Bill Maher had two blunt assessments during his “New Rules” segment on Friday’s episode of “Real Time”: First, that Donald Trump “is going to be president again,” and second, that “the battle” for America “isn’t right or left, it’s normal vs. crazy.”
The latter conclusion came as part of a rant where Maher, criticizing both the right and the left with, for once, only sparing reliance on golden mean rhetoric, called for 2024 to be “the year of sanity.”
Noting that “sanity” is something a lot of people he spoke too during his holiday break said they want for the new year, Maher began by arguing “the far end on both left and right have gotten way too much attention. Which begs the question, how do you suck all the oxygen out of the room and still not get any to your brain?”
Maher then joked how cable news gives the impression now that “this whole place was totally bats–t,” which he argued “simply was not America. Florida Yes, but not America. So, let’s examine what makes sane people feel this way.”
Maher argued that “Sane people” are “the vast majority,” and listed several things he thinks look insane to such people. One example he noted was seeing people wearing masks while driving. Another was the way Republicans constantly hold the country hostage via the debt ceiling whenever a Democrat is president — and because of the way Republicans act, Maher joked, “congress isn’t a deliberative body anymore. It’s a rave without a permit in a burning paint warehouse.”
He then noted that the biggest lack of sanity, in his view, is that Trump “is going to be president again. It feels surreal that we’re in court every day trying to prove Trump wanted to overturn the election, while he’s on the campaign trail everyday telling everyone they should have overturned the election. It also strikes normal people as insane the Trump fans are perfectly okay with the fact that he was recently asked if he wanted to be a dictator. And he did not say no. Neither did his lawyer say no.”
Maher then noted the disturbing admission by Trump and his legal team that they believe the president is legally empowered to murder political rivals, as well as Trump’s admission he intends to rule as a dictator if he somehow wins reelection.
Maher compared that latter topic to the testimony of the presidents of UPenn, MIT and Harvard in a congressional antisemitism hearing last year, “when presidents of elite colleges were asked if it’s okay to call for the genocide of Jews, and they couldn’t just say f— no. Can anybody just say f— no?”
Next Maher noted opposite extremes in public discussions of shoplifting, telling the audience he wonders why there aren’t prominent people “on any issue, socially liberal but not stupid woke, fiscally sane but not cruel.”
After a brief transphobic aside, Maher said, “maybe legalize pot but maybe stop giving drugs to hard drug addicts. Nikki Haley says America has never been racist. And social justice warriors and there’s been no progress since Amos and Andy.
A terrorist organization in the Middle East that treats women like slaves invaded Israel last October and shot hundreds of young people at a music festival in the desert. And now American streets are full of parades in support of the shooters, led by the exact kind of people who would be at a music festival in the desert.”
“That’s the literal standard for involuntary commitment when you’re a danger to yourself,” Maher added. “The NRA are bad but after a school shooting they don’t march against schools.”
After some more criticism of the way certain activists have inaccurately depicted terrorist groups as revolutionaries, Maher also dinged the whole “Gaylor” thing.
“That’s so insane. I don’t even get it. If if Taylor Swift is gay, what this is somehow a better country?” he opined.
“Far left now insists men can have babies if they just concentrate hard and don’t listen to the haters. Does that make us a better country? No. And neither does persecuting a pregnant woman who wants to get an abortion for a fetus doctor say will not survive. Could everyone just stop being nutty, completely nutty for five f—ing minutes? The battle for this country isn’t right or left. It’s normal vs crazy,” he concluded.
Watch the clip above.
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