Overtime – Episode #741: Max Brooks, Sarah Longwell
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Who are Max Brooks and Sarah Longwell and what are they known for?
Welcome to an HBO podcast, from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.
Alrighty is a senior fellow at the Atlanta Council and best-selling author, Max Brooks, and she is the founder and publisher of The Bulwark and author of How to Eat an Elephant, Sarah Longwell. What what is that tit uh how to eat an elephant? Why don't you tell them it's a funny book and a funny title?
Uh I mean it's how do you solve a big intractable problem and how do you get voters uh to basically understand that the MAGA experiment has been a disaster. So
it is the Republican elephant. It
is the Republican elephant, but it's also an idiom, you know, how to eat an elephant one bite at a time.
You used to work for them.
Then I did. I was a Republican for most of my career and then um Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party and turned it into a fascist. Do you think
you would go back after Trump?
Under no circumstances. Really? You think it's
gone forever? I don't think
I mean I think that the party that I was part of is never coming back. There's and the voters don't want it back. I mean all of my work now is about listening to voters, and the Republican Party is something completely different from the one that I was part of.
Right. Okay. Okay. These are from the people. Does the panel have any reflections on the twenty fifth anniversary of nine eleven? Well, yeah, let's let's hear from you folks. I spout it off.
You know, I was thinking when we were talking earlier, uh, the nine eleven commission did a report um where they said one of the biggest failures, the biggest security failures was a failure to imagine. uh where nobody imagined that somebody could attack Americans on American soil, that terrorists couldn't do it. Uh they didn't imagine the idea of turning a plane into a weapon like that. And it feels like that with AI a little bit, that we are in a moment of a failure to imagine what could happen and that we're at the very beginning of that.
Right. Yeah, well, I would also say that that sometimes the the term failure of imagination is a term to absolve you of responsibility. I would call it a failure of belief. Because every time there's something, there's Pearl Harbor, there's 9-11, there's COVID, there's always people sounding the alarm. Always. People do imagine it, but then there are people who said, Well, I I don't believe it. It just wouldn't happen. And that's different. Because when you hear it and You choose not to believe it, you have a responsibility, and I think that's the problem. It's uh
the COVID uh analogy is really interesting in some ways, you know, you remember in the beginning of COVID, uh, and it came out later in I think uh one of Woodward's book, uh, that Donald Trump was being told this is really bad. It is coming for us. And he said, Yeah, it's the flu, told us not to worry about it. It seems like his little the you know, we'll get the gear and the boom. But he just
we just did it on the show about what he said about AI. Right. There's a little gear, you just plug it.
Why does Max Brooks say the Republican Party is a ‘failed experiment’ after Trump?
It just flipped it. Just unplug it. It's a lever like on a like on a
train. It's just it's like a cartoon bugs bunny train. You just pull the lever and it
stops. AI is important to Donald Trump. Uh because I don't know there's no other way for him to figure out how to make himself into a hockey player, beating up the Canadian prime minister or, you know, being the Green Lantern. Yeah, he loves his AI.
Right. Um That's how he gets really big and
tough.
But m I I feel like watching the towers in real time and then I remember for at least ten years after that there was a lot of conspiracy theories about you p what you saw with your own eyes. Planes hitting buildings and then the buildings falling down. Oh sure, that's what they wanted you to think. It I feel like it it inaugurated an era, I guess there was always conspiracy theories, but an era where everything was a conspiracy theory. That you could not really trust your own eyes about anything. And this went on for a very long time. Truthers, remember truthers, truth we had to get to the bottom of the bottom of it.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Who are Max Brooks and Sarah Longwell and what are they known for?
0:01–2:51
2
Why does Max Brooks say the Republican Party is a ‘failed experiment’ after Trump?
2:51–5:34
3
What lessons does the panel draw from the 9/11 commission’s ‘failure of imagination’?
5:34–8:59
4
How do the guests compare AI’s unknown risks to the 9/11 security failures?
8:59–11:20
5
What impact does the far‑right’s state win in Germany have on European immigration debates?
11:20–14:07
6
Is Minecraft a harmless game or does it teach kids valuable skills?
14:07–15:25
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Real Time with Bill Maher
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