Not surprisingly, Real Time host Bill Maher devoted his opening monologue Friday night to trashing President Trump and blaming him in light of last weekend's mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Maher implied that President Trump received a “story by” credit for the massacre in the killer’s manifesto.
Maher began by talking about how El Paso and Dayton are “still reeling from two disasters: a mass shooting, and a Trump visit.” After describing Trump as a “whiny little b***h,” Maher put himself in the shoes of a shooting victim who got a visit from the President: “imagine waking up from surgery...standing over you is this grinning, gaseous blob and his scowling trophy wife. People are like, sh** I must have died and went to hell.”
After mentioning that President Trump’s “press spokesman” claimed he was “treated like a rock star” at the hospital, Maher responded: “yeah, R. Kelly,” effectively comparing the President to a pedophile. Maher gleefully contradicted that account by bringing up how “none of the eight patients in the El Paso hospital would agree to meet with Trump.”
While Maher’s opening monologue contained plenty of material that delighted his left-wing audience, including a comparison of President Trump to “orange Jell-O” and a solemn declaration that “gun violence has paralyzed…the United States Congress,” nothing could have pleased the crowd more than Maher’s attempt to blame President Trump for the El Paso mass shooting. According to Maher, “the shooter in El Paso did it because all the things that Trump says all the time, he took to be true, like Mexico is invading us, that kind of sh**.”
Explaining to the audience that “in his manifesto, he wanted everybody to know that he wasn’t getting this from Donald Trump,” Maher offered up a different explanation: “He was getting it from Lou Dobbs, same as Trump.” Maher’s explanation hardly qualifies as unique; just days earlier, a Daily Show tweet referred to Fox News as the “audiobook” of the El Paso shooter. Maher reiterated the point that the shooter “wants you to know” his actions had “nothing to do with Trump” before claiming that “in the manifesto, Trump does get a ‘story by’ credit.’”
While Maher had no problem tying the El Paso shooter to President Trump, he remained mum on the political beliefs of the Dayton shooter; who described himself as a “leftist” and supported liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren. I guess Maher agreed with most of the legacy media that the American people do not need to know that information.
A transcript of the relevant portion of Friday’s edition of Real Time is below. Click “expand” to read more.
HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher
08/09/19
10:02 p.m. Eastern
BILL MAHER: What a shitty week. Right? Poor El Paso and Dayton, still reeling from two disasters: a mass shooting and a Trump visit. Just --- [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] Every…but not…every city in the…everyone is asking the same questions: Why? Why? Why? Why does his hair look like that? What the fuck? [LAUGHTER] Well, the President is off for a well, well-earned two-week vacation; which will be different from working how? [LAUGHTER] They want you to know, the President will be available at all times if there is an emergency that needs to be made worse. He is completely. [LAUGHTER] But on that…we, we, well, we know… [APPLAUSE] Well, we know now, this pattern that we have always seen. Whenever there’s a tragedy, it’s all about how he’s feeling. Right? It’s like, is he okay? This week…after, after the massacres…he attacked the media, Obama, Google, Sherrod Brown, the mayor of Dayton, Beto, California, Sleepy Joe, he’s the only President who thinks Consoler-in-Chief means you console him. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] And also, he’s a whiny little bitch.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
But seriously, Mr. President, don’t console us. Really. We don’t…I know, well intended…don’t console us and mostly, stay out of hospitals. Right? I mean, we have seen what he does in these situations like, you know, he threw paper towels to hurricane victims. What does he do in a hospital, throw Tylenol? [LAUGHTER] I mean, these poor people, imagine waking up from surgery and --- [LAUGHTER] -- standing over you is this grinning, gaseous blob and his scowling trophy wife. People are like, shit, I must have died and went to hell. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] They’re like, I’m in the hospital, I’ve had enough orange Jell-O. [LAUGHTER] But, of course, you can’t tell him he’s unpopular. His new press spokesman drank the Kool-Aid, said, oh yeah, Trump went into the hospital and he said they treated him like a rock star. Yeah, R. Kelly. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] MAHER: None, none of the eight patients in the El Paso hospital would agree to meet with Trump. Isn’t that something? They were --- [LAUGHTER] ---They were all asked, would you like to meet the President? And they all said, El Paso. [LAUGHTER] But --- [APPLAUSE] --- here is a sobering statistic. Gun violence has paralyzed 535 people in this country this year. They’re called the United States Congress. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] Come on, stay with me. A little faster than that. [LAUGHTER] No, Americans have made it clear they will endure school shootings, they will endure church shootings, but they draw the line at their shopping trips to Walmart. That is too far. So…well, the…the shooter in El Paso did it because all the things that Trump says all the time, he took to be true, like Mexico is invading us, that kind of shit. He took all that to be true. But in his manifesto, he wanted everybody to know that he wasn’t getting this from Donald Trump, no, no, no, he was getting it from Lou Dobbs, same as Trump. But --- [LAUGHTER] --- but what he did do, this guy, this shooter, he wants you to know, nothing to do with Trump. Although, in the manifesto, Trump does get a “story by” credit. But --- [APPLAUSE] --- it’s scary the way some of this stuff is going so mainstream. Tucker Carlson of Fox News says white nationalism is a hoax. You got to love Republicans. Global warming is a hoax. Russia, that was a hoax. White nationalism is a hoax. Hillary Clinton runs a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor, completely true. [LAUGHTER] That one we know is true. And Tucker’s evidence that white nationalism is a hoax, he says it’s because he never met one. Oh, come on, Tucker, yes you have.
