On Friday's episode of HBO's “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said former President Donald Trump, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, was “right, rhetoric has consequences,” and that while saying someone is destroying the country is rhetoric that can lead to violence, Trump is a threat to democracy and “the answer should not be that you can't tell the truth.”
Maher said, “I wanted to talk about rhetoric, because that's what's on Trump's mind. He gets shot again and he says their rhetoric is making me shoot. And of course Trump, the most self-aware person in the universe, goes on to say they're destroying the country. This is the kind of rhetoric that makes a borderline person want to shoot you. But he's right, rhetoric has consequences. But he's probably the worst person to make this claim.”
The New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens agreed that it was no good for Trump to make such claims, but said, “He's absolutely right that maybe we should tone it down. As long as we're calling our opponents the end of democracy, the end of Western civilization, we're not getting anywhere.”
“I don't agree with that. I think that's a stupid argument. … That's their argument. I mean, you're saying Trump is a threat to democracy, but he's [democracy]”…the answer is not that we cannot say what is true.”
Maher later said: “[O]In this matter of rhetoric, both sides have pretty big things to say about the other. That's politics. It goes on all the time. Only one side uses the kind of rhetoric that they use. There should be no false equivalence here. For example, remember Trump's…tough people.”
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