Bill Maher talks Jan. 6, conservatives and 'woke' liberals before Pittsburgh show

Before Jon Stewart, before Stephen Colbert and before Trevor Noah, when political panel shows skewering politics and politicians were considered risqué television, acerbic comedian Bill Maher was blazing a trail of laughter with a show called “Politically Incorrect.”

The show aired on Comedy Central and later on ABC from 1993 to 2002 and paved the way for programs like “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report” and Colbert’s uber-political “Late Show” on CBS.

It also paved the way for “Real Time with Bill Maher,” a successful showcase for political satire that airs weekly on HBO. For nearly two decades, the show has made Maher a must-see TV personality and a hot ticket when it comes to live stand-up shows.

After not being able to go out on the road for over a year because of the pandemic, Maher started touring again last June.

Maher is back in Pittsburgh on Saturday for a performance at the Benedum Center (rescheduled from October 2020). He recently spoke to the Tribune-Review by phone from Los Angeles (you can listen to the full interview here). This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Question: You have made a very successful living skewering politics and politicians as you riff on the news. The news has been so bad lately, bad really for the last year and a half. Have you found it challenging to find things that an audience can truly laugh at?

Answer: No, quite the opposite. I mean they’re so hungry. First of all, they’re hungry to get out of the house and I hope they understand that we’re doing a very safe show. I think that’s the number one concern with people right now. It’s like, “Can I go to a show safely?” Well, I think you can. We certainly haven’t had anything happen from our shows. I mean I’ve never understood why an airplane was safer than a concert. Is it safer herding people into an enclosed metal tube with the recycled coughs and farts and spooning the guy in 32B involuntarily? So, anyway, now we’re in a different place, most people are vaccinated. I think it’s a very safe environment.

But also, people are just hungry to get out and to laugh and there’s a whole new panoply of things to laugh about. I mean the last time I was on stage before I got back on the road in June, Trump was president. It’s a whole new world, a whole new act and lots to make fun of and lots to laugh at.

Q: Do you wonder if Trump’s ever really going away?

A: I don’t wonder. He’s not. I keep saying he’s the shark that went out to sea. It’s like in “Jaws,” they didn’t kill it, it just went out to sea and it will be back at the beach to chew up more people. The thing is, he’s a narcissist. We know this, probably the worst narcissist ever. And you cannot break up with a narcissist. They break up with you. He’s Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.” I mean he still hasn’t conceded the election.

So, there’s no doubt in my mind that’s he’s going to run again. And of course he could win legitimately. That’s absolutely in the realm of possibility. And even if he doesn’t, can anyone really imagine a scenario where Donald Trump says ‘well, the votes are in, they’re legitimate and congratulations to Joe Biden’ or whoever’s running next time. Of course not. Every election, in his mind, is a foregone conclusion. He won and if he doesn’t, it’s rigged. And unfortunately, he’s gotten a good part of the country to be on that page. Even if it’s not him next time, whoever runs on the Republican side – that is their playbook now.

They are a one-issue party. Voting – they’re against it.

Q: Even as the details of the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 have become clearer, the condemnation of it has become less widespread and many Republicans have downplayed the riot and even begun treating it as a heroic act. Have we become allergic to the truth in America?

A: Yeah, I think all of that is true. You mentioned January 6 which, for my money, should go down in history with dates like December 7, November 22, September 11, I’m sure your sophisticated audience doesn’t need to have anyone explain what those dates mean. Same thing with January 6. We never had anything happen like that before and we’ve never had a political party that has been playing with the kind of fire that these guys are playing with. And there are still people in that party, smart people, who know better. I’m talking about guys like (Missouri Sen.) Josh Hawley and (Texas Sen.) Ted Cruz who went to Harvard and Yale. They know what happened. They just don’t care. Ted Cruz, his basic point of view was, “if there was any danger on Jan. 6, I would have been in Cancun.”

Q: It’s safe to say that you are a progressive on the issues, but people have noticed that you have been taking dead aim at the left lately and “woke” liberals as you call them. What has sparked this for you?

A: They changed. I didn’t change. Liberalism didn’t change. Wokeism is not liberalism. It’s very often the opposite of liberalism. We’re doing something this week at the end of the show about whether we should have two national anthems and I’m showing the clip of Barack Obama saying, “There’s no white America, there’s no Black America, there’s no Latino America, there’s one America. We’re the United States of America.”

Segregation, I’m an old school liberal. I’m against it. But wokeism is very often about the reverse of that. The traditional liberal view is “we don’t see color.” That’s the goal, a color-blind society. Now it seems to be to see it everywhere in everything. I don’t think this is leading to a good place.