Talk show host Bill Maher has been effective at alienating the right and the left recently, both targets angered by Maher’s critiques from his comfortable perch at HBO, where his show Real Time is in its 22nd season, and from his more freestyle podcast, Club Random. There Maher tends to partake in a cocktail and some marijuana, and let fly.
A libertarian more than a liberal, Maher relishes being an equal opportunity offender. But he finds himself squarely in the GOP crosshairs this weekend, drawing the ire of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP 2024 presidential nominee, presumably for prominently featuring stalwart Trump antagonists Adam Kinzinger and Andrew Cuomo — and perhaps for Maher’s recent defense of Joe Biden‘s mental acuity.
Trump laid into Maher in a social media post using some of his most preferred insults, calling Maher a “highly overrated” sufferer of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
More significantly, Trump issued an unambiguous order to MAGA adherents to “stop using [Maher] as a reference point,” declaring Maher’s show “dead.”
Trump’s rhetoric makes it a near certainty that none of his Vice President candidates or any of his acolytes in Congress will be guesting on Maher’s platform any time soon — or even amplifying Maher’s sometimes savage critiques of the left.
Someone said mean things about the sensitive snowflake again. pic.twitter.com/R7kkFbMI5w
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 22, 2024
Maher has hammered Trump before, just as he’s knocked Biden, Hillary Clinton, and other big name Democrats. What forced Trump to declare Maher’s show a dead zone for Republicans this time — especially since Maher appeals to the independent voter Trump seems to need in 2024 — isn’t clear.
Maher had the January 6 Committee member and Republican former Illinois Congressman Kinzinger on together with Cuomo, the former New York Governor. The pair pitched their belief that another Trump presidency would be an existential disaster for America and the rule of law — but that’s not a new claim and it’s not something that’s never been said before on Maher’s platform. And Cuomo actually made the argument that the Trump case in New York was an anomaly.
Crowd Goes Dead Silent as Bill Maher Realizes “Hush Money” Trial Was a BIG MISTAKE
BILL MAHER: “The trial in New York, the one he [Trump] got convicted for, was the greatest fundraising bonanza ever. He was lagging behind Biden, and now he’s pulled quite a bit ahead. That trial… pic.twitter.com/lATiJBVaj0
— The Vigilant Fox (@VigilantFox) June 22, 2024
Maher’s own words might have been enough to trigger Trump when, speaking of the various legal cases against the former President, he said: “If they had just heard the one about trying to overthrow the government of the United States. That’s the main thing! He tried to overthrow the government of the United States!”
[Note: Maher himself, despite routinely swinging at both sides, said in March that he would aim to prevent a second Trump presidency with every tool available to him. So the question remains why did Trump strike so fiercely at him now?]
Maher also has taken issue with the right wing media’s portrayal — through selective video edits — of Biden “losing his mind.”
“The Democrats have to find a way to communicate, I think, that this guy is mentally there,” Maher said. Democrats need, Maher asserts, to get the message across that “Okay, [Biden]’s old, but he has never lost his mind.”
Maher also made an interesting distinction between President Biden and Candidate Biden, noting that the former — the executive — is stronger: “He’s still got his marbles….can still do the job. He just can’t run for it.”
About the widely circulated Juneteenth video in which Biden doesn’t groove to the music like the rest of the crowd, Maher said: “Everybody’s dancing and he’s not. Good! He shouldn’t be dancing! He’s 82! You look like an idiot when you try to dance.”