On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher called for people to “rally the normies, which we now realize are still most of us,” after the 2022 midterm elections, and push back against extremes on the left and the right with “grand bargains” like people on the right conceding voter fraud “doesn’t exist” “and liberals will admit that getting a picture I.D. is not a Herculean burden that minorities can’t manage like everybody else, and which most don’t even object to.”
Maher said that after the election, “I feel like we’re having a not as crazy as we thought moment, let’s keep it going. Let’s rally the normies, which we now realize are still most of us, and bully the bullies on the extreme ends who are such a tiny part of us, and yet, thanks to social media and partisan politics, are able to hog the microphone and make everything suck. … All the normal Republicans who stepped up last week, great beginning, let’s keep it going. Don’t stay silent about insanity just because it’s coming from your team. Call out this conspiracy stuff, marginalize the people who believe in crisis actors and lizard people and who think Democrats eat babies or run pedophile rings. Jewish space lasers? I don’t even know what a Jewish space laser is, But I know even Kyrie Irving doesn’t believe in it.”
He continued, “We all need to call out the people of bad faith on both sides who pretend things they know are not true, like voter fraud. It’s been studied a million times, it doesn’t exist. There just aren’t hordes of people showing up in grey-haired wigs pretending to be dead people and risking prison to vote for Patrick Leahy. Voting twice? It’s hard enough to vote once. Okay, you admit that, and liberals will admit that getting a picture I.D. is not a Herculean burden that minorities can’t manage like everybody else, and which most don’t even object to. We need more grand bargains like that. Everyone’s always talking about how they’re tired of the extremists and how they long for compromise, then do it. Make deals. Stop flirting with authoritarianism, and we’ll stop flirting with Communism. Stop saying Democrats eat babies, and we’ll stop saying men can have them. Stop denying the ice caps are melting, and we’ll stop asking to disband ICE. Stop saying there’s a war on Christmas and we’ll admit Kwanzaa’s completely made up. Keep a lid on the Proud Boys and we’ll see what we can do about Kanye. Alright, let’s all agree to form a less psycho union.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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