All Episodes
Previous Next
May 26, 2024 - Lionel Nation
34:07
Why Bill Maher Actually Thinks He's Politically Relevant
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Disaster can strike when least expected.
Wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes.
They can instantly turn your world upside down.
Dirty Man Underground Safes is a safeguard against chaos.
Hidden below, your valuables remain protected no matter what.
Prepare for the unexpected.
Use code DIRTY10 for 10% off and secure peace of mind for you and your family.
Dirty Man Safe.
When disaster hits, security isn't optional.
The storm is coming.
Markets are crashing.
Banks are closing.
When the economy collapses, how will you survive?
You need a plan.
Cash, gold, bitcoin.
Dirty Man Safes keep your assets hidden underground at a secret location ready for any crisis.
Don't wait for disaster to strike.
Get your Dirty Man safe today.
Use promo code Dirty10 for 10% off your order.
When uncertainty strikes, peace of mind is priceless.
Dirty Man underground safes protects what matters most.
Discreetly designed, these safes are where innovation meets reliability, keeping your valuables close yet secure.
Be ready for anything.
Use code DIRTY10 for 10% off today and take the first step towards safeguarding your future.
Dirty Man's Safe.
Because protecting your family starts with protecting what you treasure.
*clap*
My friends, I'd like to explain something to you about this feller named Bill Maher.
Now, I've got nothing against Bill Maher.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what Bill Maher says or does.
He's entitled to his opinion.
God bless him.
It's a great gig and he's run it for...
Decades and whether you like him or not is really unimportant.
But here's what's important.
Something that I've learned.
Who is Bill Maher?
Better yet, who in the hell is Bill Maher?
Well, he's nobody any different than anybody else.
But he's a guy who I remember years ago.
It was September 25th, 2001.
Remember that month, September 2001?
26 or so, I believe.
And President Bush came out and he said, quote, freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward.
Make no mistake.
The U.S. will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
Remember the momentum?
I do.
I'll never forget it.
9-11 was my red pill day.
I'll never forget that.
And the House and the Senate followed suit.
They passed a joint resolution past the next night labeling the suicide hijackings as heinous and cowardly attacks.
And believe me, at the time, nobody but nobody with a couple of neurons and a working synapse would have ever dared to veer from that particular Thought process.
The country was...
I don't have to remind you, but you know, but you might be...
Listen, this is what, 23 years ago, roughly?
So, you know, this may be...
Many folks watching this may not have even been alive then, but in any event.
So, Bill Maher was the host of an ABC late-night show called Politically Incorrect.
Let me tell you what Bill Maher said.
This is the mind of Bill Maher.
Now, understand this.
This is...
This is what he thought, because he's a comedian.
He's funny.
And he's wacky.
He's wacky.
He said, quote, we have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.
That's cowardly.
And then on the show, at some point later on, he said, quote, staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it.
It's not cowardly.
Staying in the airplane when it hits the building.
Now, I don't want to go through the specifics of how you could...
Forget it.
The point is, this is Bill Maher.
This is the way he thinks.
This is the comedian.
This is the genius.
This is the guy who knows more than us.
This is a man imbued, possessed.
Given this God-given insight, this absolute, imane genius.
Okay.
He learned his lesson.
He came back, recovered.
And now he's back doing whatever he was.
But he doesn't.
Again, I'm not a...
And I think against him, it doesn't matter.
He's just, look, everybody's...
There's some comedian.
By the way, comedy is dead.
Comedians are dead.
This whole thing is comedians are just dead.
You want to see something really dead?
How about this?
Jerry Seinfeld.
That act is just...
But now his whole thing is we're going to stop the cancel culture.
Okay, okay, great.
Comedians in cars getting coffee and donuts or whatever.
You never realize these people are not funny.
They're rehearsed.
They know their act.
They have their very good delivery, but they're not really necessarily themselves geniuses.
You know, for every Bill Hicks and Dick Gregory and Mort Sahl and George Carlin and others and Will Rogers and Oscar Wilde, for every one of those, there's no one else.
So somehow in the meantime, we look at these folks and realize they're really not, you know, when they are not delivering their canned, rehearsed, prepared, either they wrote it or others.
