This was the last Real Time before its summer hiatus, Bill Maher noted at the top of his show on Friday night.
“It’s a slow news time,” he quipped. “We’ll be back on Aug. 23 to cover the campaign between Trump and….somebody.”
This was the first show since last week’s Trump assassination attempt, and Maher reiterated his previously expressed sentiments that it wasn’t a subject to joke about.
“You should be as angry about that (shooting) as (against) the candidate you like,” he said about the few who made rude comments about the assassination attempt. “Liberals don’t shoot each other and they don’t revel in it. I’m glad you’re okay – because then I couldn’t make jokes about him.”
He did note that Trump is being attacked by people who take their names from elements of the Trump persona, namely Bragg and Crooks.
As for all the RNC supporters wearing ear patches, Biden supporters, he noted, can get in that game by “wearing pants with a pee strain.”
Trump’s long-winded speech at the Republican Convention went on so long, Maher said, “By the end of it, my ears were bleeding.”
Finally, he turned to Joe Biden’s getting Covid this week. “Even viruses want him to step down,” Maher said, listing the symptoms as headache, sore throat, and “an inability to read the writing on the wall.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was the one-on-one guest, but claimed he was on the show as a private citizen, one who believes in Joe Biden. He waxed on about his boss until interrupted by Maher: “The argument is, can he win?”
Buttigieg had some comments about Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance, noting that he’s met guys like him before. Asked about the dichotomy of having a professed populist backed by Silicon Valley moguls, Buttigieg said it wasn’t so odd, as “Rich men who back the Republican party do so because the Republican party will do good things for very rich men.”
“I hope it works out better for J.D. than it did for Pence,” Buttigieg concluded. “Not as a politician, but as a human being.”
This week’s panel discussion saw Larry Wilmore, producer, comedian, writer, and host of the podcast Larry Wilmore: Black on the Air, and Rep. Byron Donalds, a two-term Republican congressman who represents Florida’s 19th district.
The two battled civilly over the Republican convention, but really got into it when they discussed Roe v. Wade. The two engaged in a back-and-forth that was captivating, so much so that Maher let them have at it for a long stretch without interrupting, finally breaking in with, “Can I talk? I’m happy to start my vacation early…”
Donalds admitted under questioning from Maher that the Republican party has embraced diversity in the last decade. But Wilmore had a quick comeback: “Just because you add more raisins to the potato salad doesn’t make the salad any better.”
In his “New Rules” editorial, Maher decried the attempts to portray the near-miss on Trump as divine intervention. “America doesn’t need a demigod,” he insisted.
Watch the complete editorial above.
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