Maher Says Republicans Disrespect America More ‘Than Any Football Player Ever Could,’ (Video)

On Friday’s “Real Time,” Bill Maher ended the show with an edition of “New Rules” that laid into politicians, especially Republicans, who seem to hate everything about America and half the people in it. He also dinged certain people on the left for views he thinks are also far too negative about the country.

“Because honestly, I don’t know why the people who are fighting for this country so hard even want it anymore,” he said.

“Republicans: I’ll start with you, because I really want to know, what do you like about America? It’s not democracy,” Maher continued. “You stand with a president who tried to pull a coup. And a dozen Republican nominees for Senate and governor in this year’s mid terms say they absolutely will not commit to accepting the results.”

“Elections only count when we win them? That’s what America is to you now? That shows more disrespect for the flag than any football player ever could,” Maher said. He then noted Senator Mike Lee of Utah, one of several Republicans who have said “we’re not a democracy.” “No, not the way you want to run things.”

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“This year at least 27 states have introduced or enacted laws that restrict voting. If you say you love America, don’t you also have to love the idea of everyone getting to vote? Don’t you have to love the peaceful transfer of power?” Maher added.

“Republicans remind me of the trophy hunters who say they love wildlife. Yeah, then why do you shoot it? Republicans used to be the rule of law people, and lionize the officers who upheld it. But when rioters stormed the citadel and symbol of America on Jan. 6, most Republicans took their side. And not the side of the police, over a hundred of which were wounded. F— the police, that is the clarion call of the Republican Party now?” Maher posited.

“When did the GOP become NWA,” Maher joked.

“And then there’s the FBI. Steve Bannon says that they’re the Gestapo. Marjorie Taylor Greene says that they should be defunded. Congressman Paul Gosar says ‘we must destroy the FBI.’ What? The FBI is not America now,” Maher discoursed.

Maher then took a detour to dunk a little on the FBI: “FBI agents are so square that they yell ‘fore’ when they ejaculate They think matching windbreakers are cool. Their flag pins have flag pins.”

“And the military,” Maher noted, returning to the point. “They used to be the same category. The bedrock of the super patriot crowd. But Trump began his first campaign by doing something that up to then was unthinkable: He mocked and derided a war hero, a Republican war hero, who’d been shot down, imprisoned and tortured.”

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“And it was not a bridge too far for Republicans. They shrugged and walked across it. As they did when Trump called the Joint Chiefs ‘losers.’ And our soldiers who died in World War 1 ‘losers,'” Maher reminded viewers.

“Ted Cruz calls today’s troops pansies, and Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters says that our generals are ‘left wing corporate bozos.’ That’s the patriotic view of our military brass?” Maher asked. “Maybe that’s why Trump said that he wished they acted more like the Nazi generals we fought in World War II. Yeah, we won that one, by the way.”

“So,” Maher uttered as he started to bring the thing to a point,” I ask again. If you don’t like democracy, voting, the FBI, military and cops, what about America do you like? Oh, I know, the constitution. That’s right, the grand old– what’s that? Congresswoman Lauren Boebert says what? She says, ‘I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the constitution.”

“But it is in the constitution,” Maher correctly pointed out, “and it’s another one of those pillars of this country that, if you don’t believe in it, it makes me wonder why you’re fighting so hard for this place at all.”

Maher explained that this stuff “is what is so odd about this time that we’re living in. For all the talk about ‘fighting for the soul of America,’ nobody seems to like it all that much. Too many liberals give the impression that to them, America is just a big ugh. The red, white and ew. The country that started out bad and will always be bad. Founded on an unrelenting history of sucking. And unable to change.”

“But,” he countered, ” we have changed. A lot.” Maher then describe how Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush tweeted “This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free” on July 4, 2021.

“Not that I give a s— about the fourth of July, I’ve never been a rah-rah guy. But I am a perspective guy. And that’s what too much of the left has lost: Perspective.” Maher noted a recent poll showing that 72% of young Black people are much more optimistic about America than that. He also joked that “we could change the name of Captain America to Captain Stolen Land.”

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Maher then suggested that people who participate in what is known as land acknowledgement, where they note the people who lived in a given place prior to European colonization, need to “either give it back, or shut the f— up.” He also took issue with a statement by Jamaal Bowman bowman criticizing capitalism, which he said is “kind of synonymous with America. If you don’t like it, I don’t know how you can say that you love this country.”

“You know who loves this country? You know how’s not constantly complaining about what happened 200 years ago, and who’s not obsessed with seeing America through s–t-colored glasses, and shaking off the stench of what privileged and irredeemable a–holes we all are? Immigrants,” Maher opined as he approached the end of the bit.

“Ask any of them why they came here, and they’ll tell you the same thing: Ron DeSantis put me on a plane,” Maher quipped. “But they will also tell that America, for all that’s so s—-y about it right now, is still the last, best hope, and those people asking for our votes to take it over, should remember that.