Jake Tapper touting Christiane Amanpour’s Tuesday interview with Hillary Clinton, asked guest Bill Maher if he agreed with Clinton’s claim she was winning the ’16 election until FBI director James Comey’s letter and Russian Wikileaks dumps scared away some voters.
Maher said she was not wrong, but added, provocatively, “I don’t know why she need to be coming back; she had her turn and it didn’t work out.” Maher also agreed with Clinton’s contention misogyny played a role in her electoral college defeat. “I think we learned a lot about this country – and we’re learning more as we watch what goes on with Fox News every day,” he said.
Maher forecast a crowded field of Dem hopefuls in four years, and hoped the party had learned some lessons in ’16, “like have a message – ‘At Least We’re Not Crazy’ didn’t work.”
Tapper asked Maher to explain his claim liberals must stop trying to win over Trump voters with facts. Maher suggested easing up on “the identity politics” too.
“They pulled off quite a neat trick in 2016; they made white people feel like a minority, or enough of them to swing the election,” Maher said. “That’s important: make sure you represent everybody, including the majority.”
“And go where the energy is in the party,” Maher continued. “Hillary is a lovely lady, but she wouldn’t fill the function room at the Olive Garden.” Meanwhile this “74-year-old man…was getting crowds of 20K young people to come see him. Rallies matter. Trump proved that. It shows something about what people want,” the political satirist observed. He will end this week’s edition of Friday’s Real Time chastising people who called Hillary ‘the lesser of two evils” during the race.
“Now we have 100 days of empirical evidence of what a Trump presidency looks like. They should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.
Tapper tried to get Maher to talk about the “tense” moment on his last week’s show, in which he called guest/Dem Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” as Trump loves to call her. Tapper wondered if that was an ethnic slur.
“Technically yes,” Maher said. “Should we get that upset about it? Of course not!”
“This is one of the problems Democrats have,” Maher said, shooting down Tapper’s line of questioning. “They obsess about things like Halloween costumes and the name of the Washington Redskins.” Meanwhile, “there’s millions of people in this country saying, ‘How about a little more of “I’m going to get your job back”?'”
That’s why millions of voters “listened to a con man about that,” Maher insisted.
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