Bill Maher Defends Trump White House Visit, Slams 'Nazi' Comparisons
Bill Maher still defends his White House visit with President Donald Trump.
During the latest episode of his weekly HBO series, Real Time, the host sat down with Al Gore where the former vice president admitted that he understood why Maher accepted the invitation to meet with Trump, recalling how he himself met with Trump ahead of the Republican president's first term.
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'It's just that [when] somebody comes with an offer and says, this person who's been dominating our life, whether you like him or not, for 10 years like nobody ever has in history, would you like to see it up close?' Maher said on the show. 'Would you like to see the Trumpadopoulos up close? You know, I mean, of course, who wouldn't?'
Earlier in the interview, the duo discussed Gore's recent speech opening San Francisco Climate Week, in which the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate criticized the Trump administration and made headlines for creating parallels between the actions of the Republican president and his team in their second term and what happened in the early days of Nazi Germany.
'I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler's Third Reich to any other movement,' Gore said. 'It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it. But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil.'
He added, though, 'It was [Jürgen] Habermas' mentor, Theodore Adorno, who wrote that the first step in that nation's descent into hell was, and I quote, 'the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power.' He described how the Nazis, and I quote again, 'attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.' End quote. The Trump administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality.'
On Friday's show, Maher said, 'I just think Nazi is a hard word to use with nuance. So, when you bring that word out, you know, I feel like they're the GOAT of evil, and it just conflates.'
Gore defended his speech, though Maher argued that 'the side of the country that voted for Trump, [when] they hear Nazi, they just go, 'Oh, you're calling us Nazis.''
He added, 'First of all, it's a bit of a false premise, as bad as they are. And also it just says to them, 'Well, you just hate us.' One thing I've learned in recent years is that the one thing that's more powerful than money is hate.'
Their conversation came after Maher responded to Larry David's satirical 'My Dinner With Adolf' essay that mocked the comedian's visit with Trump where he said the president was 'gracious and measured,' and not like the 'person who plays a crazy person on TV.' During a Thursday interview with Piers Morgan, the Real Time host said his essay was 'insulting to six million dead Jews' and that 'it's an argument you kind of lost just to start it.'
'Look, maybe it's not completely logically fair, but Hitler has really kind of got to stay in his own place,' Maher said Thursday. 'He is the GOAT of evil. We're just going to have to leave it like that.'
In David's 'My Dinner With Adolf' essay, he satirically recalled having dinner 'with the world's most reviled man, Adolf Hitler.' He added, 'I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. 'He's Hitler. He's a monster.' But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn't change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.'
The guest essay pulled similar verbiage from Maher's monologue from his April 11 episode where he recounted his visit with Trump and Kid Rock. During the visit, Maher said, he 'never felt I had to walk on eggshells around' the president.
He added, 'Honestly, I voted for [Bill] Clinton and [Barack] 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.'
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