Bill Maher didn't suddenly become a conservative. The left just keeps sprinting past him, then acting shocked when he looks over and asks where everybody went.
The HBO host has spent years selling himself as the old-school liberal who will punch left, right, and straight ahead when the room deserves it. For a long time, conservatives heard more smugness than courage.
Lately, though, TDS and campus-bred radicalism have grown so loud that Maher can sound like the last adult at a Democratic family reunion.
On Friday's Real Time, Maher pushed back on Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) after Warnock tried to frame extremism in the Middle East as a problem evenly spread across both sides.
Maher called it a “false equivalency” and pointed to Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi, who was sentenced to 74 lashes after singing without a headscarf. He asked whether Israel lashes women for singing without headscarves, then answered his own question: “No, you don't. You just don't.”
Maher didn't let Warnock hide behind soft language; he pressed the point when Warnock spoke of a two-state solution, noting that one side's starting demand often sounds less like diplomacy and more like elimination. From Breitbart:
Bill Maher said that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is engaging in “a false equivalency” by saying that extremes on both sides of the Middle East conflict aren’t helpful because “there’s a lot more extremism on one side.”
Warnock said, “I think, at the end of the day, Israeli mothers, Palestinian mothers want the same thing, they want to be able to put their children to bed at night, for them to be safe and to awaken in a world that embraces all of them. And I think these extremes are not helpful. We’ve got to have honest conversation about all of –.”
Maher then cut in to say, “I think that’s a false equivalency. I think there’s a lot more extremism on one side. There’s a woman, Parastoo Ahmadi, she is Iranian. She got 74 lashes, 74 lashes, because she sang, she’s a singer, she sang without a head scarf on. So, let’s not forget who the other side is. Do you get 74 lashes for singing without a head scarf in Israel? No, you don’t. You just don’t. It’s just not equivalent.”
Warnock responded, “I don’t want to judge the Israelis or Palestinian people by the most extreme voices among their people. I think most people want peace. There are 7 million Israelis, 7 million Palestinian folks there in that same region. It’s a very small area, and we’ve got to figure out a way that leads to a two-state solution where we’re — both communities can live in peace with each other. So, I’ve been very consistent in condemning — I’ve had to take positions on stages, including the DNC, standing up for children in Gaza, and, at the same time, standing up for Israel’s right to exist and to live at peace with its neighbors. This idea that — I think that’s the false choice, that you’ve got to choose one or the other.”
Maher countered, “Well, but, it’s also not true that both sides want a two-state solution equally, one side’s beginning negotiating position is, you all die and from the river to the sea. From the river to the sea, is –.”
Warnock cut in to say, “We have to condemn that idea, whoever’s saying it, we have to condemn it.”
Maher responded, “Yeah, well, one side is saying it, not two sides.”
Warnock condemned the slogan “from the river to the sea,” but Maher supplied the part many Democrats avoid: one side says it far more frequently than the other.
Maher also sat across from Vice President JD Vance and said his 2028 vote was “in play” if Democrats keep marching toward democratic socialism, anti-Israel obsession, anti-capitalism, and soft-on-crime fantasy politics.
He said President Donald Trump can't run again after his second term (duh!), then named Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the likely Republican choices. From TV Insider:
On the Friday, June 26 episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, Vance, 41, was a guest. Maher, 70, didn’t shy away from difficult questions. However, the stand-up comedian didn’t have much luck in prompting the VP to answer many of them directly.
“If this is where the Democratic Party is going, with the Democratic Socialist — this obsession with Israel, with the Jew-hating, with they don’t believe in capitalism, no prisons — if this is where they’re going, my vote is in play,” Maher told Vance. “It actually always has been.”
After pointing out that President Donald Trump, 80, can’t run again following his second term, Maher speculated, “So it’s either going to be you or [Marco] Rubio.”
The late-night host added, “Here’s my dealbreaker for your side: Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes that an election can be, either we win, or they cheated. That s*** has to stop. And that means the person who has to stop it will be you or Marco. Can you tell me you will do that?” Can you tell me you will do that? Will you bring us back to the middle, at least on that, where we concede elections?”
Maher still had a dealbreaker for Republicans, pressing Vance to move past election fights and restore the old habit of conceding legitimate elections. Vance pushed back, arguing that Big Tech tilted the 2020 field by suppressing negative information about the left and promoting negative information about the right.
No comment from Maher regarding Hillary Clinton's 2016 election denial. But schmaybe there's hope!
Conservatives may nod at Vance there, but Maher's larger point lands because he gave Vance a fair hearing while Democrats keep ducking his table.
Then came Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic nominee in New York's 13th Congressional District, who beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in a deep-blue district covering upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.
Breitbart shared a portion of his opening monologue where Maher called her “patient zero” of the “woke mind virus,” citing her far-left positions and past statements on policing, veterans, America, and race.
During his opening monologue on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that “there is a woke mind virus, and I think we found patient zero. Her name is Darializa Avila Chevalier.”
Maher said, “There’s one candidate, she will be a congressperson from New York’s 13th district, who The New York Times asked her, if someone murders someone randomly, should they go to jail, couldn’t get her to say yes for that. She says no more police ever, at all, ever. She says our veterans are war criminals. She said f*ck Kamala Harris and Joe Biden is a rapist. So, there is a woke mind virus, and I think we found patient zero. Her name is Darializa Avila Chevalier.”
He continued, “They call her DAC. She makes AOC look like LOL times WTF. But, good news, if you’re a Democrat with a Nazi tattoo, you’re no longer the weird one. She also says that the United States, the country she’s running to be a part of, is occupied native land, and says this country, America, is a f*cking disgrace. During the oath of office, she’s going to take a knee. And she’s not too crazy about white girls, who she calls ugly colonizer women and she says black men and Arab men fetishize ugly colonizer women, to which the Kardashians wrote back, f*ck you, b*tch.”
Chevalier's rise isn't a stray spark. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani backed several left-wing primary challengers, and three of his allies won House primaries. Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine—he of the Nazi tattoo and history of abusing women—has become a national symbol of the party's strange new comfort with candidates who would've once scared the donor class into a locked room.
Maher hasn't joined the right; he still mocks Trump, needles Republicans, and carries plenty of old liberal baggage. Yet the far left has traveled so far from common sense that a comedian who built a career mocking conservatives now sounds shocked by his side's appetite for disorder.
A man doesn't have to move right to notice the floor moving left beneath his feet. Maher may never take the red pill. At the current pace, Democrats may pour it into his drink for him.
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