Donald Trump was the center of attention at another red-state performance Saturday night, but this time he was on the receiving end of insults, not delivering them.
Bill Maher took his stand-up act to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a comedy show — broadcast live by HBO — before a crowd that defied heartland conservative stereotypes, cheering the mention of Bernie Sanders and the sudden resignation of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, an Oklahoma resident.
Besides hurling a boatload of barbs, the star of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" had something else in common with Trump, who spoke at a Montana rally Thursday: Maher urged the audience to vote, although he’s pulling for Democrats, not against them.
The comedian touched on many topics familiar to “Real Time” viewers, with more time to elaborate in a 65-minute standup show. Here are some of his likes and dislikes from a politically biting performance that seemed as much an effort to buck up and rouse viewers as it was to make them laugh:
Liberal Maher, born in New York and living in Los Angeles, embraces the heartland, where he frequently performs.
“I love the red states,” he told the cheering Tulsa crowd. “I miss sensible, middle-of-the-country liberals so much.”
He despises Trump.
Maher, whose longtime critique of Trump includes suggesting descended from an orangutan, acknowledged unimpressive presidential predecessors, but said, "We never had one like this who was so aggressively stupid, takes pride that you cannot get information into his head." He offered a vulgar suggestion about how Fox News host Sean Hannity might supply the president with information.
Maher’s not very happy with Trump's Republican supporters, either. “It’s not just the clown, it’s the circus. Donald Trump could not be where he is without all these enablers.”
Surprisingly, he has a soft spot for Vice President Mike Pence — but only because he’s not Trump.
“Of all the enablers that get under my skin, the one I hate the most is Mike Pence. He launders all of Donald Trump’s slime because he looks so Christian,” Maher said, slipping into a Southern accent for the final word.
But “when people say Mike Pence would be worse, I implore you to reconsider that. Mike Pence is the kind of loathsome Christian hypocrite that, if I didn’t hate religion already, I would start. But Mike Pence is not trying to become a dictator. … He can name all three branches of government. He is within the normal parameter of Republican awful. He’s not the head of a crime family.”
He doesn't like how Trump turned immigration into such a big political issue.
"We don't even have an immigration problem. We have a my-life-didn't-turn-out-the-way-I-wanted-to-so-I-blame-other-people problem. The greatest con the Republicans ever pulled on working-class Americans was convincing them it was the immigrants and single moms (who) were blocking their way to the American Dream."
Maher likes telling masturbation jokes but he doesn’t like or understand stories of fallen Hollywood powers accused of masturbating in front of women.
“As a comedian, I’ve been talking about masturbation on stage for a long time. The last year, for the first time in my life, when I talk about this subject, I have to spell it out: I was alone. I always assumed everybody knew masturbation meant you were alone. … I used to say I don’t understand women. I don’t understand men.”
However, he is pleased the disgraced men are getting their comeuppance and that the Me Too movement has achieved results.
“I hope women know that there are a lot of men who are very happy for you, that this reckoning finally came about and that your lives will always be better for it. I always hated bullies (and) sexual harassment is a particularly odious kind of bullying,” he said. “Every man is on notice. You’re playing with five fouls.”
The blunt Maher, whose 2014 invitation to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, ran into student accusations of religious bigotry and an effort to rescind the invitation (“Because they got wind I might speak freely”), does not like what he considers liberal political correctness, especially on college campuses.
“The nothing-is-funny people cannot win. We have to laugh. And the snowflakes keep wanting to move the goalposts on what can be funny,” he said. “When I was younger, we never had terms like microaggressions and safe spaces and trigger warnings. … When did everyone get so fragile?”
Of course, Maher's campaign advice to focus on economic arguments, not social and cultural ones, delivered in his signature rough-edged style, probably risked alienating some of the same Democrats he was encouraging to vote.
“Democrats, we’ve just got to win. We cannot blow any more elections, so next time, a little more about 'We’re going to bring your jobs back' and a little less about 'We’re going to make you pee next to a guy in a dress.' "
WPXI
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