On Saturday's episode of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, the host said the quiet part out loud about his own party's relationship with Judaism. The exchange came after CNN anchor Dana Bash raised the case of Texas Democrat James Talarico, whose outspoken “Christianity,” she noted, means he "wears his faith on his sleeve" in a way Talarico believes could help him politically. Maher wasn't buying the idea that all faith gets an equally warm welcome in the Democrat Party.
"Well, in the Democratic Party, as long as that faith isn't Jewish, you're good," Maher said. Bash, clearly caught off guard, replied, "Well, you said it." Maher wasn't backing down. "Yeah, I said it because it's true!" he shot back.
Bill Maher admits the Democrat Party isn't fond of Jews.
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) August 23, 2026
pic.twitter.com/IrTvUmEgpV
He's right.
As far as I'm concerned, when a lifelong liberal like Maher admits that the Democrat Party's tolerance for public faith excludes Jews, that tells you how big the problem really is. What Maher admitted here is something Republicans have been calling out for years.
And we got the receipts.
According to Pew Research Center polling, 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up sharply from 53% in 2022. Compare that to Republicans, of whom only 41% hold a negative view of Israel and 58% hold a positive one. That gap didn't exist a few years ago, and it opened up almost entirely on one side of the aisle.
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The Democrat Party didn't get here by accident. And the fallout is impossible to ignore. It gave an audience to antisemitic influencers like Hasan Piker, and voted for Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both of whom built political careers on anti-Israel rhetoric. This isn't a fringe problem. This is the base.
Sam Markstein, national political director and spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, told Fox News Digital on Saturday that Maher got it right. "It's a rare occasion when we agree with Bill Maher, but he's right: there is only one party where American Jews can be proudly Jewish and loudly pro-Israel, and it's the Republican Party," Markstein said. "Democrats prove it again and again — from Kamala Harris passing over Josh Shapiro in 2024 to the rise of communist elected officials who traffic in antisemitism in halls of power across the country." He didn't stop there. "The Democratic Party is being remade by its radicalized base, and party leadership continues to fecklessly whistle past the political graveyard as American Jews flee," Markstein said.
As far as I'm concerned, there’s a clear period when this shift began. Barack Obama's eight years in office normalized antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment inside his own party, and that shouldn't surprise anyone who remembers his background. Before he ever ran for president, Obama spent 20 years in the pews of Jeremiah Wright's congregation, absorbing anti-American and antisemitic rhetoric that became a real liability in 2008. He only quit the church once the cameras got too close. He never actually changed course, and his antisemitic record speaks for itself. This problem continued under Joe Biden. Essentially, Obama built the road, and Biden paved over it.
The results speak for themselves. A 2025 Gallup poll found American sympathy for Israel has collapsed to a 25-year low of 46%, while support for the Palestinians has climbed to 33%. Democrats now favor Palestinians over Israelis by a 59%-21% margin. They hold that position even though Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, including babies and Holocaust survivors, raped and tortured civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages.
The Democrat Party can keep pretending it's still the party of religious tolerance and Jewish support. Even Bill Maher isn't buying it anymore.
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