(Un)Funny Man Maher and the Charming Donald Trump
“oh, what a card that Donny can be” - yeah, and Hitler loved dogs. So the fuck what?
Recently, the unfunniest comedian this side of Jay Leno, Bill Maher, sat down with Trump for dinner. Apparently, the half-witted Maher came away charmed by the fascist, rapist, thieving traitor.
This led to an exchange between me and two old friends from my days in the Manhattan DA’s Office, where we all three served initially in the Appeals Bureau, now known as the Appeals Division. Two of us were outraged. The third was not. He defended Maher, which outraged the two of us even further.
That friend, let’s call him Moe, suggested:
If you listened with an open mind (sorry Bill), Maher did confront Trump to his face on a few issues and said he’d continue with his public critique going forward.
The essential takeaway was that the “private” Trump who Kid Rock convinced to invite Maher to the dinner is different from the public persona. That, by the way, is hardly a secret.
So it’s not really evident what it means to have been “played” in this context beyond some version of the “anti-normalization” campaign used to ghettoize Jews and Israel. If you can see the person, it’s harder to maintain the caricature you have of him - and just maybe you can work with him on topics where you might find yourself in agreement.
Otherwise you have the political spectacles of AOC crying at the border cages under Trump and not giving a rat’s ass about their continuation under Biden. And a large chunk of the public then loses faith
My response to this friend’s suggestion was: “If you dance with Hitler you have the ashes of the Six Million on your lapels….”
Our other outraged friend, call him Larry, was more eloquent:
“I have never pretended to have an open mind when it comes to Trump. I wrote him off as a racist demagog in 2015 when I saw an interview during which he looked his interviewer straight in the eye and told her he had sent people to Hawaii to investigate Obama’s birth certificate and ‘you won’t believe what they’ve found.’ I confess at the time I also dismissed Trump as a celebrity clown. It took time for me to appreciate that he is also a sadistic sociopath who takes pleasure in the pain of others.
A caricature?
Blame Trump for leading rallies at which he laughs at Paul Pelosi’s being bludgeoned by a right wing lunatic.
A caricature?Blame Trump for causing a riot that resulted in the deaths of 4 cops and then pardoning the rioters.
A caricature? Ask members of his Cabinet: “a fucking moron” “the most damaged human being I've ever met” “facist to the core”etc . ..
Apparently Maher after a dinner during which Trump behaved civilly and flattered him by pretending to give a shit about his views on foreign policy came away with a more ‘positive’ opinion than he had before. Happy to hear that. Share the story with Abrego Garcia and the others sent by Trump without due process to Devil’s Island el Salvador.”
The time has come to fish or cut bait; either you dance with Hitler/Trump and brush the ashes off the lapels, or not.