On Friday's Real Time show on HBO, host Bill Maher made a number of incendiary attacks on President Donald Trump and other right-leaning figures and entities as he called EPA head Scott Pruitt an "eco-terrorist," likened the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to the "Gestapo," and cracked that First Lady Melania Trump visited the Holocaust Museum to "cheer up" after news broke that her husband might have had an affair with a porn star.
During the show's opening monologue, after bringing up the reports that porn actress Stormy Daniels may have had an affair with Trump, Maher pivoted to making light of Melania visiting the Holocaust Museum to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day as he added:
This is how bad it has gotten -- I'm not kidding. Instead of going to Davos with Donald Trump, her husband, Melania went to the Holocaust Museum. (pause) To cheer up. She signed the guest book, "I know the feeling." And she lit a candle to mourn the dark day two weeks ago when Trump's doctor said he was in good health.
Later in the show, as the panel segment discussed Republicans who have fretted over the possibility of a "deep state" in the FBI trying to undermine President Trump, Republican guest Rick Wilson -- known for frequently appearing on CNN and MSNBC to bash other Republicans -- suggested hinted that Republicans are racist as he declared that they "want the deep state when it's hunting brown people to deport."
After California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna complained about ICE enforcing immigration laws, Maher cracked: "I agree about ICE, you know, I mean, Trump may not be Hitler, but ICE is the Gestapo."
A bit later, as the government shutdown was being discussed, the HBO host began suggesting that the government was already shut down because there are a significant number of high-level positions that have been unfilled, and the liberal environmentalist in him excoriated the EPA's Pruitt. Maher: "And an eco-terrorist the head of the EPA, that kind of a thing, this is a government shutdown in motion."
Toward the end of the show, the HBO host showed a number of signs that were supposedly displayed at the liberal Women's March, including one that urged Melania Trump to kill her husband, the President. Maher read out loud: "Melania, ho to ho: Kill that John in his sleep."
Toward the end of the "Overtime" segment of the show, as the group responded to a viewer question about how liberals should counteract the more right-leaning media, after liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg brought up the possibility of telling people that "Sean Hannity sucks," GOP-bashing Republican guest Wilson and Maher dismissed the audiences of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh as "stupid" as they went back and forth:
RICK WILSON: I think it would actually enhance the sense of persecution and inferiority that drove a lot of lesser educated Republican voters into the hands of Fox and Rush Limbaugh, they were told, "You're smart, too."
BILL MAHER: But that's the Catch-22. You can't say, "You're stupid," but then they keep acting stupid.
WILSON: They're not stupid except for all the behaviors and beliefs that they're promulgating.
