Bill Maher actually came out and defended Donald Trump supporters. Yes, that Bill Maher. The comments came in an interview with famed television journalist Katie Couric on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast.
Yes, Maher is known for being politically incorrect and having opinions that those on the extremes of America’s political debate see as being contradictory, but sometimes he takes the “I’m just trying to be honest here” routine a little too far.
Bill Maher has been trying to make the case that Donald Trump’s core base of support should not be dismissed as cooks and that people on the left need to try and understand them better.
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And he also says he agrees with those on the right who think that the media in America, including both CNN and the New York Times, fail to give the public the most accurate view of world events.
“I don’t trust that anyone is giving me the full story,” Bill Maher told Katie Couric.” Everyone is giving me their spin on the story, including the places that used to be, I thought, fairly neutral, like CNN and The New York Times, I think, used to be a lot more neutral.”
“You could always slant any story,” he added to a very surprised Katie Couric. “My earliest memories of my father and me talking about something… I remember him telling me like… the bias comes through somehow, and I remember the examples he used. He said, like, ‘If you say he squawked about it, as opposed to he said.’ Then he said, Robert Kennedy, so this must have been before ‘68 when he was killed. I was definitely under 12. He said, ’Robert Kennedy, if you like him, he is dedicated. If you hate him, he is ruthless.’ But it got worse.”
When prodded about why Donald Trump does so well on the campaign stump by Couric, Maher said, “Popularity. Doesn’t matter. People loved him and what he was saying.”
Criticizing the way the media like CNN cover Trump he added, “and then you cut to a panel of six know-it-alls in Washington who do nothing but talk about the negative. I’m all-in on the negative. No one’s been harder on Trump than me. But I get it, and I’m bored with it. And there’s a different way to do this, I think.”
Bill Maher has made this case on his Real Time program for a while now. He wants people to try and empathize with the Donald Trump supporters, to try and understand where they are coming from.
“Not to defend Trump, but to defend the people who still vote for him,” Bill Maher told Katie Couric in a way of explaining his comments. “Because what they see on the other side, to them, is even more dangerous. Because it’s closer to home: ‘My kid is coming home from school and he thinks he’s a racist? He’s five, what have you been telling him? My son thinks maybe he’s not a boy.’ And maybe that’s true, that happens. Those kind of things are what they say. ‘That’s why I’m voting for Trump.’”