And by the way, when Mar does it, he always, when he would read, I would see on YouTube, his new rules, he would read the prompter and laugh like he's seen it for the first time, which I think he did.
People who laugh at their own jokes, but his was surprised.
Hey, that's pretty funny.
Who wrote that?
Oh, I wrote that.
I'm sorry.
And we know at this point people don't write their own stuff.
In any event, comedy is dead.
Comedians are dead.
What's interesting today is this new version of, I don't know what you want to call it, satire, absurdism, whatever you want to call it.
But let me give you the story.
Let me get the cut to the chase.
And this explains why Bill Maher is doing this.
Bill Maher is trying to convert the career, and God bless him, into something where he's the thinker.
He's not just a comic.
He's a thinker.
He's a sage.
He's a wit.
He expatiates wisdom.
I saw this years ago.
I started in talk radio in 1988.
Officially paid.
I was working before that.
In 85, but I mean, actually got a gig.
This is when talk radio, AM talk radio, stick talk radio, when talk radio was fun.
Kind of, sort of, at the time that Rush Limbaugh sort of started, but talk radio was still kind of local, and it was quirky, and it was weird, and it was just like this bastard child of radio.
Nobody really cared for it.
It didn't really, you know, it's on AM, and, you know, the radio people were the jocks, you know, on FM with the music, and okay.
And even, you know, Stern was there, certainly.
You know, the shock jock.
To make a long story short, Rush Limbaugh blew up.
If you don't remember Rush, if you weren't around then, Rush was so big that restaurants would actually report that business dropped precipitously.
People weren't coming in.
People were, like, in their cars.
This was before, you know, portables and iPhones and cellular phones and iPhones and radios and all that shit.
So restaurants would say, listen, you come in and we'll have Rush Limbaugh on this speaker or the radio, whatever it is, but please.
I mean, he was that big.
He was bigger.
And I worked with him at WABC.
And I'm telling you, everything you heard about him was absolutely true.
And everything else you probably heard, he was a great...
Great guy.
Off the air, off the air.
Great guy.
Changed everything.
Changed.
Put AM, put radio on the map.
Stern, too, to his credit.
To his credit.
Okay.
So what happened?
Well, right when Rush was beginning or in the middle of that trajectory, a lot of guys who were in radio who were doing boss, jock boss, boss talk.
I can't do that.
But they're called pukers in the business.
They go blah, blah, blah.
They're people, you know, eight hours for the hour coming out Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, down in the middle of the sun.
I remember the Stubborn wolf.
This is before the FM voice.
Robert Klein did the good, the FM voice, you know, that soft kind of AOR, late night stuff.
But the real boss, and you can hear it sometimes on Sirius, like these old, not old, but these folks with the voice who do the, you know, Martha Hoople, all the young dudes.
Eight after the hour, 93. Who talks like that?
This was the jock, and they talk like that.
And they said, do you want to hear an air check?
An air check?
Yeah, an air check.
K-5, K-3-2.
Pukers.
I mean, you don't need them now because now we spot them out.
Okay, fine.
So all of a sudden, these guys who said, wait a minute, I've been doing radio.
Then we go to the program directors and say, hey.
I want to do a radio.
I want you to give me a gig.
What?
I want you to give me a gig.
I want to do a show.
I've been at radio for 30 years.
Listen, Charlie.
And the guy's name was, you know, I don't know.
Charlie.
Charlie Tuna.
Names like, you know, they almost sound like porn names.
Branch Mason.
You know what I mean?
Or my favorite.
Stormy Deno's husband, Barrett Bangwell, which was one of his earlier iterations of his name.
I prefer Harry Dangler and things like that.
Anyway, so program directors would say, no, no, Charlie, this is politics.
What are you talking about?
I've been doing radio.
I know you've been doing radio.
I know you've been doing radio.
But this is not just introducing.
You've got to have kind of an intuitive, you know, Rush Limbaugh knows what he's talking about.
Rush Limbaugh understands the issues.
Rush Limbaugh is not merely belching and puking into the mic.
He knows what he's talking about.
Rush Limbaugh really is that good.
He knows what he's talking about.
Yeah, but I've been doing radio.
I know you've been doing radio.
You keep telling me.
