{"id":210997,"date":"2025-09-08T20:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T20:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/210997\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T20:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T20:13:10","slug":"bill-maher-hits-colbert-stewart-kimmel-for-parroting-msnbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/210997\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Maher Hits Colbert, Stewart, Kimmel for Parroting MSNBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Maher has some of the strongest political opinions on late-night television\u2014but he\u2019s sick of hearing everyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

On the latest episode of his podcast Club Random<\/a>, Maher told his guest, The Sopranos star Drea de Matteo, that Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Jimmy Kimmel \u201cvery predictably\u201d parrot \u201cwhatever MSNBC was saying\u201d on their shows, as he praised the good ol\u2019 days when \u201cLetterman, Leno, you know, Carson\u2026they never told you their politics.\u201d <\/p>\n

Maher argued that \u201cpart of our problem is that everybody makes their decisions based on the politics of the art and not the art itself.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"KimmelJIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs every weeknight at 11:35 p.m. ET and features a diverse lineup of guests that include celebrities, athletes, musical acts, comedians and human interest subjects, along with comedy bits and a house band. The guests for Tuesday, November 8 included Bill Maher (Real Time with Bill Maher), George Conway, and musical guest Breland. (Randy Holmes\/ABC via Getty Images)
\nBILL MAHER, JIMMY KIMMEL Randy Holmes\/ABC via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not knocking them,\u201d he insisted, but \u201cThe audience, and of course half the country, was like, \u2018Well this is just insulting to me,\u201d he surmised.<\/p>\n

Leno was roasted by the current slate of late-night hosts for making similar comments in July<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love political humor, don\u2019t get me wrong,\u201d he said, \u201cBut it\u2019s just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other. Why shoot for just half an audience all the time?\u201d <\/p>\n

Stewart called Leno\u2019s take \u201cf—ing ridiculous,\u201d<\/a> and Oliver declared he\u2019d take a \u201chard pass\u201d<\/a> on \u201cany comedic advice from Jay Leno.\u201d Maher sided with the veteran host Monday, insisting that \u201cthe most important thing\u201d in this new \u201cera\u201d is \u201cto signal to the audience what your politics are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MaherTHE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO — Episode 4382 — Pictured: (l-r) Bill Maher during an interview with host Jay Leno on January 7, 2013 — (Photo by: Margaret Norton\/NBCU Photo Bank\/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images) NBC\/NBCU Photo Bank\/NBCUniversal via <\/p>\n

\u201cLeno never did that. Leno just played it right down the middle,\u201d Maher aadded. \u201cHe was just like, \u2018I will make fun of everybody.\u2019 And that\u2019s, in a different sort of way, what I\u2019m doing also. I just don\u2019t stop criticizing just because you\u2019re on the left part. If you do something stupid, I\u2019m going to call it out no matter where you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Maher\u2019s relentless pursuit not to be pigeonholed to either end of the political spectrum, he caught a lot of heat for visiting Donald Trump at the White House this year and emerging with glowing reviews of the \u201cgracious and measured\u201d president. <\/p>\n

\u201cA crazy person doesn\u2019t live in the White House,\u201d Maher said afterward<\/a>. \u201cA person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is f—ed up. It\u2019s just not as f—ed up as I thought it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larry David roasted Maher in a satirical essay for The New York Times<\/a> that compared Maher\u2019s White House visit to \u201cDinner with Adolf\u201d Hitler. \u201cNo one I knew encouraged me to go. \u2018He\u2019s Hitler. He\u2019s a monster.\u2019 But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere,\u201d David wrote, mocking Maher. \u201cI knew I couldn\u2019t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side\u2014even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid the outcry, Maher complained that he was skewered for the visit instead of praised. \u201cI should be a hero for going there,\u201d Maher said on TMZ\u2019s 2 Angry Men podcast<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m not the villain here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maher\u2019s tone shifted again on Monday, when he declared that one side is indeed \u201cmore dangerous\u201d than the other. \u201cYes, I still think the Republicans are more dangerous because I mean, they don\u2019t really believe in democracy anymore and they\u2019re doing a lot of harmful things,\u201d he said. \u201cBut, you know, I\u2019m also not going to deny that Trump won because a lot of things did get way out of whack that he said, \u2018I\u2019m going to correct.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He agrees with Trump that \u201cthe border shouldn\u2019t be open. DEI is out of control. Universities are out of control,\u201d he explained. \u201cHe\u2019s not wrong about all those things. I just don\u2019t agree with his method of addressing them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But most importantly, he concluded, \u201cWe should always be able to f—ing talk about it.\u201d Unless, of course, you\u2019re a late-night TV host not named Bill Maher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Maher has some of the strongest political opinions on late-night television\u2014but he\u2019s sick of hearing everyone else\u2019s.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":210998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[4087,171,11171,53747,36809,27771,13895,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-210997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bill-maher","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jimmy-kimmel","11":"tag-john-oliver","12":"tag-jon-stewart","13":"tag-msnbc","14":"tag-stephen-colbert","15":"tag-tv","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115170509159246091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}