Maher & Trump

 

Let's have a look at the recent meeting between Trump and Bill Maher that has become such a hot topic. I instinctively avoided watching Maher's HBO show, knowing what I know about both men. It would have spoiled a perfectly good evening.

But transcripts work just as well for this discussion. Maher's remarks are in quotation marks. Mine follow in parenthesis. 

 “He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public. Look, I get it. It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian. It matters who he is on the world stage. I’m just taking as a positive that this person exists, because everything I’ve ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent.”

(“Self-aware”? What does that mean? He never stops thinking about himself? What wasn’t absent was the way Trump manipulates celebrities to get more attention?)

“At least on this night with this guy, Bob, Kid Rock told me the night before, he said, ‘If you want to get a word in edgewise, you’re going to have to cut him off. He’ll just go on.’ Not at all. I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected.”

(Much less connected to reality, decency, or humanity? Please.) 

“People who don’t look you in the eye, people who don’t really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn’t track. Like what? None of that with him. And he mostly steered the conversation to, ‘What do you think about this’?”

(Ah, yes. So Maher was actually being interviewed on the Trump Show.)

“I know your mind is blown. So is mine.”

(Speak for yourself, Bill.)

“You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured. And why isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer and it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw, and I wasn’t high.”

(He was “gracious and measured” for reasons beyond Maher’s grasp.)

"I had supported him in the idea that Gaza could be Dubai."

(Yes, build those beachfront casinos. MAGA Lite Maher rarely, if ever, condemns Netanyahu’s brutality or Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes, and theft of their land.)

“I never felt like I had to walk on eggshells around him. And, honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it what you will.”

(OK. This is what I make of it. Clinton and Obama are much smarter than Maher. He’s more relaxed with someone closer to his level of intelligence.)

“I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days", Maher concludes.

(Maher conveniently ignores the real factor. Fascists are better at propaganda because they have no moral boundaries or regard for truth. Far Right propaganda networks have been more successful in deluding Americans with lies than traditional corporate media has been with reaching them with facts. Trump’s criminal behavior and attempts to overturn the 2020 election were sidelined by corporate media’s paucity of reporting lower inflation, their obsession with Biden’s age, and the usual horse race normalization of the 2024 election.)

Tyrants don't become tyrants without an ability to charm and dupe the most gullible, egotistical, resentful, and angry people who’ve been indoctrinated by their propaganda. Maher has fallen for the charms of a criminal sociopath and doesn't know it.

One more point. Let’s not overlook the most obvious reason Maher jumped at the opportunity to meet Trump. He wants MAGA viewers to boost his falling ratings.