Summary for those without Twitter: he’s pushing on the big rumor that Trump and Laura Loomer are having an affair, and insinuating maybe she is being paid to influence him. (Like she has claimed about Taylor Switft and her boyfriend.)
If you don’t know Loomer, she’s a right wing influencer who got caught up in the whole Russian money scandal, and is in a huge fight with Marjorie Taylor Green, dropping tons of dirty skeletons about her, and also going after other MAGA people. And she’s been caught in photos with Trump where she seems more affectionate with him than his own wife (who hasn’t been on the campaign trail with him, of course).
She’s basically dividing up MAGA right now, and Maher noticing and fanning the flames is honestly a smart anti-Trump move. I actually now think this whole thing might take off.
Laura? Despite what you’ve learned about the way our legal system from Trump’s ‘’‘’‘lawyers’‘’‘’ you can’t sue Bill on behalf of Donny and Melania for defamation.
[SamWaterson] "Miss Loomer? Please state for the record just exactly how you personally know for an absolute fact that Marjorie Taylor “Three-Toes” Greene has a a Hoo-Ha that looks like a badly made Arby’s roast beef sandwich, dripping with… < looks at document > < looks up > ‘horsey-sauce’…? " [/SamWaterson]
Yesterday’s interview guest on Maher’s show was a dude named Bjorn Lomborg, who proceeded to blather on along the following lines:
Climate change is real, but it’s been exaggerated and is not an existential threat.
The costs of mitigation would be extremely high. Much better to find workarounds like tech to help block sunlight, carbon capture, and similar. As far as fossil fuels are concerned, keep on keepin’ on!
His name was immediately familiar to me but for a moment I couldn’t remember why. Then I remembered. Years ago, this is what I had written about Lomborg:
Bjorn Lomborg is a borderline climate change denialist and anti-science activist notable for having been investigated for scientific fraud, and found culpable by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, but partially excused because he clearly didn’t understand the subject matter that he was lying about!
There’s an entire book out about this asshole, The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming. He has no training whatsoever in climate science and knows virtually nothing about it. His blathering is entirely from an economic standpoint: “this thing that I know nothing about will be very expensive to fix”.
The reason I mention this is that one of the things I’ve defended Bill Maher on is his strong stance on climate change. I loved the way he put down Rick Santorum when he came on the show to lie about it. But here, I’m afraid, Maher really disappointed me. How did this jerk get on the show? I suspect it was just someone semi-famous that Maher heard about and thought would be “interesting”. But if he had been properly vetted, Maher would have been properly prepared with factual rebuttals. Instead, he waffled, partially agreed with the idiot, and in the end, shook his hand and went off to join the panel.
So, esteemed critics of Bill Maher, here I’m with you. Maher totally dropped the ball here. This idiot either should never have been on, or Maher should have properly prepared to debate him. Maybe Maher is just getting lazy. It was very disappointing.
Yes. Giving Lomborg a platform was disgraceful, and Maher did only pro-forma pushback on him.
I DO recommend the episode, though, for the later-guests segment. Stephanie Ruhle pushed back on New York Times GOP-apologist Bret Stephens in a way that I wish we’d see from Maher himself—but at least Bill didn’t get in the way.
Stephens was spouting the usual ‘I don’t like Trump but Harris simply hasn’t offered detailed-enough plans’ excuse for supporting Trump. And Ruhle took him apart. (Note that in the New Rules segment, only Ruhle was shown for reaction shots—apparently Stephens had stalked off the set…?)
It’s worth watching those twenty minutes (after skipping the Lomborg segment).
I saw some brief clips of Stephens and Ruhle arguing on social media. Stephens started going on about undecided voters wanting to know if Kamala Harris would support a Palestinian state if it was led by Hamas. Ruhle bluntly noted that the undecided voters that are out there don’t give two shits about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. These are incredibly low information voters who care about the most obvious things that affect their lives. There is maybe one Presidential election in my lifetime where foreign policy has been a major factor in how citizens vote, which was 2004.
