Well, Jews at the supermarket and then the cartoonists at Charlie Ebdo.

I mean that was a pretty significant event in France and that can spur some maybe anti-immigrant sentiment.

And I think Marie Le Pen is maybe capitalizing on what is some very real fear for Jews in Paris and liberals in Paris.

I agree, but it's also, I think, because that exacerbated it.

But I think it's the same situation we have, again, I'm quoting my book, but we have this problem with working people who have not had a chance to participate in the prosperity that comes forward because the economies in developed Western worlds have tilted in favor of people with high-end skills.

So the people who 40 years ago could go to work in a factory and make a decent living, they have problems doing that.

And I believe economic dissatisfaction is a large part of the Tea Party, and it's a large part of what's going on there.

Yes, there is an.

Please don't equate those two.

Please don't do that.

I don't think you want to make that mistake.

I didn't equate them.

I said it's a large, I, I, I.

And ISIS.

I wasn't talking about ISIS.

I was told, no, no, I'm talking about the Tea Party and the French right.

That's the equation.

That the dissatisfaction,

the dissatisfaction that's leading people to be so angry is, I think, at root economic.

And again, I'll go back.

That's why I want to pull back $100 billion that we're wasting.

I think, I want to be the strongest nation in the the world.

But we don't have to be quite as strong as we are.

And if we use that money to deal with economic problems at home, it would be good in itself and would alleviate a lot of that distress.

And to be fair, there is a comparison.

There is a comparison to be made of...

between religious fundamentalists of Christian Stripe and Muslim Stripe.

They both will believe.

I mean, I was just reading Mike Huckabee's book, and he says, you know, God was on our side and helped us fight battles we win battles we should have lost.

Okay, if you think God is tipping the scales to help you win battles, that is something that ISIS.

Did he say which ones they were?

Was it like Guadalcanal?

By the way, we should be great at meeting, but the Tea Party, I fight with them on, they don't kill people,

but I do believe

directly.

It's about an unwillingness to have any perspective other than your own, and that's what the similarities are.

I agree, but you still draw a distinction between people who are bigoted and intolerant and people who kill other people.

That's a pretty big line.

I just wish that the left would have the same attitude toward Islamic extremism as they had toward the Catholic abuse scandal, right?

Catholicism.

I hope you're not looking at me, because I'm the one on the left.

I'm with you.

And by the way, so

President Obama is the one who has been bombing them and killing them.

I think this notion that the left has been soft on Islamic extremism is wrong.

And I I agreed with Bill's criticism.

Well, no, but the whole of Catholicism, the church, the Pope needed to be accountable for the action of a few priests who were molesting children.

And it is not the case that Islam itself can be held accountable.

You can't have that conversation.

I agree.

The people have been shocked.

Even though it's just been a couple of Muslims, if you want to say.

You can't make the equation because of political contraction.

It's a shame Europe doesn't have, maybe they do, and I'm not aware of it, but it seems like they have the people who they,

Gert Wilders was in my movie, Religilist.

They say he could be the prime minister of

Holland.

I'm going to Amsterdam, another country city I'm going to.

A lot of people think he's a crazy person.

I don't think he's a crazy person.

I just wish there was somebody who could make this case in a way that wouldn't have them be put way out there as a bigot, because there is a case to be made.

No question.

And I've made it, I've written about it.

Clearly, there was an element in Islam, and particularly those people who are Islamist, Muslims, who say this isn't our religion, have done a very poor job of differentiating themselves.

If they would lead the fight against these people, they could then prove that this was the case.

Well, just as in the Catholic Church, the victims of these priests were Catholics.

The same is true.

The victims of Islamic extremism are, by and large, Muslims.

And since this issue blew up, I must say, I hear from an awful lot of Muslims who say, yes, you're defending me because I'm a liberal Muslim.

I want to live in the 21st century.

But they need to speak.

And all people

who are shouting, who call you a bigot, are shouting down the debate that we need to have.

Yeah, I agree.

That's right.

But I would urge them to do it because

there has to be, there is an intimidation within the Islamic community, and they have to speak out more and do this.

There's no question about it.

Okay.

For Jay, what does water have to do with the conflict in the Middle East?

Well, I know Syria, that the war in Syria was partly because there was a horrible, horrible drought.

If not

and it forced like a million farmers to the cities.

That's right.

