Bill Maher threw his weight behind embattled Maine senate candidate Graham Platner, despite his recent controversies.
During his “New Rule” segment for Friday’s “Real Time,” Maher explained his two reasons for urging Maine voters to support Platner’s senate bid.
“If you’ve been sleeping on politics lately, well, who can blame you? But the big story is the Democrats can likely take back the Senate in November if they win Maine,” Maher started off. “But their local candidate … Let’s just say [is] a guy who has a backstory that screams, ‘Don’t ask.’”
While Maher noted that he was trying not to judge Platner, he couldn’t help but rattle off the aspiring senator’s long list of controversies.
“What I do know is he served his country in the Marines in war, and you can never discount how big that is,” Maher said. “But then there’s the sexting while married, scary behavior — so, say some of his exes — old posts about how he’s a communist and all cops are ‘bastards’ and Black people ‘don’t tip.’ Well, they don’t tip cops. I can understand that.”
“Here’s a typical Platner quote he said about the Iraq war: ‘You can think it’s dumb and also kind of not want to miss it,’” he went on. “Oh, Graham, I feel the same way about so many things. The Oscars, Christmas, Taylor Swift’s wedding, that little speech Nicole Kidman gives before the movie comes on where she looks insane.”
Maher then called out Platner’s skull and crossbones tattoo, which the Maine senate candidate has since covered after not realizing its association with Nazism.
“I mean, seriously, this guy’s whole life is the movie ‘The Hangover,’” Maher sounded off. “He doesn’t need a term in the Senate. He needs a gap year in Costa Rica.”
Yet, despite all of this, Maher said he “would still urge the folks in Maine to vote for him.”
As for his reasons why, Maher shared: “One, we need to restore balance in our government, and a Democratic Senate would help a lot with that. And two, get used to it. America is a country filled with a lot of broken, horribly educated, phone-addicted, sort of nutty people. And as long as we live in a representative democracy, we are always electing our reflection in the mirror.”
Though, Maher admitted he wished Platner’s tattoo controversy was “the scariest thing about [him].”
“It’s not. That would be his solution to a home invasion, which is to rape the home invader,” Maher said. “And no, of course, that’s not policy he’s proposing. It’s a fantasy his ex says he talked about. Next week it’ll be policy.”
He continued: “Okay, this is the kind of thing war does to people. That’s who we created. Our society is not healthy. We create broken people. So, don’t expect politicians to suddenly become Lincoln-esque again.”
Watch Maher’s full monologue above.
