Political Debate Heated Up on a New “Real Time With Bill Maher”

A television show built around interviews and panel discussions sinks or swims depending on the quality of those conversations. Real Time With Bill Maher is often at its best when Maher and his guests don’t see eye to eye on an issue and can make their cases with panache. That isn’t always the case; one panel discussion earlier this year felt inert in part because the participants largely agreed for much of the discussion.

To be fair, that’s one of the challenges of having a weekly show like this: some weeks you’re going to get more interesting combinations of guests than others. What made this week’s episode stand out were the sparks that flew for much of the episode, beginning when former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy joined Maher for a sit-down interview.

McCarthy took to the stage to cheers, and commented on that. “A more bipartisan crowd than I thought!” he said. But before long, he and Maher were (collegially) butting heads, beginning with McCarthy bringing up Hunter Biden’s laptop. Maher’s rejoinder? “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

This diverged pretty wildly from the usual format of politicians visiting Real Time and making an effort to court Maher’s audience. (This came up again at episode’s end, when Maher made a case for why recent guest Gavin Newsom would make a good Democratic nominee.) Unfortunately for McCarthy, initial applause for him aside, this was clearly Maher’s audience — and when Maher called out McCarthy, saying “you went to Mar-A-Lago and kissed [Trump’s] ass” after the 2020 election, he got plenty of cheers for it. McCarthy’s response — “You’re so full of shit” — did not.

The ideological skirmishes continued with the panel discussion, with The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro and The Moment author Bakari Sellers joining Maher. Both panelists made memorable comments early on, with Sellers declaring of the candidates in the upcoming Presidential election, “One is old and the other is a sociopath. Your choices are extremely clear.”

Shapiro, meanwhile, spoke of savoring watching the debate over whether or not Democrats should replace Joe Biden on their ticket, saying, “As a Republican, I’m enjoying the hell out of this.” (“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Maher replied.)

Things got more heated when Sellers expressed his frustration that Maher and Shapiro were speaking about aspects of race in America that they had no direct experience of. “I think the ridiculous notion is for either one of you all to have the audacity to believe that you understand what the experience is to be…” he said, and Maher quickly disagreed. That said, Sellers didn’t seem convinced by Maher’s argument that one can be “too close” to an issue, and argued that his lived experience as a Black man was not “too close.”

When Maher announced that the panel was out of time, groans could be heard from the audience. As debates go, it was one of the better ones the show has had in a while.

Bill Maher and Ray Kurzweil Debated AI on a New “Real Time”

Also on the schedule: Maher’s dating advice

Some other notable moments from the episode:

Maher, on the Presidential election as it stands: “It’s like a horror movie that you watch through your fingers. You know something bad’s going to happen; you just don’t know when.” And later: “A guy who can barely talk versus a guy who won’t shut the fuck up.”
For the record, Maher has made his feelings on the Democratic nomination pretty clear, including via an op-ed earlier this month in The New York Times.
Sellers and Shapiro agreed that the Dred Scott decision was bad; Maher sounded happy that they had actually agreed on something.
During New Rules, Maher addressed the phenomenon of microplastics found in human penises, and whether it might actually be a good thing.
“America is going to do this! We’re going to get new tits!” That was how Maher concluded a lengthy metaphor on the possibility of replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.