Longtime provocateur and host of HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher sometimes slips into conservative crank territory. Whether lambasting Covid rules or scolding LGBT youth, Maher can sound like an aging buffoon. Yet he is by no means friendly toward the nakedly fascist MAGA/QANON Republicans.
During the latest episode of Real Time, Maher wondered aloud what the stunning idiocy of GOP campaign ads means for our future.
“We have to figure out how a country can solve any problem if so many of its people are so intractably, astoundingly, mind-numbingly stupid,” Maher told viewers. “And I’m not saying that as hyperbole or just out of frustration. I mean this country just might be empirically, verifiably too fucking dumb to continue as an ongoing enterprise.”
Maher showed a TikTok video that proves his point, and commented on a clip from one of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green's ads in which she fires a semi-automatic weapon.
"Here’s three words that no one ever has to say to Marjorie Taylor Greene: dumb it down.”
Although comedian and “Real Time” host Bill Maher is a blistering critic of political correctness and “woke culture,” he is no fan of MAGA Republicans and former President Donald Trump. And during an early April monologue on “Real Time,” Maher warned that the far-right GOP “kooks” and “extremists” who are likely to take over the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms make the Republican “kooks” of 2010 and 2012 look tame by comparison.
“We are now only seven months away from midterm elections that are poised to make the Republicans much more powerful,” Maher told viewers. “So, attention must be paid to where the Republican Party is right now. You’d think, with the left going a little looney over the past few years, Republicans would have seen an opening to grab the sensible center. But no…. Normal Republican crazy, where you just shoot guns at things you don’t like in your campaign ads — even that shit doesn’t cut it anymore… I look back at the Republican class of 2010 because that year has been held up as an example of Republican kookiness gone wild.”
Maher went on to cite examples of Republicans who were slammed as “kooks” in the 2010 and 2012 elections, including Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell (of “I’m not a witch” fame) and Missouri’s Todd Akin (who is infamous for his “legitimate rape” comment). And the 66-year-old “Real Time” host stressed that in 2022, the GOP is even more unhinged.
“In 2009,” Maher recalled, “it was a big deal when Congressman Joe Wilson yelled out ‘You lie’ during (President Barack) Obama’s State of the Union address. But this year, [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene and [Rep.] Lauren Boebert repeatedly interrupted (President Joe) Biden during his State of the Union. Excuse me, Karen! The president is talking; it’s not a black kid you caught trying to use the pool. No, you can’t have another skinny margarita, and if you don’t sit down, this flight is never getting to Orlando.”
Maher continued, “For all of you who get frustrated because Manchin and Sinema don’t vote like true liberals — because they never were — or think Trump is as bad as it’s going to get, remember the first rule of modern Republican politics: They always go lower. Because this party has no bottom, unless you count [Senator] Lindsey Graham. The kooky Republicans of the 2010 era wouldn’t even make the cut today for extremism. And the ones today aren’t even as bad as the ones in the wings. Wait ‘till you see the incoming group of Facebook uncles, crazy Karens and submental shitposters coming up.”
Maher pointed to “dim-witted religious nut” Kelly Tshibaka (who is running for the U.S. Senate in Alaska), Michele Fiore (who is running for Nevada state treasurer), “sociopath” Eric Greitens (who is running for the U.S. Senate in Missouri) and Tina Forte (a Republican seeking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s seat in the Bronx and Queens) as some of the many GOP “kooks” running for office in 2022.
Whoopi Goldberg blasted HBO’s Bill Maher after the increasingly right-moving comedian declared he doesn’t want to live in pro-vaccine Americans’ “masked paranoid world” anymore.
On Monday’s The View, Goldberg called Maher’s remarks “not really funny to people who have lost their kids” or “family members or dear friends to this,” she said, apparently meaning to COVID. (She obviously misspoke, saying the “vaccine").
Maher on his HBO show on Friday had said, “I don’t want to live in your paranoid world anymore, your masked paranoid world anymore, you know, you go out it’s silly now. You know you have your mask, you have to have a card, you have the booster, they scan your head like you’re a cashier and I’m a bunch of bananas. I’m not bananas you are.”
Goldberg continued, saying, “Listen, nobody on the planet really wants to go through this, this is not something we’re doing because it’s, you know, sexually gratifying. This is what we’re doing to protect our families, and you don’t have to do it, but stay away from everybody. Because if you’re the one who’s not paying attention, and your confidence needs, you don’t want to then stay out of the public man. This is not, nobody wants this. I don’t want it. And I think he’s forgetting the people who are still at risk, who cannot get vaccinated. People who can’t get – little kids under the age of five. Yeah, well people with health conditions How dare you be so flippant, man?
Fox News is known for its far-right hosts clogging the airwaves with GOP propaganda, conspiracy theories, and rancid racism. But to Bill Maher, "these desperate attempts to attract an audience feel a bit thirsty" for a network that is losing audience rapidly.
The Real Time host obliterates the Murdoch "news" network but he has some suggestions, firing off show titles like "Inside Sedition," "The Segregation Room," and so many more. It's the perfect punch of comedy for your Monday afternoon. Enjoy!
Fox News is bleeding viewers, but these desperate attempts to attract an audience feel a bit thirsty... https://t.co/S1ItCSz5X3
— Real Time with Bill Maher (@Real Time with Bill Maher)
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