Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Fortitude | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

my next guess is a Republican congressman from Texas and author of the new book fortitude American resilience in the era of outrage please welcome Dan Crenshaw congressman thank you for doing this I must tell you I first became aware of you as I think many Americans did when Pete Davidson of Saturday Night Live made that joke about you and I have to tell you I am such a fan of what you said because you never hear that in American life you said look it was wrong but let's just forgive each other I know you've done much better things for this country five tours you did overseas but thank you for your service in calling out victim culture I appreciate that bill and first of all thanks for having me I know we had planned to do this in the studio in Los Angeles unfortunately life took a different turn you know the phrase I used after Pete Davidson said that which I think you would love this phrase is try hard not to be offended or try hard not to offend but try even harder not to offend or be offense he's under writing this up try hard not to try even harder not to be offended and I thought it would be great a way to live for all of us no and we both share this disdain for victim culture and for lots of stuff trophy syndrome I hope I have some credibility with you because you know I did a show called politically incorrect which started in 1993 what I think you were about ten and I was onto this a long time ago and it hasn't gotten any better I think you do have some credibility for sure in conservative circles I don't know how often you you test or do focus groups with amongst conservatives but we generally think of you as a real liberal and you know and that means something and there's a difference between liberalism and leftism and we can disagree wholeheartedly on right the best way to govern our country there the best way to perceive a problem and the framework with which to approach problem-solving but open-mindedness and and the ability to debate should be a key tenant of liberalism and at least in the classical sense and so now we do appreciate it okay so let's debate a little bit I mean you yeah yeah you say in your book I'm gonna quote your you call out automatic assignment of blame outward that's what we were just talking about help me understand how someone who calls out the outward assignment of blame can be such a supporter of a president who does nothing but passed the buck lie finger point shirk responsibility tell tell me how you can support someone with your background someone like that yeah it didn't take long for Trump to come up you know I would say I support the country right and the president's success is certainly tied of the success of the country I support his policy agenda when I disagree with this policy agenda I openly disagree with it this isn't you know Republicans always get asked this question and there's this demand that we always have to answer what do you feel about him well you don't don't you don't you want to comment on his latest tweet and his latest out in his in his the way he lashed out and and no I don't I can't defend everything I can't he doesn't have the same style as I do I don't consider him my spiritual guide by any means but but you know let me tell you a quick story what I was blown up sitting in my hospital bed President Obama was doing the rounds at Walter Reed just like President Trump does now and just like President Bush did before him it's a really neat thing it's a really interesting connection that the president gets with these wounded wounded active-duty soldiers that is never publicized and even though I may have disagreed with so many levels with with President Obama I made sure to get up and I was excited I was genuinely happy and to shake that man's hand and have him sign the American flag on my wall and you know even though we disagree on political things and and I think I would like us to get to that point with this president as well okay but you you do it a lot of Republicans do you you you talk about his tweets and his style I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the person who's the leader of the country at a time of crisis and we have to we have to go through what he actually has done this is important stuff it's about life and death and it's about our economy and everything that's really important it's not tweets and it's not style let's just go through the timeline okay because he was warned this did not have to happen Alex a czar his his Health and Human Services guy January 18th he warned him about this and again on January 30th Trump said he was being an alarmist Peter Navarro somebody else who talks to Trump a lot told him directly January 29th you got to get ahead of this February later two days later he implemented a restrictive try a travel ban from China which he was widely criticized for I have that same day on January 31st Nancy Pelosi proposed the no ban Act which would be congressional limitation on the president Trump's actually able to do with that true what that travel restriction okay but that's right and he lies about that he first of all he didn't lie about it what do you mean he said he stopped people coming in from China he did not he said he was ahead of it 43 countries did it before we did there are still people coming in from China he only stopped foreign national okay let me address that because I know that's that's the people are saying right now but the reality is that was about 40,000 people came in after that these were US citizens and green card holders and passport holders being repatriated US citizens so you have to make the argument then that that we shouldn't allow them in and it sounds to me like you're fully agreeing with President Trump on this when everybody else disagreed with them and if you're saying that you wish that that that travel restriction had been more extreme okay fine well I you apparently had the foresight back then but when nobody else did but the fact is you know we if Joe Biden was in charge at that moment he's already said he wouldn't have done it he criticized it as at the time Nancy Pelosi actually proposed legislation to stop it but people people are still coming in from from China it wasn't just foreign nationals but let's get off that let me just go back to the time line for a minute February 10th after these warnings he says it's going to go away in April with the heat because he had a hunch February he goes to India this is four days after the white house coronavirus taskforce said we're going to have to lock down the country and dr. Nancy Mason yay who's in charge of the Center for immunization and respiratory diseases wait a second let me just finish she announced this on the 26th he on the 25th that we're gonna have to lock down the country he said the next day 15 people have it and it's soon going to be close to zero March 6th he said anyone who wants a test can get it which is still completely addictive February clearly wrong go forward because I mentioned February 25th the day before February 24th that's when the administration requested two and a half billion dollars from Congress to fulfill you know CDC NIH an fda funding to combat the virus and the potential spread of it what happened right then I'll tell you because I was in Congress but I know what happened did we vote on a supplemental funding bill no did we wait