Awesome / Real Time with Bill Maher

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• To many, including some of his Conservative detractors, Maher's continuous criticism of the 9/11 Truth Movement. During a taping of Real Time in October 2007, he was heckled by a group of Truthers who continuously interrupted his show by yelling out their theories. After only a few minutes, Maher got off stage and confronted the hecklers himself and then ordered them out of his studio.
• November 7, 2008: After Barack Obama's win in the 2008 presidential election, Bill uses the New Rule "Harass Backwards" to chastise the Republicans after their defeat, and what they should do for Obama's presidency.
  Bill: You know, when Obama starts a pre-emptive war, and then fucks it up, and makes torture our official policy and outs a CIA agent, and purges U.S. Attorneys, and tries to put his cleaning lady on the Supreme Court—and doesn't act on global warming, and appoints as the head of FEMA an ex-dildo salesman who was his college roommate—you know, that kind of stuff, believe me, I'll be with you. But, until then, I don't want to see Republicans freaking out if Obama isn't singing the National Anthem loud enough, or they find out he gets his suits made in France. If he puts a moon roof in the presidential limo, he's not making himself Führer; he's just trying to get the smell of stupidity out of the seats.
• March 11, 2011: Bill uses the New Rule "Wage Against the Machine" to criticize shows like Secret Millionaire and Undercover Boss, which seem to glorify the massive wealth gap between upper class Americans and everyone else.
  Bill: We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same, like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they'll explode, and the candy will rain down on the rest of us, like they're some sort of pinata of benevolence. But here's the thing about a pinata, it doesn't open on its own, you have to beat it with a stick.
• April 8, 2011: In the New Rule "Charlie Don't Serf", Bill urges Americans to stand up to the corporations who have been abusing the American socioeconomic system. Bear in mind that this was less than 6 months before the first Occupy Wall Street rally.
• June 7, 2013: Bill's brilliant takedown of Donald Trump for his birther attack against President Obama in the last weeks of the 2012 presidential election.
• February 28th, 2014: Bill positively and deservedly eviscerates the super rich who are claiming they're victims (one of whom goes so far as to horridly compare the 1% to the Jews being persecuted by the Nazis). Bill goes on to suggest that someone in Congress should bring up the idea of a maximum wage to force income equality, as many presidents did suggest in their respective terms.
  Bill: What can you buy with two billion dollars that you can't buy with one? You couldn't spend that kinda cash if you lived forever and your money manager was MC Hammer. And, y'know, there are some billionaires who get that, and that's why they give most of their money away. (shows pictures of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) As Warren Buffett once said, 'I should write a book on how to get by on $500 million, because apparently, there's a lot of people who don't know how to do it.'
• June 6, 2014: In "Here Comes Gunny Boo-Boo", Bill takes on advocates of "Open Carry", who effectively terrorize their neighbors by taking their guns wherever they go, criticizing American gun culture.
• November 14, 2014: Because the 2014 midterms had the lowest voter turnout since 1942, Bill takes down the apathetic non-voters who sat the election out, offering a mostly-humorous idea of what would have happened if the 2008 and 2012 elections had similar turnouts, meaning Obama would have lost to John McCain or Mitt Romney (whom Bill combines into candidate "Mitt McCain").
  Bill: But keep telling yourself that because politics is dirty, so very dirty, that you, precious, by not voting or informing yourself or participating in any way, are clean. Yeah, that’s it. You’ve kept yourself pure, because you haven’t gotten your hands sullied by the gutter that is American politics. Well, you can keep telling yourself that. But, the truth is, if your hands aren’t dirty, it’s not because you’re pure. It’s because you’re not helping.
• November 11, 2016: In the wake of Donald Trump becoming the next president, Bill makes a call to action to everyone who's afraid or nervous:
  Bill: You can unfriend someone whose politics you don't like. You can't unfriend 47% of the rest of America. Roommates can move out. Patriots can't. America needs you, more than ever. Right here, with me, and the rest of the resistance, until we can really figure out how to make America great again. And don't ever let them forget: (dons a "We're Still Here" hat and looks directly into the camera) We're still here.
• His monologue after Donald Trump's first hundred days in office, where he viciously calls out the hardcore left-wingers who opposed Trump during the 2016 election, but also refused to vote for Hillary Clinton because she wasn't quite progressive enough for their tastes. Turning his criticism towards everyone who insisted that Clinton and Trump were the same, he recaps all of Trump's major political actions over the first 100 days of his presidency and earnestly asks if they genuinely believe that she would have done the same.
  Bill: Before the election, Edward Snowden tweeted "2016: A choice between Donald Trump and Goldman Sachs". Yeah, so what happened? The anti-Wall Street crowd who was "too pure" to vote for Hillary ended up putting Goldman Sachs people as Trump's chief political strategist, the head of his economic council, and our Treasury Secretary—the trifecta. The only people he hasn't hired from Goldman Sachs are Goldman and Sachs. If Hillary were President now, would we be turning the clock back on the one issue for which there is no more time—climate change? Would we be having to wonder if our President's love of dictators foreshadows some kind of coup here? Would anyone have to wonder if she was Putin's bitch? And instead of trying to kick millions off healthcare to pay for a tax cut for herself, she'd be trying to raise her own taxes to get more people covered. On so many issues, she wouldn't be complaining "It's complicated! Who knew?" She knew. She loves "complicated". She's a reader. Do you really think if "just as evil" Hillary had been elected, conservatives would now be in control of the Supreme Court—as they will for decades? Just wait until the 5-to-4 decisions start rolling in gutting unions, making it harder for minorities to vote, siding with polluters, overturning abortion rights. Then maybe you'll join me in saying to the liberal purists: go fuck yourselves with a locally-grown organic cucumber.
• Bill on the receiving end for once when Ice Cube tactfully explains why white people don't have N-Word Privileges.
• "Howie Wrong" from February 8, 2019, takes aim at the notion that both political parties are equally to blame for the current state of US politics, calling out the rampant dishonesty and faulty logic that plagues the current GOP, and notes that what happens within the Democratic Party is nowhere near equal to what is accepted inside the Republican Party:
  Bill: Howard Schultz says both sides engage in "revenge politics", but it wouldn't have even occurred to Democrats that you could simply refuse a President to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Mitch McConnell did that. He said, "I know it's in the Constitution. I don't care, make me." Both parties are not extreme, that's extreme. Al Gore conceded the 2000 election for the good of the country. Would Bush have? Would Trump? Only one party thinks it's okay for Presidents to have a side gig as a Russian agent! Trump fired the head of the FBI for doing his job with the Russian investigation, then he had the Russians over and laughed about it. That's not a bi-partisan problem. If Obama did it, he'd be in Supermax now trading cigarettes with the Unabomber. And are you really going to tell me that both sides are equally to blame for the state of the environment? One party trusts the science on climate change and the other asks "How can the Earth be warming if I'm holding a snowball?" So when you say they're both equally bad, just know that doesn't make you a sage. It's a stupid person's idea of a smart thing to say. It's a cheat that says you're above it all, when you're really just too lazy to tell shit from shinola. And it is the central fraudulent idea that allowed an outsider like Trump to get elected. It's one step up from "I don't vote." It's like claiming "I don't read" makes you smarter, and "I don't shower" makes you smell good.

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