But it's not just knowing how to push the buttons.
So sure enough, every now and then somebody gets this guy, you know, Rockstone from Q5.
He's got a radio show.
And you realize it immediately.
You know, I don't know about you, but these rebel insurgents in Basque country, what the hell is going on with that one?
All righty, it's a quarter past the hour.
I'll be here.
Give us a call at 800.
And I said, wait a minute.
No, no, no.
No.
No.
And they couldn't get away from it.
Not only that, if they could drop that stupid pukey voice, they didn't know anything.
This stuff is tough.
You really got to know your stuff.
You really have to know your stuff.
And know radio.
And Rush Limbaugh still was just terrific.
Not only that, he could do actualities.
He bit, and he was funny.
And let me say this again to you.
And to all you comedians out there, he was funny.
Not, not, ha ha ha!
I'm a comedian funny.
Naturally funny.
Funny, funny.
He made the news.
It was a pleasure.
He was, I can't say enough about him.
So, what does this have to do with Bill Maher?
Simple.
He was a comedian.
Oh, I can do this.
I went on stage and I go on stage and I may talk about something.
You know, Bill Maher's big thing was he's an atheist.
There's no God.
Bill Maher figured this one out.
Bill Maher can prove it to you.
He's an atheist.
There's no God.
And he goes through the whole thing about Mithra and all this.
You can find it on the internet.
It's been around forever.
And he's going to prove to you after all that, you know, the virgin birth is nonsense.
He's an expert.
And here's the thing.
They start to believe their own stuff.
They start to believe, hey, I'm Delphic.
I'm oracular.
I'm the Oracle of Delphi.
I'm the voice of, I know this stuff.
You want to talk about Israel?
You want to talk about Palestine?
You want to talk?
I talk to me.
And the other day, if you could stop and think about this.
I want you to close your eyes and either you get that.
You want to talk about a joke?
This is a joke.
This is a joke.
Okay, you ready for this?
Bill Maher on The View.
Just stop.
Stop.
Let me just say that again.
I'm not going to explain the joke to you.
Bill Maher on The View.
And let me tell you something.
That is a genius show.
You know what I would do?
If I ran that, if I programmed that, nothing.
Maybe get him a little loaded more.
You know, get him half in the bag before they went on.
You might be really winding Joy Behar up.
Oh, and they would walk off the set.
Oh, yeah, I don't want to lose their thought.
I don't even know who these people are.
I couldn't tell you.
I know Whoopi and Joy Behar, but other than that, I don't know who's on.
It doesn't really matter.
It doesn't matter.
Because this is where we are today.
You don't have to know what the hell you're talking about.
It's all attitude.
It's attitude.
So, recently, two things happened.
One was Bill Maher on Megyn Kelly, who ate his lunch, and get this, he didn't know it, and she didn't know it.
Bill Maher with Bill Burr.
Embarrassment.
Little Bighorn.
He was destroyed.
And the rest of the world, and his knowledge of the Middle East, Israel, Gaza, Palestinians, it's like you wonder, where have you, do you understand what's going on here?
I swear to God, I tell people, listen to him if you want to know the dangers of mindless propaganda.
When Megyn Kelly said to him, Bill, Hillary is in election tonight.
Oh no, she's not.
No, Bill, Bill, Bill, no, no.
We're not asking you whether you personally are okay with that.
She really is.
You have to remember, you have to know the facts of the case.
And by the way, Bill, Coming on and finally admitting, finally admitting that Joe Biden's out of his tree, that he's a wizened coot, that he's hobbled by decrepitude and senescence.
The guy walking around the White House yelling, who ordered the veal cutlet?
This guy?
I remember on a show, I'm not going to mention the show, on election night 2020, and I told the host then, he's out of it.
I said, you don't understand.
He's out of it.
I said, what do you mean?
I said, listen to what he said about corn pop.
Listen.
That one told me.
He's out of his tree.
And that was nothing.
He was lucid.
He could speak.
It was complete gibberish.
It was schizophrenic logolalia, logoria.
It was word salad.
I don't know what the hell it was.
But then I said, this man's out of his mind.
Remember when he was at this, these two African-American kids were looking up at him, he said, and he would go off into these tangents.
