Bill Maher laid into Republicans during his “New Rules” segment on Friday’s “Real Time,” which he started by explaining to people who ask why, if he roasts “the woke nonsense peddlers, why don’t you go all the way and join” the right wing.
“Let me give you the short answer,” Maher said. “Because I don’t want to live in North Korea.”
Maher then noted the incredible propaganda deployed for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who “has state stenographers who follow him everywhere and scribble his genius ideas into their notebooks and applaud. Well, Republicans, that’s you now. Republican Congressman Anderson McDowell wants to name Dulles airport after Trump. It will be like other airports, except the International Terminal only has departures.”
Maher then mentioned a recent Republican tribute to Trump, the proposed bill to add him to Mount Rushmore, and then he discussed Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center
“The Kennedy Center is not something I really care a lot about. But I do care that an American president doesn’t see anything wrong with him personally taking it over, or that his communications director Stephen Chung said it was justified because Trump, quote, ‘is a virtuoso and his musical choices represent a brilliant palette of vibrant colors when others often paint in pale pastels.’ Jesus, Stephen, don’t get any in your hair.”
And yes, a Trump official really did say that. Read more here.
Then Maher noted how “Republicans dance like Trump now. They may name weapons systems after him. They’ve even dressed like him with the trademark suit and tie, available exclusive, available exclusively at Banana Republic,” adding, “all these super macho guys eating the ass of another man.”
Maher ran through some other recent examples of incredible sycophancy by Trump officials, and said that while “Tthere is a level of Trump derangement syndrome on the left, will you admit that this s— is also deranged?”
“A Trump speech this month to a joint session of Congress, he claimed the government had spent $8 million making mice transgender. It did not. The $8 million was for transgenic mice, mice that were being genetically modified to study how hormone treatments affect human health,” Maher continued. “We were splicing their genes, not making them compete in women’s sports.”
“Here’s the important thing about this, the fact that President Trump got this wrong isn’t what bothers me… What’s worrisome about it is that nobody around the President would dare tell him that transgenic is not transgender. It makes you think that if Trump came down one day and his fly was open, Republicans wouldn’t tell him. They’d just start showing up with their flies open,” he continued.
“So, so I know my Republican friends, when you hear ‘cult,’ you roll your eyes. But let me add one thing to it that you might not have heard. You know, a cult is really a cult when the leader asks you to turn on friends and family because they’re the only ones who are a threat to deprogram you, it’s why Tom Cruise doesn’t talk to his own kid. Which brings me to America, suddenly saying to our closest friend in the world, you know what? ‘F— Canada,’ for no particular reason,” Maher said.
“I don’t know for sure where Jesse waters of Fox News stood on invading Canada 12 weeks ago, but I’m guessing it wasn’t on his mind at all,” Maher went on. “But now his message for Canada is the fact that they don’t want us to make take them over… But Canada isn’t threatening us. For God’s sakes their flag is a leaf. Even Joe Rogan, a Trump voter, said, ‘Why are we upset at Canada? This is stupid.’”
“Okay, Maga, people, that’s called thinking for yourself. At the end of Trump’s first term, there were still some people who would occasionally correct him on little details, like, you lost that last election. But now we have Lauren Boebert saying we must rally behind President Trump to secure his third term, something Steve Bannon is advocating for as well,” Maher added, nodding of course to the fact that the only way Trump could legally serve a third term would be to change the constitution.
“And you know, you just know that soon, the entire Republican Party will be on this page. Okay, there’s no fuzz on this. It’s as clear as 123, presidents get two terms, not more, no matter how wonderful you think they are. It’s written in black and white in the Constitution. Guys, you know this is wrong. You know in your heart, this is the moment when Rome stops being a republic. So come on, be like those mice and grow a pair of balls,” Maher urged.
Watch the whole thing here: