"Real Time" host Bill Maher conceded that former President Trump is "right" about the hostile rhetoric being said against him but declared he's "the worst person to make this case."
"He says ‘Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at.' And then, of course, in true Trumpian fashion, always the most unself-aware person in the universe, goes on to say ‘when they’re the ones that are destroying the country,' Also the kind of rhetoric that would make a borderline person shoot at you," Maher said during a panel discussion on Friday night about the second assassination attempt.
"But, I mean, he's right. Rhetoric has consequences, but he is possibly the worst person to make this case," he added.
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New York Times columnist Bret Stephens agreed with Maher's assessment, saying it's "pot calling the kettle black." He then said what's "not helping our argument" against Trump is when the left calls Trump the "end of democracy."
"I disagree. That's a dumb argument," Maher shot back. "That's their argument, which is that ‘You guys are saying Trump is a threat to democracy.’ But he is a threat to democracy!"
"The answer can't be that we can't say what's true. I want to say what's true, and the left has to do that too," Maher told Stephens.
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Stephens doubled down, insisting to Maher that he himself used such rhetoric in 2016 but in the end, "that dog is not going to hunt."
"You have to say the case against Trump is that he's gonna be a terrible president who's gonna divide the country, that is gonna accomplish absolutely nothing, that is gonna embarrass us in front of the world and is gonna conduct a miserable foreign policy, but those are policy questions," Stephens told Maher, later adding "Trump has done nothing but benefit from a campaign that seeks to treat him as outside the borders of political respectability-"
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"He is!" Maher shouted. "You said he's gonna be a bad president. He's a bad president because he doesn't concede elections, not the policy s---. That comes and goes!"
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"Look, most Americans realize that here we are; Joe Biden is the president the United States. Kamala Harris is likely the next president of the United States. But the reason that Trump has an enduring appeal on so many Americans is that so many of us in the media want to treat him, right, as absolutely beyond the pale," Stephens said. "You know how Trump supporters respond? By saying, 'Oh yeah, he's beyond the pale? I'm gonna vote for him.' We have done nothing but help Trump for the last eight years."
"So that's how we should organize our views, by what the idiots will do?" Maher pushed back before arguing there was a "false equivalency" between what conservatives says about Democrats versus what liberals say about Trump.