There I was!
Corn Pop!
He's a bad dude!
He's a bad dude!
Took a razor blade, shaped it on the side of the pool.
And I got yellow blonde hairs on my leg, get crazy, get curly.
I said, hey, Corn Pop, you meet me outside of that chain, chain of rocks.
Great Danes and chains.
Whips and chains in Great Danes.
Hospital for life.
Martin Mall.
Bar and Maul.
Yeah, babe.
Furn with the night.
That's what it's about.
Put the pomade in here.
You can't go run.
If you drop the bridge, don't drop the soap.
And when you hit the bridge, wave.
Mary's a dozer and dozer, and I'll be in Scotland before you.
And the staff was saying, what the hell is this guy talking about?
And I was saying then, no, no.
And you know what the people said?
Bill Barr.
Just realize now, I think he's a little...
It's okay, Bill.
Thank you, bud.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Hillary Clinton before, remember this?
A little memory lane, folks.
A little memory lane.
Remember when Hillary Clinton was doing this?
She'd go through these weird neuronal or neurological fugues.
She went through that jerking head thing.
Remember that fella she had?
Look at that guy.
They said he was a Secret Service agent, but he really wasn't.
He was kind of a rotund African-American gentleman.
I don't think he's with us anymore.
Remember the time she was at some event and he walks up, I think he's got the Benzo pen and you could hear him saying, it's okay.
It's okay.
She just looked.
Remember that?
Remember the Benghazi hearings?
Remember the Fresnel lenses for Diplopia.
Remember that?
For double vision?
Remember that?
Remember after she fell?
Remember the 9-11, she fell?
She lost her shoe!
Remember that?
She left her shoe there and threw her in the back of her truck.
Took her off like a sack of potatoes.
They left her shoe there.
Stephen Stills would say, threw her shoe and took a bad fall.
Stills too, by the way.
Solo album, great stuff.
Singing call, I think it was.
In any event.
She was out of her tree.
The night she got the nomination, she went into that Angelo Bruno look.
With the lights, pow, pow, pow.
The lights, the flashing.
You ever see those signs in Broadway plays?
They say, we've got flashing lights here.
People with epilepsy, you better be careful, with all due respect.
But I'm saying, you've got to be careful.
People who are photophobic.
I was talking about this, and they looked at me like, what are you talking about?
I said, look at her!
And then Bill was talking about her own book.
She fell, the State Department hit her head.
Anyway.
Nobody listened.
Nobody cared.
But Trump!
Remember that he grabbed the water one time?
Look at him!
Look, he confused the name.
The guy speaks for three hours.
What are you talking about?
Trump is, he's like Dorian Gray.
He's ageless.
He doesn't, I don't understand how he does it.
I don't understand how he does it.
But Bill Maher had the unmitigated courage to finally say, you know, I think Joe looks like a cadaver.
Okay.
Why?
Because he's at the end of the trajectory of the career.
And it's a great career.
And he's fooled people into thinking he knows what the he's talking about.
And he doesn't.
He doesn't.
He doesn't understand.
There is no depth.
There is no analysis.
There is no nuance, no parsing, no plumbing the depths of the issue.
Nothing.
He is bumper sticker, playbook, echo chamber, cookie cutter.
He's just the usual.
He's just this bumper sticker sock puppet root knife.
He plays it safe.
He says nothing.
Nothing.
That's at all controversial.
Oh, these kids today going out there with their crazy Palestinians.
What the hell do these kids know?
They don't know anything.
Why these long hairs?
Where have you heard that before?
Huh?
Thanks, Bill.
Why, these crazy kids?
You don't know what you're talking about.
He actually said today, all those people in Gaza, they love to go to Tel Aviv.
It's like, do you understand?
What?
Do you understand what you just said?
Do you know what you...
No!
He doesn't know.
Because he said, play it safe.
Because he learned in 2001, I'm not going to do that again.
No way.
When I start riffing...
I say stuff that's stupid, so give me some four points everybody's cool with, and I'll sound like the guy who I'm going to go out and I'm going to, once and for all, I'm going to bury the left.
I'm going to make sure that I stand up.
I'm going to show those left people that Bill Maher's in town, damn it!
I'm in town.
