Bill Maher returned to the air last night for a brand new original episode of HBO’s Real Time, despite further lockdowns in Los Angeles County due to a spike in coronavirus cases in the area. The episode was taped from his home, as he has been doing for the past several months.
The late night host welcomed Kerry Washington on the show to discuss her ACLU documentary The Fight and Jim Carrey to discuss his new bestselling novel.
Maher also had quite a spirited discussion with frequent guest of the show and now-ex-New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss and about standing up to anti-liberalism. Weiss’ appearance comes just two weeks after she resigned from the Times in protest of its editorial atmosphere in which “self-censorship has become the norm.” You can read her full resignation letter right here. Weiss garnered attention in 2019 with the release of her book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
Maher joked to a fake studio audience during his opening monologue that he apparently missed a lot during his four-week hiatus, centering his banter on President Donald Trump as per protocol. The HBO host mocked Trump for using potential issues with mail-in voting as an excuse to suggest delaying the November 3 presidential election.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump tweeted on Thursday, the day Maher taped last night’s show. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Regular viewers of Real Time know that Maher has been openly questioning whether Trump would actually leave office if Democratic opponent Joe Biden were to be elected president for many months now. During the majority of his panels on the show, the host has asked “what happens when he won’t leave?”
Biden himself has even wondered this, in April claiming that Trump “is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.”
Maher saved his gloating for the end of his monologue. “The most important issue, or at least it should be” was Trump’s tweet questioning whether we should move the election, he said. “OK, for everyone who has called me crazy the last three years because I was asking this question and saying he would do exactly that? I will accept your apology in weed.”
You can check out his full opening monologue below:
Michael is a music and television junkie keen on most things that are not a complete and total bore. You can follow him on Twitter — @Tweetskoor
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