Note to MSNBC: When you've lost Bill Maher... well, they lost Bill Maher a while ago, but they should listen when he warns them about their glass houses and penchant for throwing stones.
Bill Maher scolded an MSNBC host who called Trump supporters at odds with "reality," retorting, "There's a lot of crazy on the left," too.
The liberal comedian was a guest on MSNBC's "The Beat With Ari Melber" on Wednesday when Melber commented on the differences in reactions between Trump's base and "normal, reality-adjusted" persons to the Georgia election interference hearings against Donald Trump.
Maher pushed back against Melber's dig at the former president's supporters. "I got to stop you and say, I don’t think this helps, the media world that we live in, where we sit here and everybody else is just a deplorable who's—reality challenged," he responded.
Let's take a moment and examine some work on loony leftists from our own RedState scribes:
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The Left Has a Cognitive Disconnect When It Comes to Getting What They Voted For
Tapper Perplexed by Biden's Policies Failing to Persuade Americans, NPR Host Insists She Knows Why
The Authoritarian Left Has a Dangerous Vision for Free Speech in America
Let's be perfectly frank about two things: Yes, the right has some nuts, too, and yes, many - maybe most - people tend to exist in a bubble of media and opinions they are already comfortable with. That's what Maher is, correctly, warning Ari Melber against.
Maher implored MSNBC viewers to "try to understand" why half the country still supports the former president.
"I think it would be helpful if the people who watch this would see that. Just crack a window a little bit, and you maybe understand why people would — you have to try to understand why half the country is looking to Donald Trump as some sort of savior. Yes, it’s not what we think, but, you know, people are not self-deporting in this country. Half the country isn’t going away. Even if the Democrat wins the next time, they’ll still be here, and they'll still have these views. And some of them are not crazy," he argued.
Bill Maher has been and always will be a leftist himself; there is no evidence of him being red-pilled in this interview or anywhere else. But what Maher is, is a realist, at least to the extent that he recognizes that there are reasonable, rational, intelligent, and sane people who disagree with the left and that leftists discount that at their peril. He understands that, even to the point of acknowledging unfair media coverage of the Biden and Trump families:
"If Don Jr. had done the things that Hunter Biden did, he would be [covered in the media] every day. If they found cocaine in the White House? Whose could it be? Who does cocaine around here. We can’t figure it out?" he joked.
The political right has some great intellects: Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, Thomas Sowell, and Art Laffer, for example, as well as the late Milton Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, and, of course, Senator Barry Goldwater. There are many more, but bandwidth prevents the presentation of a complete list. These people, and people like them, are the ones that the left desperately tries to deny the existence of.
It is in the interest of neither side to pretend that the other doesn't have some intellectual firepower, although it's fair to say the current presidential administration seems to be rather short on that attribute.
Of course, it's also fair to say that Maher has indulged in some nasty rhetoric as well; he's firmly in the "J6 Insurrection" camp, even going so far as to blame it on, of all things, Christianity. He has also ranted against the Second Amendment in the past, and there's little evidence his views there have changed.
Sorry, Bill, but that's quite a bit of the loony you were just cautioning Ari Melber and other leftists against.
Mr. Maher is correct to warn MSNBC against throwing stones. But he should also take one more look at his own glass house.
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