MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle traveled over to HBO and Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday to discuss the Trump Administration, Harvard, and the recent firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado. While Maher and The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg tried to take a nuanced approach to the issue, as well as with Trump’s fight with Harvard, Ruhle was more rigid as she insisted we should not “set government policy based on what one horrible individual in a terrible act” did.
After Maher and Goldberg observed that there were red flags that should have suggested the Boulder terrorist was no good, Ruhle lamented, “But now we have become so divided and so angry we are meeting hate with hate and one could reasonably argue a guy like Stephen Miller shouldn't be the one deciding what decency is. And we should be able to come together and say, rather than just fight more hate, how do we get to be pro-decency? Pro compassion? And actually love? Because when you talk about patriotism, patriotism is about love of country and when I hear this administration talk about the things that they — it's all about the grievance and anger. If you get us back to a place of common decency and loving thy neighbor, it's not about anti-immigration it’s about—”
Maher then jumped in with an obvious point, “Okay, but I can just imagine people out there hearing this and saying, ‘Well, the guy with a flamethrower, he wasn't exactly full of love.’”
Ruhle would not be moved, “He wasn't full of love for that's somebody who is rolling their eyes and dismissing the idea of love and the actual idea of love; there's nothing more powerful. It's what starts wars; it’s what ends wars.”
Again, Maher quipped, “Well, flamethrowers are very powerful.”
While this conversation was happening against the backdrop of funding for higher education, Trump’s response to Boulder was the travel ban. Either way, Ruhle was upset at the notion that somebody would propose doing something different, “Flamethrowers are very powerful, but we're not going to set government policy based on what one horrible individual in a terrible act—we should be thinking about the victims and what do we need to do to protect them?”
Goldberg then turned back to the problem with universities and suggested Ruhle was in denial, “I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, but at the same time you have lots of college campuses, including these elite schools, that do not teach patriotism and love of country. It’s this narrative of colonial oppressors, you have schools bending over backwards to police speech where if you say ‘men can’t get pregnant’ you get kicked out or thrown into reeducation but if you say ‘Gas the Jews,’ you got ‘Well, you got to hear both sides. Free speech’ and all that kind of stuff. That stuff matters too.”
It does. Ruhle is appealing to patriotism in order to defend people who are inherently unpatriotic. Even if one agrees with Maher and Goldberg that Trump's approach has been counterproductive, the problem is universities have had decades to reform themselves, and, just like Ruhle, they chose to bury their heads in the sand instead and are now in need of a wake-up call. That, fundamentally, is not Trump's fault.
Here is a transcript for the June 6 show:
HBO Real Time with Bill Maher
6/6/2025
10:38 PM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: But now we have become so divided and so angry we are meeting hate with hate and one could reasonably argue a guy like Stephen Miller shouldn't be the one deciding what decency is. And we should be able to come together and say, rather than just fight more hate, how do we get to be pro-decency? Pro compassion? And actually love? Because when you talk about patriotism, patriotism is about love of country and when I hear this administration talk about the things that they — it's all about the grievance and anger. If you get us back to a place of common decency and loving thy neighbor, it's not about anti-immigration it’s about—
BILL MAHER: Okay, but I can just imagine people out there hearing this and saying, “Well, the guy with a flamethrower, he wasn't exactly full of love.”
JONAH GOLDBERG: No.
RUHLE: He wasn't full of love for that's somebody who is rolling their eyes and dismissing the idea of love and the actual idea of love; there's nothing more powerful. It's what starts wars; it’s what ends wars.
MAHER: Well, flamethrowers are very powerful.
RUHLE: Flamethrowers are very powerful, but we're not going to set government policy based on what one horrible individual in a terrible act — what we should be thinking about the victims and what do we need to do to protect them?
MAHER: It’s not just one.
GOLDBERG: I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, but at the same time you have lots of college campuses, including these elite schools, that do not teach patriotism and love of country. It’s this narrative of colonial oppressors, you have schools bending over backwards to police speech where if you say “men can’t get pregnant” you get kicked out or thrown into reeducation but if you say “gas the Jews,” you got “Well, you got to hear both sides. Free speech” and all that kind of stuff. That stuff matters too.
