Bill Maher is an interesting character. One moment, the HBO host is torching Donald Trump to a charcoal briquette; the next, he sounds like he’s writing a plank for the 2020 Republican Party platform.

During the panel discussion on this week’s “Real Time,” Maher assumed the role of the latter, arguing that the Wuhan virus lockdown and “closing down an entire country for months” are responsible, in part, for the continual rioting and overall unrest across America.

Maher also seemed to suggest that the nation’s police departments have been stressed to the max by night after night of violence.

This lockdown that we’ve been living with — do you agree with me? — that this has a lot to do with the unrest in the streets? That when you coop people up and when they have no hope and no job, that they — why not go out in the streets?

I wonder what America will look like, what police departments look like if they have to fight this all the time.

Ah, but “Maher the Conservative” wasn’t finished. The liberal comedian went on to sound as if he were channeling one of Trump’s money guys — Steve Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow, or both.

The usually diehard liberal warned that the shuttering of “100,000 small businesses” and the virus’s impact on the worldwide economy could ultimately be responsible for more deaths than the virus itself, including “hundreds of thousands of children.”

It almost is about what in the long run is going to cause more death. The head of the U.N. said a couple of weeks ago he expects hundreds of thousands of children to die because of what we did to the economy.

I know they’re not all Americans so they don’t count as much to Americans, but I think that matters somewhat.

Maher is not alone.

As we reported in late May, Psychiatrists and mental health officials warn that a mental health crisis spawned by Wuhan virus fears and long lockdown could be the next pandemic facing America. We cited an article in the Wall Street Journal, which reads, in part:

Health concerns, social isolation and the stress of job losses are taking a toll on people’s well-being. More than one-third of Americans say the pandemic is having a “serious impact” on their mental health, according to a survey released March 25 by the American Psychiatric Association. Among parents with children under 18, 46% rated their average stress level related to the pandemic as 8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale, according to a survey the American Psychological Association released May 21.

Anyway, lest you think Maher has turned in his liberal credentials in exchange for a “Make America Great Again” cap, think again.

During an opening monologue in early April, in which he called Trump the “Worst Responder” as the pandemic spread, Maher joked that he had no symptoms of the virus, “except if you count sh***ting my pants every time Trump talks.”

He’s not FDR or JFK, he’s LOL. So it’s more than a little disturbing that he’s getting a bump in the polls around this. A bump that tells us we’re once again entering into ‘rally around the leader’ time. Around the guy who made it worse.

As for Maher’s brief moment of clarity, while he suggested there will be “blood in streets” regardless of which candidate wins the election, he suggested that it just might be more likely if Trump wins.

Whoever wins in November — be it Trump or be it Joe — there’s gonna be blood in the streets, right? I mean, if Trump wins, I can’t imagine the kind of demonstrations we saw the last week not repeating themselves.

And if he doesn’t win, we already know Trump’s statements. I can read you his statements about tough people. … ‘I have the support of the police, the military, the bikers. […]

‘I have the tough people. They don’t play it tough until they,’ meaning Democrats, ‘go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad.’ That sounds to me like an invitation for the tough people to get in the streets.

And there it is.

Allow a liberal who’s momentarily sounding like a conservative to talk long enough, and sooner or later, he or she will revert to form. Every time. But, hey — we knew all along that this was all going to be Trump’s fault in the end, didn’t we?