Bill Maher has been criticized by Democrats for changing the way he speaks to them, but he says it’s the left that has changed.
“I haven’t changed. People have certainly said to me, ‘You’re making more fun of the left now than you used to,’ and I feel guilty, because the left has changed,” Maher told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. Sit-down interview.
Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” acknowledged in the interview that both the left and the right have changed, but he argued that Republicans are “even worse” than Democrats.
“So basically, the right doesn’t believe in democracy anymore. So they’ve cast their lot in the hands of a sociopath called Donald Trump, who thinks elections only matter if we win,” Maher said, referring to former President Trump’s baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election. “Well, it’s worse than that.”
“But the left isn’t unchanged,” he added, “so I’m going to call it out wherever I see it.”
Maher then listed issues he sees relating to “gender, race and freedom of speech,” as well as communism, border patrol and the police abolition movement.
“No, it’s not that I’m getting old, it’s just that your ideas are stupid,” he said.
Maher has come under fire from progressives for his strong opposition to pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the U.S. and for supporting Israel’s right to continue its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Among the criticisms of the show’s host is that he supported college students who protested during the Vietnam War but did not support current efforts by the United States to divest from Israel.
“That was very different back then. First of all, students weren’t against their peers,” he said. “Students were threatening other students. That didn’t happen in the Vietnam War.”
“Obviously we’re against the Vietnam War, a war we probably shouldn’t have been in,” Maher added, “but listen, this is a demonstration and a protest on behalf of a terrorist group.”
He argued that the younger generation believes their new ideas are better. New is not synonymous with better, he said.
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