Bill Maher Addresses Heated Political Rhetoric After Protestors Called Trump The Hitler Of Our Time: “Calling Somebody Hitler Makes It A Lot Easier To Justify Assassination”

Trying to turn down the political temperature.

That’s been a big topic of conversation this week in the wake of the horrific assassination of conservative media personality Charlie Kirk on Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University.

The shooter has since been identified as a 24-year old named Tyler Robinson, who comes from a conservative family, but his family said he had recently gotten into politics and expressed his hatred for Kirk and his political views, while appearing to have been radicalized in online forums. A friend of the shooter claims that he was the only member of his family to have left wing views and that he had become more radical in recent years, and the bullets found with the rifle used in the shooting were inscribed with messages referring to “fascists” and other phrases commonly associated with Antifa.

Obviously we live in an incredibly divided political time, where it seems that everything is a zero sum game and there’s no room for compromise or disagreement. And unfortunately a consequence of that is increasingly heated political rhetoric.

During the 2024 election, we heard especially pointed rhetoric directed at President Donald Trump, with the left calling him “Hitler” and “an existential threat” to our country. And it’s no wonder that language like that inflames tensions and makes people believe that they need to take action.

But Bill Maher opened up his show with a stark and somewhat surprising take, given the source, on where we are as a country when it comes to our heated political rhetoric:

“This sh-t has to stop too. [President Trump] went out to dinner. I wouldn’t have done that in Washington, DC. And people started to gather around him and they were chanting, ‘You’re the Hitler of our time.’

Ok, first of all a—holes, he’s not Hitler, an insult to everybody in the Holocaust to begin with.

Second of all, calling somebody Hitler makes it a lot easier to justify things like assassinations. Let’s put a sh-tload of that away.

I’m not saying he’s popular. He went out to dinner there in Washington, DC, the kitchen had to send out for more spit. But he’s not Hitler.”

Of course Maher has a unique perspective on Trump from most of his fierce critics. A couple months ago, he sat down for dinner with the president at the White House (at a meeting arranged by Kid Rock), and came away with a different impression of the man than he’s gotten from TV:

“He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public.

Look, I get it, it doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian. It matters who he is on the world stage. I’m just taking it as a positive that this person exists, because everything I’ve ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent, at least on this night with this guy.”

Maher gave several examples of disagreeing with the president to his face, and describes Trump as being thoughtful and taking interested in what he had to say:

“I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who were much less connected. People who don’t look you in the eye, people who don’t really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn’t track… None of that with him. And he mostly steered the conversation to, ‘What do YOU think about this?’ 

I know, your mind is blown. So is mine.”

And he also admits that he was far more relaxed talking to Trump than he would have been any of the Democrats he voted for:

“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted Clinton, and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it as you will. Me, I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days.”

Now, Maher didn’t exactly walk away from their dinner a MAGA fan. And he says that he wishes Trump behaved publicly more like he did in private. But he says that he walked away realizing that the person on TV may not be the real Trump:

“A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is f**ked up, it’s just not as f**ked up as I thought it was.”

And I think that really illustrates where we are as a society. We form an impression of somebody based on what we see on television or social media, without ever really getting to know them or find out what they’re really like as a person.

Because at the end of the day, I still like to believe that we have way more in common than we like to admit, or even realize. And it’s when we strip each other of that humanity that we see the violence that has unfortunately become all too common.The post Bill Maher Addresses Heated Political Rhetoric After Protestors Called Trump The Hitler Of Our Time: “Calling Somebody Hitler Makes It A Lot Easier To Justify Assassination” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.