As welcome as HBO’s Bill Maher’s revelation that the left has lost their mind on transgender ideology has been, he remains a stubborn liberal atheist who is determined to attack religious Americans. On Friday’s edition of Real Time, he ridiculed the idea that God saved Donald Trump from assassination as not only stupid but also “dangerous.”
Maher insisted that seeing God in Trump’s close call is just a severe form of confirmation bias, “People see signs because they want to see them. It's why stalkers think Taylor Swift is blinking ‘marry me’ to them in Morse Code.”
He also claimed that:
It gets dangerous when the signs make someone think God is on their side. Republican Congressman Mike Collins said after the shooting, ‘God spared Ronald Reagan for a reason. God spared Donald Trump for a reason. God doesn't miss.’
Really? Tell that to John Lennon, Lincoln, JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King. Look, the asshole who shot at Trump was cowardly, unpatriotic, selfish, vile, and weak, and he should rot in hell, but thinking that God protects your heroes but not mine? That isn't cool either.
King, in particular, would not find anything wrong with the idea that God saved Trump, but not him. On April 3, 1968, drawing on the Biblical story of Moses, he declared that he was unsure whether God would let him enter the Promised Land. He was assassinated the very next day. Ultimately, nobody knows why God chose to spare Trump’s life, but not any of those Maher listed, and that is ultimately his problem. He is just unwilling to accept “We don’t know” as an answer.
As it was, Maher continued, “MAGA Nation, because they are religious by nature and given to magical thinking, have been trending towards demigod worship for a while now. The shirts and flags and posters depicting ‘Trump the Redeemer.’ The crosses and religious imagery that were heavy in the crowd on January 6. But Trump didn't survive the attempt on his life because of divine intervention, he survived because a virgin couldn't hit the fattest president since Taft.”
Instead, Maher attributed Trump's survival to dumb luck, “again, make no mistake, I’m glad he couldn’t, but Trump is alive because he’s the single luckiest motherfucker who ever lived. His whole life is a string of ‘you gotta be fucking kidding mes.’”
Maher is concerned that claiming God spared Trump will lead to a cult-like Messianic complex being built up around him, but that is actually a different question. Genuinely recognizing that God is the giver and taker of life leads to humility. Reagan believed God saved him for a high purpose: in order to bring down communism, which, in hindsight, doesn’t look crazy at all. Maybe God will use Trump in some other way that currently escapes human comprehension.
Here is a transcript for the July 19 show:
HBO Real Time with Bill Maher
7/19/2024
10:53 PM ET
BILL MAHER: People see signs because they want to see them. It's why stalkers think Taylor Swift is blinking "marry me" to them in Morse Code. But it gets dangerous when the signs make someone think God is on their side. Republican Congressman Mike Collins said after the shooting, "God spared Ronald Reagan for a reason. God spared Donald Trump for a reason. God doesn't miss."
Really? Tell that to John Lennon, Lincoln, JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King. Look, the asshole who shot at Trump was cowardly, unpatriotic, selfish, vile, and weak, and he should rot in hell, but thinking that God protects your heroes but not mine? That isn't cool either.
MAGA Nation, because they are religious by nature and given to magical thinking, have been trending towards demigod worship for a while now. The shirts and flags and posters depicting "Trump the Redeemer." The crosses and religious imagery that were heavy in the crowd on January 6. But Trump didn't survive the attempt on his life because of divine intervention, he survived because a virgin couldn't hit the fattest president since Taft.
And I’m—and again, make no mistake, I’m glad he couldn’t, but Trump is alive because he’s the single luckiest motherfucker who ever lived. His whole life is a string of “you gotta be fucking kidding mes.”