I'm a new voice.
And I'm going to say to all my lefty friends, I've got cojones like this.
Elefantine, my friend.
Wave us the size of cannonballs.
And I'm going to go on and say stuff like, I think this cancel culture's got to go.
Wow!
What balls!
Thanks, Bill.
That's what I do.
That's what I do.
But you know what?
God bless him.
And what's funny, there's a weird momentum once you start, you know, you may not remember this, but one of my favorite, my favorite, or my generation, there was a commercial for Alberto VO5, and this woman says, hello, I'm Rula Lenska.
And when I go out, I need my, and she would go with her hairspray.
And everybody would say, who the hell is Rula Lenska?
I don't know.
Rula Lenska.
Hello, I'm Rula Lenska.
Yes, I'm partying.
Rula, yes, darling.
And she's at the stage door signing autograph.
And we kept saying, who the hell is Rula Lenska?
Bill Maher is Rula Lenska.
Remember when Saul Alinsky came out all of a sudden?
Everybody starts saying, that's just Saul Alinsky right there.
That's what that is.
Sure, I know that's that Obama with the Saul Alinsky.
I know what you're doing, Mr. City local organizer.
You're into Saul Alinsky.
Who the hell Saul Alinsky?
I don't know, but I don't like his name.
And I'm going to say whatever I have to say because we repeat things.
Remember during 9-11?
Because you've got to remember that the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud.
The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud.
Yeah, then maybe not.
There wasn't a 9-11.
No, there hasn't been a 9-11 since 9-11.
Remember that one?
Why are we in Iraq?
Well, there hasn't been a 9-11 since 9-11.
I said, and there wasn't a 9-11 before 9-11.
Better to fight them here than there.
Who?
Them?
Who?
So I'm used to this.
They've been around, see?
They've been around.
Every now and then, you get somebody like...
Bill Barr, who says, I'm going to do this.
Years ago, there were two horrible examples of TV talk radio.
You may not remember this, but trust me, this was the real coke.
This was horrible.
Anybody remember the worst one ever?
It was Magic Johnson.
Oh, my God.
He had a talk show host.
And Chevy Chase.
Oh, dear Lord.
The two worst radio talk shows ever in terms of terrestrial radio.
Two.
Back to back.
And I believe they were on WABC.
They were so horrible that I am not a proponent of waterboarding, but if I did catch somebody and I wanted to torture the truth out of them, I would make them listen to continuous loop tapes of either the Mario Cuomo Or Alan Dershowitz, talk host.
He's come a long ways, but his talk radio, oh dear God, it was just horrible.
Why?
Because they said, give him a talk show.
Give him a talk show.
Why?
Well, just give it to him.
Bill would remember this.
In the 80s, remember when they had Stand Up at the Improv, and then there was this plethora, this endless ha-has and hoo-hoos and chuckles and yuck-yucks and all these...
People that...
Everybody gets to be a comic.
I can be a comic.
I can be a comic.
It was the day of Emo Phillips and Judy Tenute.
I'm thinking, oh my god.
I can be a comic.
I can do that.
I'm funny.
I can stand in front of a brick wall and tell quirky, quirky things.
I've seen this before.
Well, you know what?
Be a comic.
But don't go out there and try to explain.
You know, try to parse the Balfour Declaration or talk about jurisdictional problems inherent in the ICC versus ICJ and the whole notion of, you know, realism.
Let me tell you something.
The best stuff that I'm seeing, the best, the absolute best, it is simply when it comes to this whole thing.
And of course, Bill Maher.
I'd love to bring Bill Maher on just to sit there.
My dream?
Ready for this?
I've always wanted to see...
This is terrible.
Wouldn't it be great to see a 79, 80-year-old man against Mike Tyson in his prime?
Wouldn't you like to see?
I know it's terrible.
It's like the Coliseum to see a bear maul somebody.
But I would love to see this.
Bring Bill Maher on against John Mearsheimer.
I say, Johnny, go for the throat.
Tear him apart.
Kill him.
Okay.
John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Colonel McGregor, Scott Ritter, the great Judge Napolitano, Max Blumenthal, superb Aaron Maté.
Who else?
Amy Goodman.
Just go down the list.
