17-05-2025
Bill Maher defends Marjorie Taylor Greene for saying Catholic bishops are 'controlled by Satan'
Bill Maher defended Marjorie Taylor Greene for a statement she made suggesting Catholic bishops were 'controlled by Satan' as he railed against hypocrites in politics lacking principles.
The MAGA firebrand had made the remark in a statement responding to Phil Donohue and The Catholic League demanding she be censured for a tweet she sent out after Pope Francis died.
'Today there were major shifts in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God,' she wrote.
In a statement responding to demands that she be censured by Congress, she made a statement explaining she was merely criticizing Vatican and Catholic leadership, which she claimed was 'controlled by Satan.'
'It's the church leadership I was referring to when I invoked the devil,' she said, saying she stopped going to mass because she felt she couldn't protect her children from pedophiles.
'Just so we're clear, bishops, when I said 'controlled by Satan,' I wasn't talking about the Catholic Church. I was talking about you.'
Liberal comic Maher - a longtime critic of all religions - made a rare effort to defend the Congresswoman in his 'New Rules' segment on Real Time Friday where he decried people shifting their politics based on whoever's espousing their ideas.
He cited Democrats who no longer liked Elon Musk or bought Teslas and Republicans who suddenly loved them, as well as liberals who went against reopening schools post-COVID because Donald Trump said it should happen.
Maher even went as far as pointing out pro-'Make America Healthy Again' conservatives were once infuriated by Michelle Obama's attempts to improve nutrition standards.
When it came to Greene, Maher admitted they were forming an unlikely alliance.
'Now, it would be easy to just make fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene and since this is week 16 of our show and I'm already tired... I think I will.'
The comic pointed out Greene's past statements such as 'Jewish space lasers' and once demanding answers from Joe Biden about something on the nonexistent date of June 31.
'So, not a genius,' quipped Maher, before turning to her statement about the Catholic Church, comparing it to the infamous live television performance of singer Sinead O'Connor decades earlier.
'She was talking about the child abuse that's gone on for a thousand years, which is basically the same thing that Sinead O'Connor said in 1992 when she went on SNL and tore up a picture of the Pope.'
He pointed out that many liberals and non-religious people thought that it was great the Irish singer made that shocking statement.
'So don't be a hypocrite and that's the challenge, to not automatically rush to the opposite view point, based solely on who said it.'
O'Connor, who shot to stardom across the world in 1990 with her heartrending cover of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, was performing on Saturday Night Live on October 1992 when she pulled the stunt.
The then 26-year-old singer performed an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley's 'War' to bring attention to the issue of child abuse.
The artist sang the final refrain 'And we know we shall win/As we are confident in the victory/Of good over evil,' then held up a picture of Pope John Paul II and tore it to pieces right in front of the single camera.
O'Connor exclaimed 'fight the real enemy!' while staring down the barrel of the camera before blowing out the surrounding candles on stage and walked off.
She had reportedly told NBC, who hosted the show, that she would hold up a picture of a starving child and make a plea to protect the world's most vulnerable kids.
However, the singer instead replaced the photograph in order to protest the ongoing issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, long before such allegations were widely reported.
The performer recalled in her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, the eerie silence she was greeted with after walking off stage: 'When I walk backstage, literally not a human being is in sight' she wrote.
'All doors have closed. Everyone has vanished. Including my own manager, who locks himself in his room for three days and unplugs his phone.'
The network was inundated with complaints and calls for days about the broadcast.
SNL's show creator Lorne Michaels allowed O'Connor back on stage at the end of the program to wave goodnight to the audience.
He later added that O'Connor's action was 'the bravest possible thing she could do.'
However, the following week SNL distanced itself from the act by having host Joe Pesci reassemble the photograph and tell the audience that had he been present he would have given the singer 'such a smack'.
Several weeks later O'Connor once more sang an a capella version of 'War', this time on stage at Madison Square Garden in New York during a tribute concert to commemorate Bob Dylan's 30th year in music.
She was met by a mixture of cheers and boos, but fellow performer Kris Kristofferson emerged from the wings to say 'Don't let the b******s' get you down.'
O'Connor faced considerable backlash in the months after her SNL performance.
There were protests, death threats, cancelled gigs and even a bulldozer used to flatten a pile of her records in Times Square.
Several years later, in 1999, O'Connor caused uproar in Ireland when she became a priestess of the breakaway Latin Tridentine Church - a position that was not recognized by the mainstream Catholic Church.
For many years, she called for a full investigation into the extent of the church's role in concealing child abuse by clergy.
