Bill Maher on wokeness and why having an older president isn’t a bad thing

CNN’s Jake Tapper speaks with Bill Maher about the comedian’s thoughts about wokeness, President Joe Biden, and former president Donald Trump. Maher’s show, “Real Time with Bill Maher” airs on HBO, which, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

42 comments

  1. Thank you for sharing this-Bill Maher is right up there as one of our favorites! He’s always so inspiring, always!

  2. Look at how old Warren Buffet is…the man is 90something and sharp as a tack and can out debate most people.

    1. Senile Joe has Parkinson’s and is going downhill fast, he can barely string together a few words and make a rational speech. But then Barry wants a brain dead fool in the White House so he, and the evil people around him, can run the country. Doctor Jill is enough of a whacko that she’s all in for Joe being president when he’s 86. The whole world can see exactly the situation in our country and is shocked that the leader of the free world, who has always been corrupt, will take down the USA and our allies. An 82 year old man should be in an assisted living facility where professional nurses can give him the care he needs !@!@!

  3. Being in the middle isn’t sitting in the fence, it’s using democracy, a hybrid of the conservative and liberal is always the best choice. You take the best pieces of both depending on the situation the country is currently in.

    1. Democracy would be a system that would allow you more than two choices…..
      democracy has nothing to do with taking “parts of both sides” there is more than two sides and if we had a real Democratic system with proportional parliamentary style politics instead that would be apparent to you. Democracy means one thing “rule by the people” whether those people are socialist, conservative, liberal, whatever, is irrelevant in what defines democracy.

    2. Being in the middle is being stuck. It’s not moving forward. It’s what’s destroying the US. The world moves on, yet your political system is hopelessly lagging behind. You’ve gone from a shining example, a leader, a country that was what others aspired to be, to a hopelessly outdated, stuck in the past, example of what other countries want to avoid to be. Conservativism is dragging you down.

    3. @Franklin a lot of countries are unions of states. It’s not special and it doesn’t mean our system has to work the way it does. Germany is a federal republic like we are but their system is much more proportional and democratic than ours.

  4. Agree about how woke loves diversity except for diversity of ideas. But this is true of the extreme right as well. Long ago I was into the music scene in and around SF. It was great fun until I ran into a rather unseemly crowd into a more extreme lifestyle, shall we say. They were supposedly the most liberal and the most non-conformist, the “cool” ones, but also the most hard core. I wasn’t into it so much and was pretty much dismissed. Thank God. I was independent enough to stay out of the hard drugs et al. I realized that these “non-conformists” were the most uptight and conformist people I’d ever met. They couldn’t accept anyone that didn’t fit into their paradigm. In the meantime an old conservative friend was much more forgiving of my occasional escapades. I learned an important lesson.

    1. It’s apparent you haven’t the slightest idea what woke means, then again, maybe you do. n his song written in 1938 about the Scottsboro Boys, nine black boys falsely accused of raping two white women, Lead Belly wrote as a warning to black people, “So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.” Lead Belly uses “stay woke” in explicit association with Black Americans’ need to be aware of racially motivated threats and the potential dangers of white America. Anti woke=anti black.

  5. “I believe these things, you change it and yell at me for it”……..neer has a truer phrase been uttered

    1. “Never has a truer phrase been uttered”???? Dude, GTFO! If you’re gonna lick his balls, do it on your own time, privately.

  6. Great interview. I respect both of them. They both seem sincere and intelligent. I liked Bills comments in regard to allowing and living well with disagreement,….yes, thicker skin AND more fun loving maybe IS the way.

  7. its true not all people get dementia at an old age…my grandmother lived to be 86, and she was sharp till her last day…and she wasnt like an intellectual…she didnt go to college…she was a rural woman…and a housewife…and yet she didnt get one sign of dementia…the thing about old age is that you can suddenly die…but younger people die suddenly to…so

  8. I’ve been a liberal all of my life. It’s odd how things change. We used to make a point of not identifying ourselves by race or gender. We wanted you to see us by more than what we looked like. Now, it’s the opposite. People want to be identified specifically as something. WHAT you are is now defining WHO you are. We got so intense, we ended up flipping the dial.

    1. @frisco21 As a Black woman who grew up in the 70’s I can say we (Blacks) were treated differently for no other reason than color. I’m not sure what country you lived in but being a female and Black in this country was and still is challenging.

    2. I’m pretty left-wing but have been called racist, sexist and transphobic because I believe that no one is sacred when it comes to making jokes. If someone tells me, “That’s not funny,” I reply, “It is to someone.”

    3. @Adrienne King …for sure, the world of equality I described was an ideal, not a reality. I am the first to admit this. Yet, in the 60s and 70s many of us really did strive to attain the goal of equality. But identity politics leaves me scratching my head. I would much rather see you as a person, and as a fellow American, than as an African American woman. I don’t think demanding to be seen primarily by my specific racial and gender identity helps move the “equality agenda” along. It’s a distraction, and an obstacle. At the end of the day, we’re all just people. Let’s embrace our common humanity and build a better world together.

    4. @Dean Fiora …Agreed. The old fall-back comedians use when they slay sacred cows with humor, eliciting an audience groan, is: _”Too soon?”_ It’s a handy deflection device that never fails to get a chuckle, while making no allowance for maintaining sacred cows.

    5. @frisco21 Denying I am a Black woman is watering down my identity. Why should I have to assimilate to be respected and treated equally? Why can’t I be proud of being African American? Do you insist the Irish assimilate and not refer to themselves as Irish Americans? The Italians? The Polish? Why must only African Americans dilute their ethnicity?

  9. I don’t like wokeness but when asked to define it doesn’t.

    Then quotes two examples that never happened. Well done Bill, your right wing audience punches the air.

    1. Are you referring to Lincolns named being removed from schools and statues of him being taken down because a quick google search says those indeed happened.

  10. Bill Maher, one of the many who knew Trump well enough in 2016 to predict much of what happened from 2016 to 2020, and even now.

  11. Love you both..you are honest and truthful….🏆
    in relationships….we all deal with good…bad….sad happy…truth..challenge..
    healthy…fun and .debates….all the time..keep it up with all you do🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🙏🙏🙏

  12. I watch bills show every week. The thing I’d say is you love it when you agree with him, but can be annoyed when you don’t. I’m fine with that. I don’t have to agree with him on everything. And ultimately, it’s just his opinion. He’s not the ultimate authority on anything. He’s just a guy with an opinion. Both conservatives and liberals can probably watch his show because you will find things you agree with him on and see well informed contrasting opinions

  13. Real time is a great political/comedy show. The recent segment on the taliban at the office is a great example of why it should have won awards every year. I look forward to the uncensored unscripted conversations with the variety of guests. I dont agree with Bill Maher on everything but that’s okay.

  14. Since many here seem to be asking for a definition of “woke” (rather malevolently, I would say) here a definition of what woke REALLY is: “Trying to impose to everyone else what YOU think is a solution to what YOU think is social injustice often using illiberal  or outright  fascist methods based on an ideology that is foreign to Liberal Democracy ie. post-modernist neomarxism.” There are other symptoms and manifestations of “woke” but the aforementioned definition covers well the root causes.

  15. One thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that unwise young people usually turn into unwise old people. In that respect Maher is right that age doesn’t matter.

  16. “You’ve changed these things and now you yell at me for it.”
    Bill on the defining of words.

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