BILL MAHER DEFENDS HARRISON BUTKER AMID SPEECH UPROAR: ‘I DON’T SEE WHAT THE BIG CRIME IS'

Let's do a monologue. That was fun. So let's talk about Bill Maher. He's the only – giving away the surprise. He's the only other talk show host besides me that hasn't worn blackface. But the night is young.

 Ha ha ha! It is Fox. But weirdly, he's been saying stuff that I like hearing. 

Something is happening. Could this be the biggest 180 since Bruce Jenner replaced his track suit for a hoop skirt? No. Fact is, Bill's likely seeing a party go in a direction that deviates what we used to call sanity. And Bill and I have more in common than you think. We're both hosts of successful shows. We can both fold our legs behind our heads, and we both carry around Canadian quarters to give to the homeless. 

But we also agree on today's insanity. In Bill's great new book, he talks about presentism, which means judging everyone in the past by the standards of the present. He says it's like getting mad at yourself today for not knowing what you know now when you were ten. I feel the same way when I read my old diaries – to think I wanted to be one of Charlie's Angels. 

But I also feel that way when I read some of the stuff I wrote years ago, I can see that I let my concerns about terror mistakenly convince me that safety trumped freedom. Does Bill feel that way when watching older episodes of Real Time? I'd ask him if he were here tonight. Oh, wait. He is. See. Today. 

Today's world can create strange bedfellows. I mean, Bill Maher and Greg Gutfeld together. That's like Kat Timpf and Ozempic. Doctor Drew in Doctor Kevorkian. Dana Perino and Barack Obama. One loves to take dogs for a walk, and the other likes to cook dogs in a wok. That's right. President Obama wants a dog. I just have to remind everybody. But Bill's right. Judging the past against the present is pointless and lazy. Sure, people in the past might look ignorant compared to us now, with perhaps the exception of not letting women vote. Now, Maher adds that the left irritates and frustrates him, but the right alarms him. That's exactly how I feel about condoms versus impregnating my dog walker.

Instead of listening to the saner voices on opposing sides, we often focus on the nuts because it's fun. Protesters are more fun to expose than debating a nerd on the Middle East. God, that sounds boring. I'd be the one stepping in front of traffic. And likewise, it's easier for the Dems to focus on January 6th than the millions of decent people who think Trump is their guy. The question, however, is which crazies have more sway? The right's nuts come from below a fever swamp of Reddit and Q and on the left, though they come from above and they make progress. The Mayo Clinic just apologized for saying there are two sexes. Heads of children's schools announced will no longer use the terms boys and girls. A dude just creamed another slew of girls in a high school championship race, and they totally ruined Ghostbusters with an all-female cast. Call me old fashioned, but the only place women should be busting ghosts is in the kitchen. Oh, man. Bill is here for a few reasons. He's selling a book, which we never do at Fox. But also, when was the last time we had two normal people from different sides disagree in front of other people? 

There you go. So here. Here. The goal is to understand and not undermine. To see that people at Fox aren't bad***t crazy, and people over there aren't all transgender pro-terror bike messengers. Some of them are just cross-dressers. But there's one thing we might always disagree on, and that's Trump. Even though I can't argue with Bill over Trump's personality. Sure, Trump has no filter, but neither do the joints that Bill smokes. It's true.

That's Trump. He insults people, but I insult people. Hell, if I stopped insulting people, what would be left of this show? 

And yet, Trump's deeds often defy his bluster. He's the most anti-war president I've seen. And unlike Joe and Hillary, he goes after individuals in power, not the masses. He doesn't slam millions of people as racist. Perhaps because in his mind, he still thinks he could win him over. He's a populist, and in a world where the elites locked us down, then went to find a restaurant that matters. Point is, it's the elites not the populist who pushed insane Covid measures, reverse discrimination and child mutilation under the ruse of gender affirmation. True, Trump refuses to concede elections. He's like an athlete who's convinced the umps were rigged. If only the other side did the same thing. 

Now people say Trump traffics in hate, but I think he's got competition. 

Well, that speech was as united to America as Lorena Bobbitt was to a penis. But. Sorry, Dana, but the big criticism, the big criticism is that Trump lies. Fine. But as opposed to who? Obama and Hillary brought us three years of Russiagate. Joe says the number one threat is white supremacy, the border is secure and inflation was 9% when he took over. Those are double whoppers with extra cheese. This guy got elected on the ‘fine people’ hoax, pushed the Trump said drink bleach hoax, he claims he was arrested marching for civil rights, top of his class and law school runner up, state scoring champ in football. Yet the only proof he played football is the brain damage. What? Oh, I know that was mean. 

What does Trump lie about? Things like the size of the crowd at his inauguration or his penis not looking like a shiitake? I mean who among us? I tell everyone my audience is huge and that I bent it playing football. People also call Trump a clown. Fine. But when you work in a circus, why not be the clown? It beats cleaning up after the elephants. The government's a circus, and the idiots are the ones who give it the respect it deserves. Look, no one's asking you to love the guy. Great leaders are always hated. Bill Parcells players hated him. The same with Vince Lombardi. And of course, there's Joe Jackson. Fact is, the guy you hate might be better at the big issues than the guy who claims his uncle was eaten by cannibals. Either way, I don't expect to change Bill's mind on Trump, but that's the point. Not everyone's going to agree. And if you do have everyone agree with you on every single thing, you're going to be very, very lonely.

You're going to be very lonely. Very lonely if you want everybody to agree with you. Which explains why Joy Behar goes through three vibrators a month.