Bill Maher Braves Right Wing Media Waters

Good for him for crossing enemy lines...But he's off on a few points.

Walter Kirn began appearing on Gutfeld at a time when it was controversial to do so. One doesn’t cross enemy lines to appear on Fox because it might sully an otherwise respectable reputation. Kirn did not and does not play that game, which is what makes him such an important guiding light through these dark times.

Well, now, Bill Maher has followed suit. He’s promoting his new book, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You, and realized that he couldn’t just limit the reach to the Left. Why should he?

He hit Greg Gutfeld’s show, and then the Megyn Kelly show. He brought his Trump Derangement Syndrome with him, all packed up in a nice little suitcase ready to be snapped open and on full display at any minute.

Maher deserves props for making the case that we should not hate each other as Americans. We are one big family, and even if we don’t agree. Here he was on Gutfeld saying we can all be friends:

I love watching Gutfeld because it feels like you’re in the real world, unlike the Brave New World of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, or John Oliver. Maher has clearly noticed that people on the Right are more fun, laid back, and less strident in their language and thought policing.

Maher next landed on Megyn Kelly’s show for a much deeper and more contentious conversation. Kelly is too experienced of an interviewer to allow Maher’s hysteria to hijack the conversation. She takes a more gentle approach, as one might with an aggressive dog when bringing up touchy subjects around Trump:

And here:

They didn’t have the time to keep arguing, but I was glad to see Maher directly challenged by her. I was especially glad she brought up January 6th, chided him for calling it an “insurrection,” and pointed out the double standard of how Maher viewed the FBI’s entrapment case compared to January 6th and the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case, which was covered by one brave reporter for Esquire:

Beyond that, it’s mostly been crickets in the legacy press. But both Julie Kelly and Glenn Greenwald have done a good job connecting the dots. Here is Greenwald’s lengthy rundown of the FBI’s history with entrapment.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

A few more key points:

1. Bill Maher says Trump did not concede the election. Trump would have conceded had he been given the chance to debate the election in the Senate, which was what he wanted. He had taken the time to convince Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley (Cruz writes about this in his book) to debate the election. It was in progress when the riot broke out. All the riot did was hand absolute power to the Democrats and end any chance Trump had to make his case. It gave the media a powerful piece of propaganda to use to demonize half the country.
   

2. Megyn Kelly brought up the Hunter Biden laptop censorship, which Bill Maher laughed off. He tried to belittle her, but she breezed right over it like a pro. She’s interviewed Putin. She can handle Bill Maher.
   
   What’s key to remember about this is that the FBI “rehearsed” with reporters from the Washington Post and prepared both Facebook and Twitter in advance to look out for “Russian disinformation,” like a laptop. They knew the laptop was real, and they knew it would be an October surprise, but they would not allow it to derail Biden’s win.
   
   In my view, the FBI intervening on that scale to censor information from the public invalidates the 2020 election. That’s not the only thing, but that is more than enough. It’s just that Trump and MAGA do not have enough power to challenge that in any major way, so they protested, which is their right as Americans and is covered under the First Amendment. You don’t like it? Tough. Don’t vote for him. But in this country, we, the people, decide.
   

3. Bill Maher says that “Democracy will end” if Trump wins and that Trump “doesn’t believe in Democracy.” I hate to break it to him, but this is what “democracy” looks like. The Trump side has every right to fight for the country they want. They are a grassroots movement driven by the people of this country. Of course, they believe in democracy. It’s absurd to suggest otherwise.

Speaking of a divided country, The Apprentice screened at the Cannes Film Festival. I won’t bore you with the details except to say that the critics mostly loved it. Trump says he might sue for suggesting that Ivana Trump was “raped.” She herself denied it 8 years ago.

Here is Ben Shapiro on it:

What Bill Maher may or may not know is that the hate is not coming from the Right. It’s coming from the Left — unending, bottomless hatred and rage unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s one last “cancel,” and it’s the big one. We should be very afraid of what else they might do to stop Trump now that everything else has failed.

But it has all but destroyed them. They’re the ones whose empire is collapsing. This was covered beautifully in Martin Gurri’s latest essay at the Free Press, Revenge of the Normies:

The normies, by their very nature a disorganized crowd, fight back by pouring into the streets in frighteningly large numbers and electing politicians loathed by the elites, like Donald Trump in the U.S. and Javier Milei in Argentina. The elites, as creatures of hierarchy, are hyper-organized, and can summon to their side the established political parties, the national and transnational bureaucracies, and the activist class. They can get you from above (with government mandates) or from below (with the sloganeering mob) and would seem, therefore, to have all the advantages. Yet the conflict rolls on around the world, undecided, and it’s the elites, it seems to me, who have that frightened, desperate look.

This would not be the first time an aristocracy walled itself off from the discontent masses outside the castle walls. It will probably get worse before it gets better. I prefer Bill Maher’s approach - a meet-in-the-middle. That’s brave. That’s the American spirit at a time when we need it most.