Bill Maher explains why he’s rejecting calls to join the political right
"Real Time" host Bill Maher closed his show Friday night by offering a blunt message to his conservative fans who ask why he hasn't joined the political right as he rejects the left's embrace of wokeness.
"Let me give you the short answer: Because I don't want to live in North Korea," Maher told them. "Kim Jong-un has state stenographers who follow him everywhere and scribble his genius ideas into their notebooks and applaud. Well, Republicans, that's you now!"
Maher listed examples of Republicans going to great lengths to honor President Donald Trump from pushing to rename Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport after him to a bill adding his face to Mount Rushmore.
He also called out their embrace of Trump's iconic dance and the group of supporters who dressed like Trump outside the courthouse during his hush money payment trial. He singled out Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick as an example of Republicans talking like Trump "with the crazy, over-the-top exaggerations."
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"And these bills they've introduced to make Trump's birthday a holiday and put him on currency and Mount Rushmore- this is not what we do here, guys!" Maher exclaimed. "He's still in office for God's sake. Can we see how it turns out before we put him on a stamp?"
"If I admit that there is a level of Trump Derangement Syndrome on the left, will you admit that this s--- is also deranged?" Maher asked. "All the people on the right who say they certainly don't agree with me on everything, but they respect the way I keep it real about the left and like me because I'm honest. Well, that's a two-way street. Are you being honest?"
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The HBO host suggested the people around Trump are too cowardly to correct him when he's wrong, pointing to when Trump claimed during his address to Congress that DOGE found $8 million in federal funding that was allocated for "transgender mice," insisting it was actually "transgenic mice" used for hormone treatment research.
"So I know, my Republican friends, when you hear ‘cult,’ you roll your eyes. But let me add one thing to it that you might not have heard," Maher later said. "You know a cult is really a cult when the leader asks you to turn on friends and family because they're the only ones who are a threat to deprogram you. It's why Tom Cruise doesn't talk to his own kid. Which brings me to America. I'm suddenly saying to our closest friend in the world, ‘You know what? F--- Canada for no particular reason.’"
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Maher went on to sound the alarm on Trump backers like Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and "War Room" host Steve Bannon over comments legitimizing the idea of a third Trump term, insisting it won't stop with them.
"And you know, you just know that soon the entire Republican Party will be on this page," Maher said. "Okay, there's no fuzz on this. It's as clear as one, two, three. Presidents get two terms, not more, no matter how wonderful you think they are. It's written in black and white in the Constitution. Guys, you know this is wrong. You know in your heart this is the moment when Rome stops being a republic. So come on. Be like those mice and grow a pair of balls."