Bill Maher is So Gullible That Kid Rock and Donald Trump Played Him Like a Fiddle
As readers of this blog are well aware, one of my pet peeves involves the press and users of social media treating Bill Maher like a passionate progressive icon so that when he expresses a right-wing opinion, conservatives can marvel, “Wow, Democrats are so crazy and so extreme that even a huge lefty like Bill Maher criticizes them.”
You can only be impressed and surprised that someone on the other side of the political divide agrees with you so often before realizing that maybe you’re not on competing sides after all.
Maher is anything but an important leftist intellectual. As I wrote in a recent blog post, the problem with that designation is that Maher isn’t important, a leftist, or an intellectual. I don’t want to be elitist, but you can’t be both a public intellectual and a close friend of Kid Rock.
Like all principled journalists, Bill Maher was excited to get Donald Trump’s autograph!
Maher leans right on many, if not most, issues. He famously hates all religions. He even made an insufferable and unwatchable movie where he traveled around the world telling people of faith that they’re dumb and he’s smarter and better than them.
But Maher hates one religion above all others. Not surprisingly, it’s the one that involves people of color and languages other than English.
On Real Time, he said of Trump’s ideas about taking over the Gaza Strip and transforming it into a Middle East Atlantic City, “This idea that it could be Dubai instead of Haiti, which is really what it is. It's just like Haiti, run by a criminal gang, by a terrorist mafia gang. That's why it's a hellhole, not just for the Israelis next door but for the people who live there, who hate Hamas as well. And it could be something else."
In one ignorant comment, Maher was Islamophobic, xenophobic, racist, and agreed, to an extent, with Donald Trump.
Islam is far from the only place where Maher’s views lean far right. He also seems to view the increase in LGTBQ as a crazy fad where people become trans because it’s the hot new thing, and also life is so easy for people who come out as trans, particularly now.
If you Google “Bill Maher” and “transphobic,” the first thing that comes up is a Youtube video entitled, “Dennis Prager warns Bill Maher about the trans agenda.”
The far-right grifter behind PragerU must have done a fine job because, in the second article, Maher blames trans trendiness for what he predicts will be massive Democratic losses in the 2022 elections.
Maher sneered, “If we can’t admit that in certain enclaves, there is some level of trendiness to the idea of being anything other than straight, then this is not a serious, science-based discussion. It’s a blow being struck in the culture wars using children as cannon fodder.”
The idea that parents and teachers are tricking cisgender children into thinking that they’re trans to score points at the lesbian bookstore, Bernie Sanders rally, or food co-op has always been ridiculous and insulting to trans children, teens, and parents.
In an age of vicious institutional and individual transphobia, where the government has refused to acknowledge that trans people exist and that there are anything but men and women, it’s even more appalling.
Except for Caitlyn Jenner, trans people are probably an abstract concept to Maher, so he can treat children who just want to be accepted and live their truth like gullible fools eager to be part of the latest trend.
Marjorie Taylor Greene thanked Maher for his words of condescension and hate. When she agrees with you, you know you’re doing something wrong.
Maher is also racist and sexist. Remember when he dropped an N bomb on air? In Maher’s mind, if the rappers can use that word, then an important intellectual/modern-day Lenny Bruce like himself should be able to use it as well.
Anti-wokeness is at the core of Maher’s persona as the leftist who disagrees constantly with the left and regularly finds common ground with the right.
Wokeness is the “political correctness” of our time. Maher’s old show was called Politically Incorrect. The modern-day equivalent would be Un-Woke, a potential title for his next special.
Maher was never particularly progressive, but he has been getting progressively more right-wing as he ages into a cranky, bitter old man apoplectic that kids with green hair and pronouns in their social media bios might have anyhing to say of value to say to a rich, powerful, straight 69 year old man with an ego of Trumpian proportions like himself.
The television veteran’s rightward swing continued when he recently visited Donald Trump at the White House alongside his friend Kid Rock as a way of bridging the cultural divide between Republicans and rich, bigoted assholes who talk and behave like Republicans but consider themselves leftists, or centrist, as Maher described himself in a monologue about how, actually, Donald Trump is a wonderful human being who merely portrays a deranged lunatic on television and social media.
Maher is one hundred percent the kind of guy who says that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left him. I can easily envision him saying that he believes in the legacy of John F. Kennedy, but the modern Democratic Party has pushed him away by advocating men in women’s sports and genital mutilation of children and kissing up to Muslims who would like to behead all infidels and implement Sharia Law.
In a profoundly unsurprising development, Donald Trump had dinner with a rich, arrogant, powerful, transphobic, ostentaciously anti-woke white man/longtime television personality, and they got along famously, despite their non-existent political differences.
Maher got suckered by Kid Rock into normalizing Trump’s shtick for his audience as the political equivalent of Kayfabe, which refers to the fake reality of professional wrestling.
Maher claimed disingenuously, “I didn't go MAGA. And to the president's credit, there was no pressure to.”
