Overtime – Episode #688: Gov. Josh Shapiro, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Sam Stein

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maul.

Okay, here we are back. He's the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro.

He's an MSNBC contributor on the Bulwarks, Managed, Getter, Sam Starr,

and she is the dream of an author of the book, Second Class, Matthew Ungar-Sargon.

Okay, here are the questions directly from the people.

It's like the People's Choice Awards, but with questions. First one is for you, Governor.
Do Democrats have a problem with courting male voters? How can they win them back? Well, I did see Nancy Pelosi's comment today after the vote with the brouhaha with Schumer was that they should have listened to the women. Are we going to break down on men-woman thing now in the Democratic Party? I don't think we should.
I think it's about giving everybody the freedom to chart their own course, the opportunity to succeed, lifting everybody up, not trying to create others, not trying to slice and dice the electorate. I'll tell you the first thing I did, Bill, when I was...
And that goes racially, too? I think it's for everybody, absolutely. First thing I did when I was governor, literally after taking the oath of office, I signed my first executive order, doing away with the college degree requirement for 92% mistake.
I love that. I had done bits on that myself.
Because I want people to have a shot. And then we followed that up by increasing our VOTEC budget in high schools by 50%.
And get this, 81 new apprenticeship programs,

everything from dairy herd management to welding, and we've got 12,400 new Pennsylvanians going through apprenticeships. We don't care if you're male, female, black, white, doesn't matter.
We want you to have opportunity in Pennsylvania. We want to lift everybody up.
But the question was,

do Democrats have a problem with male voters?

I know what the question is.

But that's going to be the answer to my question.

What's the answer?

All right, all right.

Was it inappropriate for the audience,

this is for you, Bajit, to boo J.D. Vance at the Kennedy Center last night? No, with free speech.
Okay? Come on. She didn't even get to answer.
Yeah, I didn't answer it. You're right.
I'm so sorry. You're right.
I told you. What, you were comfortable watching that? I didn't see it.
What happened? They booed him. They booed him.
They called him, like, a series of expletives. He was with his wife.
I thought it was kind of gross. I don't know what you guys thought.
I mean, it would be lovely if we didn't live in that country, but that ship has sailed. And, you know, it happens to the other side, too.
People have been at dinner, and people will surround them and force them to, including from the left. I mean, we saw that during the Black Lives Matter riots.
People would be having dinner and people would go, you know, come on, get out there. Like, I'm having dinner.
Can you wait? Well, these were definitely leftists booing the vice president. I understand.
Oh, no, no, they're terrible at it. Did you see the Love is Blind story? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. That was bad.
Okay, so this, I've never seen this show. Have you ever seen the show? You've never seen...
No. Good.
If you had said yes, you would have lost my vote immediately. But it's some...
Anyway, so she's at the altar, and she jolts her fiancé at the altar because it didn't seem like he did a hell of a lot. He apparently didn't do enough thinking about Black Lives Matter.
He asked him, what do you think about that? Not at the altar, that would be inappropriate, but I guess sometime during the courtship. And he said, I don't know, I haven't thought about it that much.
I don't want to, like, get into, like, the premise of Love is Blind, but they also just met each other, like, four weeks ago and proposed, you know. There might have been some extenuating circumstances beyond the politics.
But that was what you said. I know.
I'm saying it might be a fig leaf. Oh, I see.
Again, they just met each other four weeks ago. I'm saying you don't care enough about Black Lives Matter, but really...
I don't even know you. You have a small dick.
Okay. You need to put that ring on or whatever.
What does the panel think of the Trump administration gutting and potentially eliminating the Department of Education? I'm still thinking about it, honestly. You take this one.
Here's what I care about. I got kids with special needs.
I've got kids who are coming from poor families who rely on this funding from the federal government to have a shot in life. I said before, I want every child of God to have the freedom to chart their own course, the opportunity to succeed.
The federal government made a compact with those kids. I hope they don't break that compact with those kids.
I guess what the question, though, really is, is the Department of Education doing that? Is it now they probably are doing some good work? I'm sure they are. What is their budget, like $200 billion or something? But it also looks like some of these places are just funneling money to people who are not solving the problem.
I mean, I saw that story about the 20 billion that went out the door after Biden lost the EPA. It wasn't the EPA or was it the EPA? But there was 20 billion dollars that they shoveled to groups because Trump was coming and then they were going to reverse all this stuff.
And supposedly environmental groups, and they were not really environmental groups. And they had no experience in doing it.
Like I said before, I care about the plastics. Do I think this money was going to get rid of the plastics in my brain? I do not.
So I am skeptical of the Department of Education. And I think every Democrat who runs really needs to take on this issue because that's your portfolio, education.
You've owned it, and the results aren't good. Kids isn't...
The education standards... Kids isn't learning.
Kids are not learning. Kids are not learning.
I think, look, thank you. I think through all this...

I'm sorry, Sam.

I will say it's clear that our education achievements

are not where they need to be, right?

