It seems most of the good vibes Bill Maher insisted he experienced during his much-criticized dinner with Donald Trump have finally worn off. During his monologue on Friday’s “Real Time,” Maher discussed several of the most disturbing things that Trump has done recently, described the current situation as a “police state,” and offered up a bleakly funny assessment of where things are headed if something doesn’t change.
“I’ll say this, ladies and gentlemen, in the future historians will say this is a very dark time in American history. They won’t say it publicly or put it in a book,” he joked. “They’ll whisper it to each other when the cell phones are off.”
“So remember to support your local police state,” Maher added.
But not all the good vibes were gone. During the “New Rules” segment at the end of the episode, Maher joked that Trump may have actually won his support, thanks to the possibility he may change the legal status of cannabis. This came at the end of an extended rant against Democrats, who he criticized consistently running away from popular issues, like cannabis legalization, and running candidates who lack “the political skill” to sell important issues.
This, he said, effectively handed advantages — and elections — to Trump. Watch that below:
But back during his monologue, Maher’s bleak assessment of America’s situation was inspired by the news on Friday that the Trump administration raided the home of Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton to investigate, so they say, whether he illegally retained classified documents. Something, coincidentally, that the Biden administration failed to prosecute Trump for. Critics warn that it’s yet another example of the Trump administration using the power of the law to attack critics
“Remember John Bolton?” Maher asked, and then based on the audience’s enthusiastic reaction joked, “sophisticated crowd.”
“Yeah,” Maher continued. “John Fulton, there he is. He was in the Trump administration, and then he left the administration. Wrote a book, you know, a kind of a tell-all book, and said Trump only cares about retribution and will abuse the Justice Department. And today, the FBI raided his home.”
“The administration says it wasn’t about retribution. It was about law and order. They think he might have been the guy who beat up big balls,” Maher joked.
Then, after his comments about America’s precarity that immediately followed the John Bolton comments, Maher indicated he thinks that the Trump administration’s actions are being ignored by Americans.
“That is not what is bothering a lot of America. What is bothering a lot of America is that Cracker Barrel, I couldn’t make this s— up, Cracker Barrel has changed their logo. It’s just putting the words Cracker Barrel. They used to have a barrel, and, quite frankly, a cracker standing next to the barrel and now it’s just the word. Conservatives have not been this upset about a rebrand since Caitlyn Jenner,” Maher said.
