Bill Maher on Tuesday said Americans unhappy with the current direction of the country are like battered women that go back to their abusive lovers.
Chatting with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's "Last Word," the "Real Time" host also disgustingly claimed, "When they say they want their country back, that`s what they mean, really, is they want their country back to the appropriate time when a white person was in the White House" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, HOST: Now, serious question. Is it just a coincidence that our politics have gotten crazier since the election of a black president? Or is it the very existence of a black president that`s driving some of these people crazy?
BILL MAHER: Oh, I think it`s absolutely that that`s driving these people crazy. When they say they want their country back, that`s what they mean, really, is they want their country back to the appropriate time when a white person was in the White House. It`s called the White House, Lawrence. It`s not hard to figure out.
But I think it`s also just impatience. I mean, I don`t want to cast most Americans as being racist, but I think a lot of them are just dumb. I`m sorry, but they are. They are clueless about the issues. They don`t think further than things are not great, let`s have a change -- even though we just had a change two years ago.
I mean, they voted for this massive change two years ago. But because it didn`t immediately start raining $20 bills, they want to go back to the way it was. They remind me of a battered girlfriend, you know, who goes back to the guy who was battering them because, I don`t know, the new boyfriend forgot their birthday or something.
Honestly, the ignorance on display here was astonishing even for a factually-challenged person like Maher.
Ignoring that racism nonsense, which has sadly become standard fare for this nincompoop, the idea that things are better today than two years ago casts Maher as the one "clueless about the issues."
Two years ago the unemployment rate was 6.2 percent. Now it's 9.6 percent.
Two years ago there were 9.6 million people out of work. Now it's 14.8 million.
And this guy claims folks wanting to go back to that remind him of "a battered girlfriend, you know, who goes back to the guy who was battering them because, I don`t know, the new boyfriend forgot their birthday or something."
So I guess in Maher's twisted view, a 54 percent rise in the number of people unemployed is like a new boyfriend forgetting a birthday.
Of course, the real issue is broader than that, for Americans began this change when they gave Democrats control of Congress in 2007. The numbers since then are even more stark:
- In January 2007 before the Democrats took over Congress, unemployment was 4.6 percent; now it's 9.6 percent.
- In January 2007 there were 7.1 million unemployed people in America; now there are 14.9 million.
- In January 2007 the median home price was $210,600; today it's $179,300.
- In January 2007 the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 12,500; today it's at 11,000.
- In January 2007 the gross federal debt was $9 trillion; today it's $13.5 trillion.
- The poverty rate in 2006 was 12.3 percent; now it's 14.3 percent
- In the final budget created by a GOP-controlled Congress, the deficit was $160 billion; now it's $1.6 trillion.
Add it all up and: there were half as many people out of work then; houses were worth 17 percent more; stocks were 15 percent higher; the federal debt was 33 percent lower; poverty was 14 percent lower, and; the deficit was 90 percent lower.
But Maher thinks folks that want to go back to that are like battered women returning to their abusive lovers.
To give you an idea of just how off-base Maher was, even the liberal website Mediaite found this segment disturbing.
Now that's saying something.