A perspective that is so antithetical, so...
The chiral opposite of what's going on right now.
Put Bill Maher in there.
Please, Bill.
And do me a favor, Bill.
Say that thing about wanting to go from Gaza to Tel Aviv.
Please!
Please!
Tell Max Blumenthal that.
Please!
Just, I want to see that.
Talk about NATO with Mearsheimer.
Talk about this.
Explain it.
Talk about, you want to talk about Maidan?
No, probably not.
Donbass?
No.
The right sector?
No.
Azov Battalion?
No.
The history of Ukraine?
No.
You don't want to do that?
Okay.
You want to talk about maybe Victoria Nuland?
No.
You don't want to do that either?
Okay.
Schwab?
World Economic Forum?
Great Reset?
No.
Neoliberalism versus neoconservatism?
Come on, Bill.
You can do it.
You're funny.
Leo Strauss versus...
I mean, you're good at this.
PNAC versus the iteration of this, a great reset.
You're good at this.
I mean, listen, Bill, you tackled Joy Behar.
You were on...
You and Joy Behar.
That was sheer...
That was a meeting of the minds with Steve Allen.
Remember that years ago?
It was a great show.
It was like watching Bill Buckley with Mortimer Adler debating the hermeneutics of Aristotelian dialectics.
It's beautiful!
You can do it all, Bill, because you're a comedian and you're on TV and you're the voice of this.
You're funny.
You can do this.
Please, I beg you.
You don't understand.
It's almost like...
You ever watch these great YouTube channels where you see somebody out there and you see these boxers and they do like this and they do this?
They show you the right way to block a punch or whatever it is.
This is the way.
I would show Bill Maher and then I'd stop the tape and say, no.
And then I'd give him somebody who is lucid.
Bill Maher against Elon Pope.
Just imagine that.
I mean, just...
And you know, let me tell you something.
Two people, two people that do it right every single time.
And I think they're...
I think the most important person right now on any kind of platform, bar none in the world, is Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan stays in his lane, but Joe Rogan, what he doesn't know, he shows utter and absolute curiosity and a jaw-dropping sense of, wow.
And Lex Friedman.
The best.
Seeing Lex Friedman in the Amazon forest in a black...
Lex Friedman is the best.
It's the greatest...
It is so great.
The greatest minds in the world we're talking about.
When...
Oh my God.
When...
Eric Weinstein against...
Anyway.
But no.
Bring on Bill Maher.
And by the way, one more thing.
One more thing.
And this is my last little suggestion.
If you're going to get gooned, if you're going to get waxed, if you're going to get absolutely haloud on weed or whatever it is you're smoking, don't do it on radio, on talk shows.
Cat Williams, I was looking so forward to him on Joe Rogan's show.
Cat Williams went from, my God, he was great.
He was like Dick Gregory meets whatever.
And I can't wait to see him with Joe Rogan.
And he turned into like Thelonious Monk with a hangover.
And oh, you see, God is not the apparent God.
What was I going to say?
Anyway.
And when Bill was talking with Bill Burr, Mar Burr, when Mar said, when Bill Burr said, yeah, I'm with the kids.
And Mar didn't know, because he stoned out of his bejesus.
Don't do it.
It does not help.
Marijuana creates the illusion that what you're saying is profound.
Remember when Hemingway said, write drunk, but edit sober?
Well, don't go on talk shows when you're stoned.
And they're telling me that you think Biden is...
You know, I think that Biden is...
You know...
You know, he's just not.
Thanks, Bill.
Appreciate it.
Love it.
Alright, that's all.
Thanks for spending some time with me.
Thank you for letting me into it.
And by the way, what's my basis of expertise?
You're looking at it.
Alright, friends.
By the way, do me a favor.
Follow me on YouTube at Lionel Nation.
I would appreciate it.
I do this stuff all the time.
Nobody gets it.
No, no, no.
I'm telling you right now.
It's not because it's that, you know, rarefied or recherche.
No, it's because nobody gets it.
Because it's not obvious enough.
I talk about things that are frankly, well, sometimes a little bit different.
So anyway, thank you for your time.
And don't forget, my friends, as I always ask you, and please do it in this particular frame right here, comment.
▲
Export Selection