By Andrew Sanford | News | January 13, 2025 |
Many people make grand promises of what they’ll do if their preferred candidate doesn’t win an election. There’s the classic “I’m moving to Canada” promise, as if the country is always willing to accept runaway Americans. Plenty will say how they will quit or stay off social media (an admittedly more achievable goal). More often than not these promises are not kept, but people don’t notice because they are the musings of “regular” folks. If you say you’re going to quit your popular talk show and then don’t, people will notice.
I love Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It’s funny, smart, and never feels like it’s trying to talk down to anyone to get its story across. Oliver and his writers can communicate and educate while tackling pressing social and political topics. MAX, the service it streams on, thinks that because I like that even-handed, well-written show, I would be interested in Real Time with Bill Maher. As soon as Last Week Tonight ends, I’m forced to look at Maher’s dumb face as the service tries to get me to click over to a boomer b**** fest.
That’s all to say that I am not a fan of Maher, and even I didn’t take it seriously when he said he would quit his show if Trump won reelection. That was brought up to Maher when he recently appeared on CNN and he shot it down saying “I don’t know where this started about I’m getting rid of Real Time. They’re going to have to drag me off of that show.” Again, I didn’t think he was going to quit, but forcefully pushing back on a rumor he started is the most “Maher” thing he could do in this situation.
Maher absolutely mused about quitting the show before the election. “It’s hard to believe. I mean, I may quit because I don’t want to do another,” he explained on Club Random, his podcast that asks “What if a divorced dad was also your loser uncle?” “I did Trump. I did all the Trump stuff before anybody. I called him a con man before anybody. I did. He’s a mafia boss. I was the one who said he wasn’t going to concede the election. I’ve done it.” Of course, a statement like that would make news and work its way into headlines and Maher knows that.
Still, he doubled down during his CNN sitdown, tying himself into knots as he explained what he really meant. “What I was saying was that I didn’t want to do another Trump term,” he said. “Not just because I don’t think it’s going to be possibly a great time for America. Maybe again, not going to pre-hate anything, but because I’ve already done all the jokes about Donald Trump.” Sure, Bill! Sure!