Maher at least did one good thing by calling out Stephens for saying that Democrats shouldn’t call Trump a threat to democracy. Maher bluntly said that Trump IS a threat to democracy and it is a disservice to voters to not say so in public.
Or or he’s been doing this shit all along, but you only notice when it’s an issue you care about. You don’t care about Black people, LGBTQ issues or whatever else you call “woke” so you cheer on Maher when he’s fluffing a jerk on your side of the issue.
What a totally idiotic offensive thing to say, for no apparent reason, serving no purpose, and completely untrue. Fuck off. You’re now one of just two posters on my ignore list. Should have done it earlier as I’ve never seen you post anything useful but I didn’t fully appreciate that you were also an odious asshole.
Maher made at Least one blindingly racist joke about black people… and no it wasn’t at all funny. I will not repeat it or post a video link to it.
That said, Bjorn Lomborg just seemed to be some smirking “Gordon Ramsey is my Stylist” wanna-be climate denier whose whole point was, “well, you’ll be rich”. When challenged in the slightest, he immediately fell back on “well, I’m just a Stats guy” and other BS.
Maher is shameful for the Black joke alone.
That said, Stephanie Ruhle did (in debate format) kick Bret Stephens ass. If he did childishly run off the set, it was probably to go soak his well-beaten black and blue balls.
Get a grip. It wan’t a “Black joke”. It was a very tasteless comment for which Maher later apologized. But to call it a “racist joke about Black people” is seriously mischaracterizing it. It implies that Maher is a racist making fun of Black people. It was just a stupid off-the-cuff comment directed to something his guest had said that had nothing to do with race, but unfortunately Maher’s ill-advised comment evoked an old racist trope from the days of slavery.
Bill Maher may be a lot of things that some people don’t like, but I’ve never seen any evidence that he was in any way racist. Have you?
Professional Comedians have well rehearsed bits… not ‘stupid off-the-cuff comments’.
This was as planned as every single joke w/i a late night monologue is.
Would Kimmel say that? No.
Would Farrell say that? No.
Would Colbert say that? No.
Would Meyers say that? No.
Would Taylor Tomlinson say that? Only if she was out of heroine and her dealer said he was going to repo her shoes.
Seriously, every time he makes a black joke like that, Maher needs an Uncle Buck punch to the nose and then to be stuffed back into his clown car.
This has turned into a ridiculous tangent that arose from nothing. As if Bill Maher stands in front of a mirror at home and practices prepared racist comments. This is the sort of fabricated gibberish I’d expect to hear from Trump, not reasonable and informed posters on the Dope.
If someone has evidence that Maher is racist, let’s see it. Until then I’ll go with the evidence that says the opposite. On the next show after the controversial remark, where Maher apologized for a second time, he had an extended discussion with noted Black author and academic Michael Eric Dyson, who credited Maher with calling out racism in the past, saying in part (quoting from a good serious article in Variety that some of you folks should read before just making things up):
… [Bill Maher has] said that “denying racism is the new racism.” He said that Maher was on the “front line” in pointing that out.
[Dyson] said that “people don’t think Bill Maher is a racist,” but his point was that “if even Bill Maher can capitulate in a level of unconscious privilege, then the rest of us are in a serious spot.”
[Dyson had earlier tweeted] that Maher “has bravely, and relentlessly, pilloried racism, white privilege, and white indifference to the black plight.”
Dyson further credited Maher for having “used his platform to highlight black faces, and amplify black voices, that might otherwise have never been given such a prominent perch to tell their truths.”
I’m not participating any more in this silly digression. @Smapti, the onus is on the accuser to bring the evidence, not the other way around. Personally disliking Maher is not “evidence” of anything, it’s just bias. I try to be fair, supporting him when I think he deserves it, and criticizing him when I think he deserves criticism. That was the point of my last post critical of the way he handled Bjorn Lomborg, which somehow led to this stupid tangent.
This is the sort of fabricated gibberish I’d expect to hear from Trump, not reasonable and informed posters on the Dope.