Bill Maher skewered the American public for its embrace of ignorance during his show “Real Time With Bill Maher” Friday night.
“One of the saddest things about the [country] we live in now is that we don’t seem to want smart people in our lives anymore,” the HBO host said. “Smart presidents? Can’t have that. Scientists? What do they know? Newspaper editors? Liars! Fake news!”
The issue of fake news was an especially touchy subject for Maher, who said, “Now people get their news from Facebook, by ‘sharing,’ or as it used to be called, ‘hearsay.’”
The political commentator brought up an example of a student in a social media focus group, who reportedly said “if the news is important, it will find me.”
“Well, it doesn’t,” Maher retorted. “And that’s how we ended up with President Bannon and his dummy Donny,” echoing a growing sentiment that President Donald Trump’s advisor, Steve Bannon, is the one who’s really running things in the White House.
Maher concluded his segment by showcasing the differences between President Obama’s picks for Energy Secretary (Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu, then nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz) and Trump’s (former Texas governor and “Dancing With the Stars” contestant Rick Perry).
“We went from being led by the smartest person in the room to the biggest jackass on Twitter,” he said.
Watch Maher’s “New Rule: Make America Read Again” monologue above.