days to vote no still didn't vote on it you know what we voted on later that we Nancy Pelosi the only thing she would put on the floor to vote on was a bill to ban flavored tobacco that's that's what actually happened it wasn't it was only a week later that we actually voted on supplemental funding that the administration requested your criticism appears to be based in one thing that Trump was overly optimistic that's his style you know again I you can criticize it that's fine but it doesn't but it's not connected to the actions that were actually taken because if I back up even further you know February 14th CDC announces ongoing work with five laboratories to perform community-based influenza surveillance and study the spread of the virus we're trying we're in a fact-finding mode in February people forget this we were calling February this last month the words really not there's just that's an easy and cheap accusation because there's no big bold moves taken like there was in January or were like there was in March but the reality is our government was working to create that test they do they work as fast as we would have liked and of course none there's a lot of reasons for that which I am happy to go into by March 3rd there was only 102 cases in the United States and yet I'm hearing criticism that we should have been locked down weeks earlier but would you think the American people would have accepted that with only a hundred cases in the it's States Italy didn't lock down until March 10th Spang not until March 14th UK not until later in March because like Sweden's never locked down and so I just I provide all of that context as we try to basically accuse this man of well he's being accused of having blood on his hands and and context is so important here well it is and also it's not just about being optimistic it's about being right the world was aware of this and since when does America take its lead from Italy in Spain because those were those were the outbreaks were half I understand I'm pointing it out again again for context but if we're gonna criticize somebody's actions we have to do it in the context of the facts they knew at the time and so I just I'm just trying to be fair here that I don't really care about defending him or his actions I just care about letting people know the truth and when people make these accusations I have to ask them a question is the goal to make Trump look better is the goal to get to the truth because there's two different sets of answers for that okay but sometimes they converge sometimes the truth is that somebody who says I have a confirm they converge I have a hunch this is going to go away is that someone you would want to observe with I mean my god I don't understand again why someone with your resume you were in Fallujah for God's sakes would you want someone a commander to say that to you to blame everybody else if something goes wrong and then to say you know I have a hunch the enemy's not going to be in there what's the time no I understand that so here's how I would I would describe my answer to that when bullets are flying past my head I don't need to raise my voice and I watered about this in my book to calm breeds calm panic breeds panic you know being an optimistic positive you know exuding positivity and calmness and crisis is exactly how we asked our seals to leave and no I'm not sure I see a lot of evidence for blaming others may be blaming China although there's a lot of evidence for that so maybe that's a good place to play blame but I did it last round Leeming you know Democrats here know he's he's exposing hypocrisy and it maybe and maybe we're confusing that with blame but no I mean again calm breeds calm and that's how we would lead in the SEAL Teams okay so in Texas there was a six-hour line to vote a couple of weeks ago it does look like the Republican Party doesn't want people to vote especially mail and vote and there's going to be people now who are afraid to go to the polls because of this disease where do you stand on that do you think Republicans are trying to stop people from voting do you really want it wouldn't you rather lose an election than live in a country where we're not really getting our franchise so the lines in in Houston here then those big six-hour Waits he saw Republicans are in charge of those elections the the Democrats are in charge of our County elections here they run that the County Clerk is a Democrat recently one that's that's why they're in charge they've taken full responsibility for those lines because basically what happened is a lot of machines went down and that's what caused the lines that there isn't so first of all it's not Republicans it's Democrats in these urban areas that actually run the the election system and second that there was no ill intent even I don't think ill intent from Democrats either there was mistakes made in Texas you have two weeks to early vote from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. for two weeks straight you can go anywhere in the county and passed your vote you don't have to vote on Election Day if you're elderly or sick and disabled you can vote in by mail no it's not the case that we don't want people to vote that and of course that's always the accusation but it's not really based in evidence you know mail-in ballots do have that you know there's there's a break of custody of a vote there there's if it's not fraudulent there's at least the possibility for mistakes to be made and we see that often you know I read an op-ed recently from a former Texas member who was going door-to-door based on voter registration just knocking on doors and would find you know a group of non-us citizens but they're registered there or or a empty lot but it's registered so if you start mailing all of these types of places ballots well then you know it's not ill intent but there's the possibility for a lot of bad things to happen and so the question we have to ask ourselves do we really want to especially from a national level try to revamp our entire election system and with the potential for all these problems and and for what exactly and so I don't know if your question is related to Kovac my team well there's elections in general well everything's related to that these days and there of course there's a lot to be said about your answer which is a terrific answer from a press spokesman for that cause but I don't have time to do it now I hope you can come to our show as we planned sometime and we will take up this issue of whether Republicans really are protecting your franchise or not but I appreciate you doing this I appreciate everything you've done for this country and I hope I see in person soon thank you hey thanks Bill great to be with you you

Channel: Real Time with Bill Maher

Views: 2,330,665

Rating: 4.668148 out of 5

Keywords: Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Republican, Texas, Congressman, Navy SEAL, author, Fortitude, American Resilience in the Era of Outrage, Fareed Zakaria, CNN, Fareed Zakaria GPS, The Washington Post, COVID-19, Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine, coronavirus, consciously decouple, China

Id: RTGBJMDcras

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/FiveODeuce]

Everyone should take advantage of the springboard that Dan Crenshaw used, “veterans campaign”.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/troubleschute]

He's really milking that "I'm a hero" eye patch.