Bill Maher on Friday told “Real Time” viewers that he really hopes Kamala Harris wins. Not just because he supports her candidacy, though he does. But “because I predicted a month ago you’d win this thing, and if you blow it, it’s going to make me look bad.”
The comment came during the latest “New Rules” segment of the show, though the stuff about Harris was tangential to his main point: Donald Trump is basically immune to scandal and thus, Democrats shouldn’t hope for any kind of ‘October Surprise’ that could take him down.
“Democrats need to stop thinking an ‘October surprise’ is going to save us from a second Trump term… We’ve gotten so used to thinking that there’s always an October surprise coming, that when it doesn’t happen, it actually seems weird like a party at Diddy’s house where you just dance,” Maher said.
Maher listed several examples of October surprises that fizzled. There was the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, which Maher joked so disgusted then-FBI director James Comey that “he reopened an investigation into Hillary.”
Maher then brought up the election of 1980, which is where the term “October Surprise” originated. Unfortunately, Maher demonstrated a mistaken impression of what the term refers to.
Here’s what he said about it: “In 1980 the October surprise was that Iran was going to release the hostages they’ve been holding for over a year, giving President Carter a lift, but then they released them minutes after Reagan got inaugurated. Psych.”
But the thing is, the term was basically invented by Ronald Reagan’s campaign to describe a hypothetical possibility the Iranian government would release the 66 American hostages it still held in October, before the election, giving Carter a boost.
But first, this was mainly an internal Republican discussion. There was no public understanding that such a surprise was coming. The term only entered into the popular imagination after the election, thanks to the accusation — which has never been proven but is supported with very convincing evidence — that people acting on behalf of Reagan secretly (and illegally) negotiated with Iran to delay any hostage release until after the 1980 election.
It’s only in the years since that the idea of an “October surprise” has become part of popular culture.
Back to Maher, who also mentioned the story that dropped a week before the 2000 election about George W. Bush’s DUI in the 1970s.
But, he said, “Trump could drunk drive with a blood alcohol content of a million, doing 200 on a side street and kill a crosswalk of kindergartners and two ducks, and it wouldn’t move the needle at all. Trump’s superpower as a candidate is that he has been so constantly and ubiquitously awful for so long that it’s simply no longer seen, the way you wouldn’t notice a new face tattoo on Post Malone.”
After this, Maher ran down several recent Trump scandals that haven’t really changed the election dynamic. “You simply cannot surprise the voter who’s seen it all,” Maher said, joking that even if Trump turned out to be “the third Menendez brother,” it wouldn’t matter.
And that brought him to change the subject to Kamala Harris.
“This is Kamala’s great dilemma. Trump is invulnerable to an October surprise, but she is very vulnerable because she’s the one who is still undefined.” As evidence, Maher cherry picked a single moment from her interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier, and then a moment from her recent appearance on “The View” that he personally thought was bad. Maher then suggested it would have been better if Harris had expressed his personal opinion on certain issues connected to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Addressing Harris directly, Maher said, “it’s so important that you win this election, not just for the sake of retaining a real democracy and for the good of the world, but also because I predicted a month ago you’d win this thing, and if you blow it, it’s going to make me look bad.”
“I’ve got a really good prediction record, so please don’t f— this up Kamala,” he added.
Watch the whole commentary below.