Like, we look at any comparison to any other country,

we're just not keeping up.

The question is, absent that funding,

would it be worse, right?

We don't know.

This money, if it can get funneled back into the states,

I'm assuming there are some Democrats who say, good, keep the top lines at where they are and we can use it to our benefits. But this money was also used to set education standards, to study how to do better curriculums, to figure out how to recruit teachers in a comprehensive, thorough way.
And so I don't know every program that they are cutting right now, but the idea that there won't be any adverse consequences seems not logical. Of course not, because that's what they do.
They blow everything up first. That's what I don't get about.
Exactly. I think they're going about it wrong.
First off, I think it's important that we support the American people, not the American institutions. You are right that there is waste, there is fraud, there is abuse in these institutions.
It should be rooted out. It's one of the reasons why when I was a county executive of Pennsylvania's third largest county, we did zero-based budgeting.
We didn't go in with a hatchet. We literally went in and said, your budget's zero.
Build it up to where it needs to be. And you know what happened? Some agencies were reduced.
Some agencies got a lot more because it was mission-driven. I think we've got to focus on meeting the mission, meeting the goals, and then driving the funding out to meet those goals.
Is the Democratic Party too much in the pocket of the teachers union? No, I think the Democratic Party cares deeply about making sure these children get a shot in life.

I certainly care about that.

And I'm not suggesting that everything the Department of Education does is wise.

I'm talking about unions now, the teachers' union, because I think during COVID,

didn't the teachers' union keep the schools closed way too long?

Look, we partnered with our teachers' unions in Pennsylvania

to increase the number of teachers we have in the classrooms, to reduce class sizes and to improve outcomes for kids. I think there's ways to work with the teachers unions to make progress for our children.
Okay, what does the panel think of Trump speaking at the DOJ, that's the Department of Justice, a rare move for a president where he reiterated his call for retribution against his political enemies.

I don't like it.

I, you know, I mean, jail talk. It was crazy.
Not a big fan. Not a big fan of Lock Her Up and everything that came after it, and anybody I don't like, and 60 Minutes has got to go to jail, and, you know, it's...
This one was really wild, and I say that having watched hundreds of these speeches, but to go to the Department of Justice, which is fairly unprecedented, not totally unprecedented, I mean, people go there, but to give a political speech like that at the DOJ and to say, I'm the chief law enforcement officer of this country, I'm going to prosecute my enemies, CNN and MSNBC should be illegal, and then tell two random stories about Bobby Knight. Like, it was just...
I mean, it did. It just went on these sides about Bobby Knight and you're sitting there like, what is going on? And then he realized this is the president.
But I was troubled by it because obviously he looks at the Department of Justice as his personal law enforcement agency. And that's not what it is.
And, you know, what they would say is that's what they were doing to me. Yeah.
The Biden Justice Department. I don't know.
Did you watch Merrick Garland? Did you watch Merrick Garland? Do you think that's true? Do you think that's not a false? Do you not think that's true? I don't think. No, I think there is such a thing as a Trump Justice Department, and he thinks there should be.
I don't think there was a Biden Justice Department so much because they went after their own people. They indicted Hunter Biden.
You just think it's an accident that they indicted him on 91 counts, and then as soon as he became president, they all just evaporated. It turns out there was no there or there for any of the 91 counts, and that was not politically motivated.
I don't think they should have gone after everything. I think they had every right to look into the Russia connection.
He did some of these things publicly in the open. Russia, if you're listening, help me out with the election.
His campaign manager was meeting with GRU agents. He was indicted on 91 counts that disappeared the minute he became president.
Probably because he ordered them disappear. What? What are we talking about 91 counts? He was 91 counts.
Of what? The judges themselves simply stopped. When he became president.
Yes. You don't see a connection? Well, that's big.
What do you think? You think Judge Cannon was taking orders for him? They disappeared. Do I think judges are taking orders? No, they disappeared because there's a statute that says a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
No, no. No, that's what it is.
No, that's not true at all. That's what the Supreme Court rules.
Well, you are an attorney general of a state. You probably have.
I mean, look, I didn't see the president's comments today, and I think this is obviously, I hear the different opinions. Here's what I'll tell you.
I'm a twice elected attorney general of Pennsylvania. You have the power, when you're a prosecutor, to take away someone's liberty, take away someone's freedom, ruin their reputation and their careers.
There can be no room for politics in that. There can't even be a room for the appearance of politics in that.
That's what worries me when anyone, Democrat or Republican, injects politics into prosecution. That's a dangerous thing for this country.
So, Governor, does that mean you think that did happen under the last administration? I'm making a general point here that I think we've got to make sure that whoever is the executive, right, a governor, a president, that they do not interfere with the implementation and the prosecution and the work that goes on in a Justice Department, be it a state level or at the federal level. I think that's really important to give people the confidence in knowing that the system is fair and the system

is just and the law will be

applied without fear.

It's only March of

2025. You're going to get exhausted.