Bill Maher Goes Scorched Earth on Progressives at Academic Conference

Bill Maher was invited to the Aspen Institute’s 2024 Ideas Conference, where he made host Tina Brown a little uncomfortable when discussing the 2024 election and the ills plaguing the Democratic Party. The HBO host, a proud and unabashed liberal, has recently directed more fire toward his side for their complete abandonment of common sense. 

He also said that the Democrats’ 2024 messaging is appalling in telling the American people you can’t possibly think you can do worse than Donald Trump. If there’s one thing, we, as a people, don’t like, it’s having someone tell us what to do. This is basic American history, as per our founding. Maher still wouldn’t vote for Trump and thinks the GOP isn’t the right party for him, but he understands the undercurrents that have led to Trump’s political ascendency. 

He also torched the woke Left again, talking about his friends with kids who are besieged by their kids who have yet to leave home about all the hyper-left-wing nonsense they hear daily. The usual rejoinder the youths toss out is 'You’re old,’ or ‘That’s old thinking.’ 

What’s old thinking? Maher listed off the usual talking points from these kids: abolishing the police, tearing statutes of Abraham Lincoln down, maybe giving communism another shot, getting rid of the Border Patrol, getting rid of capitalism, white supremacy has never been worse, gender is just a social construct, it’s okay to have penises in the women’s swimming pool and prisons. 

You can see Brown getting edgy during the penises in the swimming pool part. 

“It’s not that I’m old; it’s that your ideas are stupid,” Maher added. Last month, he made the same point to CNN's Fareed Zakaria:

 Maher also said that it's not his fault that he's noticing how his side has become more insane, though he did that he felt the GOP was more dangerous, but that's a pre-Trump take. Maher has said that for years (via The Wrap):

“People say to me all the time, ‘You make fun of the left more than you used to.’ Uh, yeah. Because they’re dumber than they used to be. And the right has gotten dumber, too,” Maher said.

The “Real Time” and “Club Random” host then explained when that turning point came.

“If I had to find a reason why I thought I was right about doing this, it happened after Oct. 7,” he said. “I mean, people demonstrating for Hamas? For Hamas? It’s like rooting for the planes on 9/11.”

Maher than looked out to the live festival audience for its muffled response to such sentiment: “That’s a joke, for f–k’s sake. Come on, lighten up white people!”

Pressed, however, on which party he thinks is “more dangerous” when it comes to the 2024 presidential election and beyond, Maher didn’t mince his words. It’s “definitely the Republicans.”

“When people say, ‘You make fun of the left more’ — yes, because they went nuttier. Obviously, so did the Republicans. But, you know, five years ago nobody was demonstrating for Hamas,” he said. “I’m going to just go where the funny is as a comedian. But that doesn’t make me a Republican. They went nuttier, the left, and then they blame me for noticing it. If I notice how unproductive it is to make everything about identity politics, that doesn’t make me a Republican, that makes me an honest broker.

He also added that conservatives don’t like Trump, but they hate the didactic, snobby attitudes of the Left more. He can understand that, and his reasoning for that is not off-base. 

“The stuff about family, race, and gender is very close to their own home,” he said while adding that issues about defending democracy or Ukraine are issues that are viewed as too remote for most voters. 

Yet, I disagree with his take that conservatives hate Trump—but the latter part certainly explains why those in the center have drifted toward the former president and the Republican Party. It’s why black and Hispanic men in working-class jobs are now joining white working-class voters in leaning toward the Republicans. Everyone has lives to lead, as James Carville noted when also scorching the preachy liberal women who are destroying the Democrats. No one wants to be spoken down to and told they're wrong for simply eating a hamburger and watching football. 

Maher isn’t a conservative, but he’s very much with us on cultural issues. When Quiet on Set was released, which detailed the sordid horrors that reportedly occurred at Nickelodeon Studios, he called out Hollywood liberals for being appalled at that but attacked Ron DeSantis for making the same claims about Disney, who has a parade of child sex offenders walk around that kingdom. The comedian also credited DeSantis for having a better plan for COVID, unlike New York’s, which led to so many deaths that the state lost a congressional seat. 

He may be brash and offensive to some, but Maher has been a one-man wrecking crew on some of the most salient cultural issues right now, and he’s on our side. He’ll never admit it, but the commentaries about these topics for this season of Real Time have been brutal toward progressives. When he sees the ‘Queers for Palestine’ signs at these pro-Hamas rallies on college campuses, he checks out, along with the rest of us who are normal.

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