Credit: Kevin Kwan

No matter what you think of Bill Maher as a comedian or political pundit, the host of Real Time on HBO isn’t making any apologies for what he believes. That really hasn’t changed much since he started sharing opinions on his talk show Politically Incorrect when it debuted on Comedy Central more than 30 years ago.

Maher considers himself an “honest broker” when it comes to the viewpoints of both the Republican and Democrat parties. Whether he’s trashing former president Donald Trump for all the asinine shit he spews at campaign rallies or how woke culture is destroying traditional liberalism, Maher is likely getting under somebody’s skin on a weekly basis.

It’s also a likely bet Maher irritates at least a few people as he brings his WTF? Tour to San Antonio’s Majestic Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 12.

After three decades in the spotlight, Maher’s political provocateurism continues to work. If anything, his audience has expanded. His podcast, Club Random, launched in 2022 and has added to the polarizing public discourse. He’s used the new platform to interview anyone from beloved actor Henry Winkler (Barry) to sexist toolbag Jordan Peterson to viral sensation Haliey Welch aka the Hawk Tuah Girl.

During an interview with the Current last week, Maher, 68, discussed what he considers the “single worst thing” about today’s Republican Party and what he thinks will happen if Trump loses the 2024 election. First, however, we started the interview by asking him about Assclown Alert favorite U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

I think a lot of people were surprised about how cordial you and Ted Cruz were last year when he joined you on Real Time. Can you give us some insight on his appearance and how that shook out from your perspective?

Well, sure. I mean, if you look at the broad picture, I think the country is very divided on the idea that we should even talk to the people we don’t agree with. I think this country is in a very bad place, and we’re not going to get better by just hating each other. I don’t agree with much of what Ted Cruz says. When he was on my show, Ted Cruz proved to be a guy with a sense of humor, including about himself.

After the show, he gave me a photo from a show I had done a few years earlier where I was so mean to him. I forget what the bit was, but it was basically me drinking bleach. I said I would rather drink bleach than have Ted Cruz be the president. He signed [the photo]. I feel like that goes a long way with me, somebody who can laugh at themselves. Ted Cruz has done some things I really think are horrible. But you have to talk to these people and understand where they’re coming from. I talk to everybody. It’s not going to get better by just pretending these people don’t exist, or that they’re so deplorable that you can’t talk to them.

As early as this past May, Cruz was still on record refusing to say whether he would accept the 2024 presidential election and added that he was not going to “ignore fraud” even though there’s never been evidence of widespread fraud in a presidential election before. Why is it so hard for most Republicans to answer that question without gaslighting us?

That is the single worst thing about the Republican Party. They don’t accept elections and threw their lot in with Donald Trump, a sociopath who thinks elections only count when they win. I’d still probably vote for the Democrat, but we need to go back to the place we were before Trump — when people accepted the outcome of elections. I mean, everybody did it. George [W.] Bush [did it] when Obama won. He stood there as Obama came to the Oval Office, and he said, “We want you to succeed,” because this is America. Rooting for [the president] was rooting for the country. That’s just not where we are today.

Republicans think they’re the tough guys, that they’re macho, [so they] won’t concede an election. But that’s what real men do. They accept a loss, and they move on. Watch the end of a football game. What does the losing coach do? Coaches live and breathe football. It’s their whole life. It’s all they care about. But when a coach loses a game … he puts on a grim face, and he walks across the field, and he finds the other coach, and he shakes his hand [and says], “Good game, and best of luck next week against the Packers.” That’s what real men do, not like the whiny little bitch who’s running for the Republicans.

Do you miss the days where voters would cast a politician aside for making simple gaffes, like when former Texas governor Rick Perry forgot the name of a federal department he’d eliminate during a debate. Or when former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean screamed on stage during his 2004 run for president? I mean, how did we get to a point where there are no consequences for anything Trump says?

It’s amazing. There’s no consistency about who we cancel and for what. This is certainly true with celebrities. I’m not going to name names because I don’t want to make too many enemies. But there are celebrities who have done horrible things who don’t get canceled, and there are other celebrities who do barely anything, and they can’t get work again. It’s the same with politics. I don’t know what Howard Dean did that was so wrong. He got enthusiastic about an election and screamed. So what? Trump does worse things than that every week. He does crazy things. There just seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Trump changed what we accept.

There was a time when we didn’t accept a president swearing. I remember in 2000 when George [W.] Bush was caught on a hot mic saying [that a reporter] was a “major league asshole,” and it became a big scandal. But Trump says “motherfucker” right into the mic!

The film The Purge was just trending online because during a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump suggested that to stop crime from happening in the U.S., law enforcement should be allowed to have “one really violent day,” and crime would then end immediately.

(Laughs.) I hadn’t heard that, but that’s exactly my point. This guy can say anything. Trump’s superpower is that it’s baked into the cake in people’s minds that he’s crazy. He’s been saying crazy shit for so long that nobody takes it seriously. So, he doesn’t have to — as other candidates do — stand behind things he says because it’s just assumed, “Oh, you know, that’s Donald Trump. He goes off at the mouth. Don’t take it seriously. Don’t worry about it.” No other candidate could ever get away with that.

