Bill Maher has revealed he’s taking a surprising new approach to joking about Donald Trump during his second term in office— and it might not be what you expect.
With the Trump administration set to begin later this month, the comedian told CNN that he is ‘not going to chase every rabbit down the hole like I did the first term’.
‘He’s a kooky guy who says a lot of kooky things, and I’m just not going to pre-hate anything,’ Maher said during his Friday appearance on about President-elect Trump.
‘I’m just going to hope for the best, and then when something serious happens, I’ll comment on that,’ he said.
A longstanding critic of Trump, Maher previously cautioned that a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election could spell challenges for voters.
He had anticipated that Trump would lose to Vice President Harris in last November’s election, but Trump came out victorious, sweeping all seven battleground states.
After the election, Maher criticized Democrats, attributing their loss of both Congress and the White House in part to what he described as their ‘aggressively anti-common sense agenda.’
Maher stated on Friday that fodder like Trump’s recent proposals about purchasing Greenland and making Canada the 51st state are still fair game.
‘That’s perfect for comedy, but I’m not going to take it seriously,’ the late-night host said on CNN.
Maher also reiterated his belief that President Biden is too old to serve as president and should have withdrawn earlier from the 2024 presidential to allow the Democratic Party to hold an ‘open’ National Convention.
‘I felt like I had standing to make that case because I had for so many years been the only person on television who was consistently railing against ageism. I have been saying for years ageism is the last allowable prejudice that we can have in this country,’ Maher added on Friday.
‘You can always do the age jokes, you can always rail on people for being too old and it was as I said, a case-by-case basis. Some people at 70 act like they are 100 years old and some are like 40-year-old,’ he added. ‘But this was a case, OK, where Biden was too old.’
The long-time HBO talk show host, standup comic and podcaster traditionally drew the ire of conservatives but now seems to attract hate and outrage from liberals just as often.
Just last weekend, Bill Maher revealed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal why he increasingly targets ‘woke’ liberals in his comedy: ‘You give me more material. I’m a comedian. I’m going to go where the gold is.’
He tied this shift to his growing frustrations with left-wing Democrats, noting, ‘They can’t stand to endure a moment of hearing something they don’t already agree with. Not that the right doesn’t do it, too, but the left does it worse.’
Maher took aim at progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling her ‘a little out there,’ and expressing disdain for Ilhan Omar, whom he described as ‘not my favorite.’
However, Maher praised Seth Moulton, who recently faced backlash from his party for questioning transgender inclusion in youth sports.
‘Everything with these people has to be an opportunity for virtue signaling,’ Maher said, referring to those who labeled Moulton as everything from a transphobe to a Nazi collaborator.
He also mentioned how some Democrats have severed their friendships with him over his decision to host conservatives like Ann Coulter, Bill Barr and Ted Cruz on his show.
‘Just think about what this is — people who hate me for who I won’t hate. People who hate me for who I won’t hate,’ he said.
Expanding on his recent podcast remarks, Maher critiqued how liberals often disown those who disagree with them, driven by a psychological need for virtue signaling.
‘It’s in their psychological profile; they have this need for virtue signaling and to have their friends—and I guess everybody on social media — think of them as the good people. ‘We’re the good people. We know who’s good. And it’s us,” he told the WSJ.
Maher also criticized the younger generation, accusing them of lacking perspective because of their ‘woke colleges,’ which he called ‘a***** factories.’
He added, ‘They’ve been indoctrinated into this idea that they live in the worst country in the world at the worst time in history, when actually they live in, with all our flaws, still probably the best, with definitely indisputably the best time in history.’
Despite his criticisms, Maher expressed some optimism about Trump’s second term, saying that Trump has hired ‘people I like’ to try and reform Washington.
‘It’s like a Marvel movie. This gang is coming to shake things up. As a viewer, I am interested to see what this is. It’s not like America doesn’t need shaking up. We are a sclerotic, constipated country, and it just keeps slowly getting worse,’ he said.
During an appearance on the Club Random podcast, sitcom actor Jon Cryer caught Bill Maher off guard with his outspoken liberal perspective on the reasons behind Kamala Harris’s loss to Trump.
The Two and a Half Men actor argued that Trump’s victory was largely driven by Republicans’ deep-seated animosity toward Black women and trans people.
Maher, who recently criticized liberals and Democrats in a high-profile interview, began by explaining his view on why the Democrats lost.
‘I warned everyone about Trump, and then I warned them about what would get him reelected, which was stupid wokeness — that’s what got him reelected,’ Maher said.
Cryer interjected, suggesting that ‘wokeness’ was only ‘maybe part of it.’
When Maher referenced polling data to support his argument, Cryer shifted the focus, pointing out that inflation, which he said Americans deeply despise, was a major factor in the election’s outcome.
While acknowledging inflation’s role, Cryer expanded his reasoning, adding, ‘They hate inflation. They hate riots. And they hate black women. And they hate trans people.’