It seems like Bill Maher, the host of Real Time on HBO, is always surprising me lately. Despite his reputation as a hardcore liberal, for some time now, he’s been doing something very few on the left are willing to do: criticize Democrats.
And he’s not showing any mercy, either. The left has taken notice of his apparent lack of loyalty, but that hasn’t stopped him from calling them out. Back in September, he admitted that the left is actually embarrassing him.
“To me, when people say to me sometimes, ‘Boy, you know, you go after the left a lot these days. Why?’ Because you’re embarrassing me,” he said. “That’s why I’m going after the left.”
In fact, on issues of race and COVID restrictions, he sounds much more like a Republican than a Democrat.
For example, in an apparent reference to critical race theory, Maher criticized how teachers are making kids “hyper-aware of race in a way they wouldn’t otherwise be,” and lamented the recent trend of singing the so-called black national anthem at sporting events and the left’s embrace of segregation. “I think when you go down a road where you’re having two different national anthems, colleges sometimes now have different graduation ceremonies for black and white, separate dorms … This is what I mean: Segregation! You’ve inverted the idea. We’re going back to that under a different name.”
On Friday night, he was willing to pose a question that many on the left are terrified of asking.
Maher pointed out that Republicans blame the war on Biden, while Democrats blame it on Trump. Then he asked, “If Putin thought Trump was really that supportive of him, why didn’t he invade while Trump was in office? It’s at least worth asking that question, if you’re not locked into one intransigent thought.”
Now, without a doubt, Bill Maher has no love for Donald Trump, but he seems willing to acknowledge something that the left generally has refused to: Putin didn’t invade another country while Trump was in office.
Maher’s concession is even more interesting because Trump has made this exact point. “Under Bush, Russia invaded Georgia. Under Obama, Russia took Crimea. Under Biden, Russia invaded Ukraine,” Trump said during his speech at CPAC 2022. “I stand as the only president of the twenty-first century on whose watch Russia did not invade another country.”
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It’s hard to imagine Bill Maher being a voice of reason among the left, yet, strangely, that’s what he’s become. So, what’s going on here? Has Bill Maher been red-pilled? Has he maybe taken half a red pill?
According to Maher, he’s still the same old liberal he’s always been. “It’s not me who’s changed; it’s the left who is now made up of a small contingent who’ve gone mental and a large contingent who refuse to call them out for it. But I will.”
This, to me, is perhaps the most crucial point Maher has made when it comes to his criticism of the left. For decades we’ve seen the left devolve into socialists, embracing the most radical ideas without hesitation to divide the public and increase their power.
But while some people might argue that Maher has been red-pilled, I would say that’s not the case. Instead, the left has simply overdosed on blue pills, and many in the party cringe at its radicalization but are terrified of calling them out.
I just hope that Maher’s courage inspires more in the Democrat party to do the same.