If Trump loses the election, do you see Republicans shedding the MAGA skin the day after? Or is there going to be another MAGA Republican waiting in the wings to take his place?

My prediction – [and] I put my marker down on this a month ago – is that Kamala [Harris] will win this race for sure. I think America generally moves forward. I also think they just have had enough of Donald Trump. But there will be a MAGA candidate who stands up and says, “You know, maybe Donald Trump was crazy, but some of the stuff that’s happening on the left is crazy in its own way.” I’m talking about the over sensitivity, the victim culture, the cancel culture, the overemphasis on identity politics, the forced conformity, the overemphasis on making everything so safe that it makes you want to die, the pointless white self-loathing that goes on [and] the forcing of complex issues of race and gender on kids who can’t even spell yet.

There’s craziness happening on the left, [like] tearing down statues of [Abraham] Lincoln and getting rid of the Border Patrol [and] abolishing the police and thinking you can be healthy at any weight. It’s just a long list of really stupid, bad ideas that the far left has embraced. To her credit, I think Kamala is trying to distance herself from that now. If the Democrat Party can just get back to center-left liberalism, which is what I consider myself, I think they’d win in a walk. But as long as there’s all this kind of nuttiness, I think that there will be a place for people on the other side who go, “Yeah, I get there’s a lot of bad things about [MAGA Republicans], but I just don’t want my kids coming home from school and asking me if they’re racist.”

In every poll I’ve seen, the economy is the No. 1 issue by far among voters. Of course, it isn’t the only issue people are concerned about. I agree that groceries are way too expensive right now, but aren’t there more important things to worry about in this country than $6 eggs?

Of course. But the more you are living close to the bone, the more it’s a hollow argument. I remember when I was dirt poor, and I didn’t want anybody saying, “Oh, who cares? It’s not that important.” Well, it was important to me because I had to eat at Blimpie every day. So, I get that. But what people should understand more than that is that the economy has very little to do with who’s president. It’s the same thing with gas prices. This economy, for better or worse, is pretty self-perpetuating. America takes a lickin’, and we keep on tickin’.

One thing about this country is that it is full of entrepreneurs. It is full of people, including all the immigrants who come here, who want to make a living [and] who don’t want to be stifled like they are in other countries. Economically, we’re greedy, which is good because that’s human nature. Capitalism is the system that has lifted more people out of poverty and given more people a good life than any other system in the world. We shouldn’t try to throw it away for socialism. We need some socialism. We need Social Security and Medicare and all the other things that [make the U.S.] a quasi-socialist society, as all Western democracies are. But capitalism works. We came back from the pandemic better than any other country in the world.

People here want to succeed. They want a good life. They want to make money. It just goes on, and the president has very little to do with it. As far as inflation goes, that’s a bipartisan issue. Both [parties] spent way too much money on the pandemic, Trump included. Trump spent a fortune, and then Biden spent a fortune. I was against all of that crazy spending.

In your new book What This Comedian Said Will Shock You you compiled a bunch of editorials you’ve written over the years to give your fans an overview of your opinions on a range of topics. As you read through these pieces to decide what you would include in the book, were there any opinions you had in the past that have completely transformed?

Actually, quite the opposite. One of the reasons I [wrote the book] was because people have said to me in the last five years or so, “Oh, you seem to be making fun of the left more than you used to.” Yeah, absolutely, because the left got crazier, that’s why. I wanted to go back through the editorials over the last 20 years and see, “Did I change? Maybe they’re right. I want to examine this.”

And I did. I read every single [editorial]. And, no, actually, I’m the same. [Democrats] changed. Take something like free speech. Free speech is something I take very personally because it’s how I make my living. Free speech used to be a liberal thing. It used to be that liberals took pride in the First Amendment and loved that amendment the same way conservatives love the Second Amendment. But that all went away because liberals decided that feelings were more important than free speech.

They don’t believe in free speech anymore. They’re the ones chasing speakers off of [college] campuses. They do this all the time. They do something nutty, and then when I notice it, they blame me. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m a noticer. It doesn’t make me a Republican. It makes me an honest broker.

I think the right wing has a comfortable lead in who’s the bigger threat. But I don’t hold my tongue about anyone who does something goofy. I’m going to call it out no matter where you are on the political spectrum. I speak for a different group of people who are not ideologically captured. I speak for Democrats, independents and non-drooling Republicans, and I will continue to do that.

I would never be a Republican for all the reasons I never have been. They’re too religious. They’re fiscal hypocrites who hate it when America spends money it doesn’t have, except when they’re in office, and then it’s always OK. They’re in denial about racism, which is still a thing. They’re always blaming the underprivileged instead of blaming the overprivileged. And they think climate change is a hoax and that the weather girl’s tits are real.

$49 and up, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, Majestic Theatre, 224. E. Houston, (210) 226-3333, majesticempire.com.

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This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 15, 2024.