And the Assad regime had no commitment to providing the water to those farmers.

They wanted to move away from the agrarian society to a more global economy.

And so

the young farmers migrated to the cities.

They sat around with nothing to do.

They got upset watching other people get rich.

And that's going to be the most catastrophic impact on our civilization that we've seen yet.

I mean, if you look at just the most modest projections of water rise in the oceans, it stands to displace hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, a catastrophe that governments are not equipped no matter what party is running.

That's what we went.

That's an excellent point.

And whether we're talking about climate change, whether we're talking about water availability, and they're intimately related, we are not really prepared for that future where we have to maybe migrate around

hundreds of people.

Oh, absolutely.

Northwestern India.

Right.

So, water in northwestern India, Bangladesh, absolutely right.

And there's that country, the little dot of a country in the Pacific, Tuvulu or something.

Vanuatu.

What is it?

I think it's Vanuatu.

Vanuatu.

Right.

God bless you.

God bless you.

They just had a horrific cyclone, and they could be completely miserable.

But I want to pick up on what Jay said to us.

Again,

and this is one of the things

we talked about in advance.

This isn't going to get solved in a context or even begin to be alleviated in a context in which it's fashionable to denounce government.

This is only going to happen if we have a political

consensus that we will come together and pool our resources.

The private sector, they do a very good job of creating wealth, but left to their own, they will exacerbate this because the pursuit, unregulated of the profit motive, is not immoral, but it has negative effects, the externalities and everything else.

So, this is one of the reasons why I get a quote by book.

I think it's so important for us to reverse this anti-government trend because that, well, you said governments are not doing a good job, some governments aren't even trying, and the governments that are trying lack the political resources to get it done.

Okay.

Final question from Max.

Is the U.S.

behind other Western countries when it comes to gay rights?

Yeah, I think certainly some of them.

Certainly

Scandinavian countries are

we've made a lot of, we've covered a lot of ground in the last 10 years.

Yes,

which is incredibly encouraging.

I think this summer stands to be a kind of defining moment for the legal battle.

You know, when you think about 2004, which is only a decade ago, George Bush was able to win re-election because Karl Robe was smart enough to put gay marriage on the ballot.

Remember that in 11 states?

And every redneck is now to vote again gay marriage.

I mean, Bill Clinton was

DOMA.

Bill Clinton was

one of the best.

Bill Clinton signed DOMA after the Republicans forced it through.

Bill Clinton did not invent DOMA.

Bob Dole did.

Bill Clinton did sign it after the Republicans passed it.

Just wait for me to say that.

Well, then, why are you excusing him for that?

His wife ran against gay marriage for president.

So did President Obama.

The great thing is that both parties, to a lesser extent the Republican parties, have moved so far, so fast.

I mean, lightning speed.

That is

society.

Excuse me, but that's totally untrue.

The Republicans have moved not at all.

They remain.

Every Republican presidential candidate is still against same-sex marriage.

And as far as the Democrats are concerned,

they don't vote that.

They're going to come out in favor of gay marriage.

You don't want to take that little bit as a gift?

I am saying that it is.

Rob Corbin, Lisa Murkowski.

I mean, you don't think that's good enough?

That's better than it was, but the fact is that every Republican candidate for president is still very much against us.

They vote against any legislation that will be supportive.

And the other point on the Democrats is, yeah, they took a while to get the same-sex right, but even as they were not for marriage, they were opposed to the Republican efforts to pass constitutional amendments that would have canceled marriage.

So the Democrats have been, A, not as good as they should be, and B, in every respect, much better than the Republican.

It's also a social issue.

It's also about

how homosexuality has been portrayed and perceived by the public, and certainly in large part by the entertainment industry.

If you look at the advancements in how gay stories have been told, I mean, Glee just ended.

Say what you will about Glee.

People loved it for a long time.

But what it did was it put a face to millions of people every week that had not yet been seen in that way.

Oh, totally.

And I feel like it's as much a social wave as it is.

I thought it was about a high school.

Was it a gay show?

No, but there were, I mean, there were transgender characters.

Oh, yeah.

It was a pioneering show in terms of

characters on the show having gay relationships.

I mean, it's one example of many.

What about a show about gay pioneers?

That could be a game.

We're in development on that show, actually.

We're hoping to bring you on as an audience.

All right.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Thank you, panel.

Thank you, overseas.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.