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 Trump's manipulation of 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.
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8 comments:
Maher has been duped.
Bill,
Thanks for dropping in.
Yup. Trump played Maher like a cat with a mouse.
Jus s he's played a nation.
An accomplished con that has been gaming the system and successfully conning people his entire adult life.
Les,
Maher did a lot of work for Trump by attacking and demonizing anything associated with the very flexible term "woke". I think he's a bigot.
When he started doing that more than condemning Trump, I was done with him.
I was quite surprised Maher did that.
While I recognize becoming to attached and identified with any concept can be both limiting and in the extreme harmful, to attract and demean a basically correct and ethical belief system, and appear to be supportive of the beliefs of a known bigot and racisf like the Felon has the effect of destroying ones credibility.
I don't listen much to Maher. I question his grounding at this point in time.
Maher was always more libertarian than progressive. He's way more like Dennis Miller than George Carlin.
His narcissism, huge ego, and lack of empathy have been on display for decades.
He's also in the bag for Netanyahu and his authoritarian regime.
He cares nothing for the thousands of dead children in Gaza, and would love to take his act to Trump's Gaza beach casinos.
Apparently, Maher doesn’t know that malignant narcissists can be very charming when they want to be. It’s one of their traits, FFS! Maher obviously got played by the sociopath, and that says more about him than Trump. Maher is a typical mark for this type of narcissist. He’s not the brilliant intellect he fancies himself to be.
Shaw,
It was a shit show of two narcissists each thinking they would play the other.
Maher lost to the pro. Trump is obsessed with TV ratings and already knew in advance Maher's ratings were down, and that the whole debacle would benefit him more than Maher.
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