Should long-time liberal comedian Bill Maher be a welcome guest at the White House? Is President Donald Trump again alienating his MAGA base by agreeing to meet with the broadcaster? Or is the Real Time host just edging closer to the Trump nexus because it could genuinely be a meeting of minds, a platform for constructive dialogue that could potentially bridge political divides? On Sunday, Maher said it was "game over" for the Dems.
To read the reaction of some conservative activists, you would think that Trump had agreed to meet with Jihadists.
"The fact that Bill Maher is visiting the White House to meet with President @realDonaldTrump is insane, in my opinion, and it is a total slap in the face to the MAGA base and Trump loyalists. For years, Bill Maher has viciously attacked President Trump and spread lies about him and his supporters. I even have an upcoming deposition with @billmaher in California in April because he falsely accused me of having an affair with President Trump. So I sued him," Laura Loomer wrote on X.
"Why would someone who has been sexually derogatory toward @MELANIATRUMP and someone who has tried to ruin the life of Trump loyalists with vicious lies be invited to meet with President Trump??" she continued.
"This is just more evidence of the day-to-day vetting crisis at the White House and the incredible deficiency of vetting as it relates to who enters the White House. There was a vetting crisis on the campaign, and there's an even bigger vetting crisis by Trump's staff now."
But does the visit really represent a betrayal of the MAGA movement and Trump's willingness to parlay with the enemy? Actually, this engagement is just another stage in Maher's evolution from progressive smartass to commonsense liberal.
Maher has been angering the Left for years now by openly ridiculing and rejecting woke philosophy. I've written about a number of those.
In November he faced down liberal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's refusal to say that men enjoy a physical advantage over women in sports and said his stubborn adherence to ideological idiocy was symptomatic of why the Left has fallen into such intellectual disrepute and "why the Democrats lost the [presidential] election."
The two began arguing over whether Scientific American's editor-in-chief should have been pressured to resign over her comments about Trump voters. But Maher quickly probed into the real issue: the magazine's insistence that "inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports."
"That's nuts, and it sure ain't scientific," Maher said. "And it's in Scientific American. And that's why the Democrats lost the election."
In the wake of that loss, Maher said the Democrats had nobody to blame but themselves and their woke policies. "My message to the losers: losers look in the mirror," Maher advised as the audience sat there silently. "No? Well, maybe you should. Well, that's my feeling. Losers look in the mirror." This call for introspection and learning from past mistakes is a valuable lesson for all of us in the political arena.
He eviscerated the Democrats for residing in a delusional vacuum that denied political reality. "For months, Democrats have been saying, 'How is this even close?' and they're right, it wasn't," Maher said. "They could not conceive of a second Trump term, but they should've. When does America ever turn down seconds? I mean, come on."
"Look, this is just the facts. It's just the facts. Trump won all the swings–all seven–and he ran the table," he added.
So perhaps Maher is ready to meet with Trump. The Covid pandemic has completely upended traditional political realities and loyalties. The authoritarian lockdowns and banishment of free speech completely transformed Naomi Wolf, who was a top advisor to both President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. She has rejected the hypocrisy and tyranny of the woke Left. She has apologized for dismissing MAGA supporters while identifying progressives as the ones who tried to cancel her as a conspiracy theorist. She has been a guest on my talk show several times.
I was more concerned with Trump's meeting with Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and endorsing Big Pharma's latest attempt at population control: an mRNA vaccine purported to combat cancer. But Trump has never been able to reconcile his pride in Operation Warp Speed and the birth of the Covid vaccine to just how much his MAGA supporters identify it as a bio-weapon.
And what about all those corporate liberals who were awarded VIP seating at his inauguration? Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg did more to advance woke policies as the CEO of Meta by suppressing conservative news and promoting the liberal media. But there he was on Jan. 20, paying obeisance to Trump as he began to dismantle the woke policies at Facebook. Jeff Bezos is another arch-liberal who has sought a connection to Trump even as he has reversed the editorial direction at The Washington Post.
Trump is enduring a frenetic schedule as he unleashes a plethora of policy initiatives, seeks to end foreign wars, slashes government waste, and tries to deport illegals – all while fighting liberal courts that seek to undermine him at every turn. There are days when I wonder if Trump has taken on too much, mainly when he rants about Canada and thinks a trade war with the world is going to result in prosperity for the US.
But we have come to know Trump as someone who can reverse unhealthy policies on a dime, either because he sees their failure for himself or because he listens to someone else's advice.
Although he can be vindictive, the president's greatest strength might be his ability to constantly engage with others, demonstrating his willingness to listen and adapt or to bring talent to the MAGA cause.
That's clearly what's happening with Bill Maher.