What would the pressure to go full MAGA look like at a friendly dinner between three Republicans who hate women and minorities? Trump screaming at Maher that he should get the fuck out if he doesn’t promise to support him in every conceivable way?
Unlike those leftist straw men who are humorless and dour and screech incoherently about anything and everything, Trump laughed at Maher. Maher isn’t too modest to say that Trump laughed sincerely, that he genuinely found the Real Time host fucking hilarious.
Here’s a representative quote from his monologue, “I've had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected, people who don't look you in the eye, people who really don't listen because they just want to get to their next thing, people whose response to things you say just doesn't track. Like, what? None of that with him. And he mostly steered the conversations: ‘So what do you think about this?’ I know. Your mind is blown. So is mine.”
That doesn’t seem like a meeting of political opposites. It sounds like a successful seduction.
In case anyone forgot about the many things Maher and Trump have in common, he gushed of their shared beliefs/hatreds, “Moving Israel's embassy to Jerusalem? Loved it. The border did need to be controlled. I'm glad the cops are getting their morale back. DEI had gone too far. Biological men shouldn't be playing women's sports. Europe should pay for their defense. And, of course, it makes sense that Arab countries should take in Arab refugees, like the million Syrians who wound up in Germany when Saudi Arabia took none. He said to me, ‘You're right, they took none.’ I said, ‘Well, you should remind your boyfriend in Saudi Arabia the next time you see him.’ He laughed.”
Trump, who seems like a wonderful guy, has a terrific sense of humor! He laughed at all the hilarious things Maher had to say!
Maher isn’t afraid to gush effusively about how funny, hard-hitting, and brilliant he was and how much Trump appreciated his hilarity and strength.
He quotes the president saying, “I thought maybe you'd be nice, but you'd hit me really hard.’ I did, because I'm not going to pull my punches that presidents get to propose a third term for themselves. He understood that, and without animus.”
Wow, he sounds like a chill dude. Maher wasn’t crazy about the trade war and making dissidents disappear, but that was a mere afterthought: the primary takeaway is that the private Donald Trump is a great guy, totally sincere, a terrific listener, and loved Maher’s hilarious comedy, even when it was leveled at him.
Maher closed his love letter to Donald Trump by gushing about the man currently in the process of destroying democracy, eliminating free speech, and antagonizing the rest of the world out of arrogance and greed: “Trump was gracious and measured, and why he isn't that in other settings, I don't know. And I can't answer, and it's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw, and I wasn't high.”
I can answer Maher’s question. Trump was nice to Maher because he had everything to gain from doing so.
Maher says Trump gave him “a very generous amount of time and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend.”
Trump and Bill Maher are going to be friends! Possibly! If that doesn’t single-handedly bring us closer together as a people, I don’t know what will.
You don’t get elected president twice despite a complete lack of experience and host a top-rated reality show without knowing how to manipulate people. You don’t ascend that high up the ladder without knowing how to be whatever the person in front of you wants you to be.
For Maher, that was a friendly, open, nice guy, a wonderful listener, an ideal audience, and an exemplar of common sense.
It would be impossible for Trump to behave in private like he does in public. No one could maintain that level of vulgar, hateful beligerence all the time, particularly a senile man in his late seventies.
Maher got played by Kid Rock and Donald Trump. They knew how to cater to his enormous ego and exploit their shared hatred of the left. Maher will tell you that he only hates the excesses and extremism of the fringe, but the truth is that he despises what he sees as the performative nobility of progressives and sees a lot of himself in Trump and the many right-wingers he invites on his shows to agree with.
I read somewhere that Maher’s visit was fundamentally pragmatic. Laura Loomer has sued Maher for defamation for saying that she had sex with Trump.
Incidentally, I’m sure Maher would see Trump cheating on his wife with a deranged sycophant young enough to be his granddaughter in a positive light as more proof of Trump’s studliness.
Loomer’s lawsuit would get laughed out of court in a different political and cultural context.
they have fun!
In a world where Trump controls the judiciary and the legislative branches with an iron fist, Loomer’s chances are much better.
ABC recently ponied up 15 million dollars for Trump’s presidential library after George Stephanopoulous said that Trump was found criminally liable for rape when he was technically found criminally liable for sexual assault.
That sounds like a matter of mere semantics to me, but in a world where businesses give up preemptively rather than risk Trump’s wrath, I can see how Maher might want Trump to see him as a friend rather than an enemy.
Maher and Trump share a hatred of politically engaged young people. They hate the idea that you should listen to college students, take their concerns seriously, and talk to and about them, using the language that they would prefer.
Trump and Maher are primarily concerned with money, fame, power, and success. Of course, they’d get along.
I’m so pleased that Trump and Maher overcame their non-differences. As they would be the first to tell you, it illustrates how chill and cool and common sensical they both are, in sharp contrast to all of these shrieking, perpetually hysterical lunatics on the left, with their infernal need to be treated with dignity and respect.
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