Bill Maher hasn’t been shy about the fact that he’s worried that Joe Biden’s age might be a huge liability this fall in the 2024 presidential election. But on Friday, after seeing Biden’s performance during this week’s State of the Union address, the “Real Time” host was feeling pretty good about the president, joking that his audience was happy because “we have proof of life!”
Maher spent his entire monologue talking about matters related to the State of the Union, so of course he also had to talk about the humiliating GOP response to the SOTU address delivered by Alabama Sen. Katie Britt. And he noted that she’s part of a long history of Republicans bringing up a “rising star” who ends up making normal people ask, “What the f–k was that?”
“Did you see the State of the Union? I don’t know about the Union, but the state of the president is feisty,” Maher said immediately after the “proof of life” joke. “Whatever they’re slipping in his Metamucil seem to be working, because he was up for it last night.”
Next, Maher mocked the rather chumpish reaction Republicans had to the speech, noting that they got played by believing their own attacks.
“Republicans expected the caricature of Joe Biden to show up. Kind of different guy showed up,” Maher explained. “And you could tell they were thrown off their game by this, because on Fox News, they weren’t going on about his age. They were going on that he was too loud.”
“Too loud,” Maher said incredulously. “So who sounds like an old f–k now? ‘Cut it down in there, you’re too loud.’”
“And of course we’re, I guess we’re just this country,” Maher said as he noted that Biden was heckled by Republicans yet again during the event. Maher singled out Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who he called “America’s embarrassing cousin.”
“On her schedule tonight is getting drunk at a wedding and blowing the DJ. They were so rude. The first time we’ve seen Lauren Boebert do this,” Maher joked, making the wank-off hand gesture, “without an actual dick in her hand.”
Then he got to the subject of Britt, at which point he showed the crowed a supercut of weirder moments from the Republican’s official response.
“I just want to remind you, daylight saving time starts this Sunday, so it’ll be an hour later when the cuckoo bird slides out of her head,” Maher joked once the clip ended.
“Republicans, they do this all the time. They introduce us to their new rising star and America’s like, ‘What the f–k was that?’ So here’s what I learned about Katie Britt, because I didn’t know, I’d never heard of her before. She’s got a husband named Wesley. She’s got kids named Bennett and Ridgeway. She’s this close to driving them all over a cliff in a minivan,” Maher joked, adding that her kids “now have to endure taunts of, ‘your mom’s a weirdo.’”
Maher argued that Britt obviously wrote her remarks expecting Biden to be the frail, senile caricature Republicans have promoted, but didn’t change anything after he wasn’t. Then he slid into a Taylor Swift joke, saying, “she kept referring to Biden as weak, dithering, dumb, diminished, and then this really hurts, she said, ‘We are never ever ever getting back together.’”
