Bill Maher and Larry Wilmore Blast Biden ‘Condescending’ Race-Centered Speech to College Graduates
Screenshot via Club Random
Bill Maher and Larry Wilmore dismissed a recent commencement speech by President Joe Biden as “condescending” and said it paled in comparison to one given by Barack Obama at the same college.
Wilmore joined Maher for the latest episode of the Club Random podcast and during a discussion on race in politics, Maher brought up Biden’s commencement address to Morehouse College graduates in Atlanta, Georgia last month. Biden told the crowd that an “old ghost and new garments” are trying to take power and threatening their “freedoms.”
“What did you think of Biden’s speech at [Morehouse]?” Maher asked.
Wilmore shook his head in disapproval, to which Maher agreed.
“I didn’t like it,” Wilmore, the former host of The Daily Show, said.
Maher argued the speech was “night and day” to a commencement address from Obama at the same school that focused more on hope.
“Obama’s was all about so many doors have been broken down, you have so many good reasons to hope, and no more excuses, and when it went over way better. Of course, it’s obviously a different standard he’s working from as a Black man speaking at that college, but Biden’s was so just so, I thought, 2000-late,” the Real Time host said.
“It’s condescending,” Wilmore added, recalling Al Gore similarly turned him off in the 2000 election making similar “condescending” remarks.
The two later revisited another controversial moment from Biden in which he told radio host Charlamagne tha God “you ain’t Black” if you don’t vote for him. The president has expressed regret over the remark since.
“That is such a bad attitude,” Maher said of Biden’s remark.
Wilmore recalled hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2016 and crying after writing about Obama being the first Black president.
“I live in the world of aspiration, not desperation because I know those things exist,” the comedian said. “I’ve talked about them, I make jokes about them, always keep it in perspective of if you want to build something, you don’t want to just put bandaids on things in your life, you also want to build things in your life too, and you build things by being inspired.”
Watch above via Club Random.
