Bill Maher and NY Times’ Dave Leonhardt Mock ‘Moron’ Trump Fans Dying of Covid — And Liberals Who Wear Masks Too Much
Comic and pundit Bill Maher and NY Times “The Morning” newsletter author Dave Leonhardt mocked “moron” supporters of President Donald Trump and liberals for their respective responses to Covid.
On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host teamed up with Leonhardt to slam “moron” Trump supporters for not taking the Covid vaccine and dying as a result — but also to slam “performative” liberals for wearing masks more often than the duo thinks they should:
MR. MAHER: Seventy-eight percent of the people who are hospitalized or died had, were obese. I mean, it’s just it’s just it was killing most people before COVID, but just slowly. And then it was, of course, elderly, 75 percent are over 65. And then it’s unvaccinated. So yes, if you’re one of those red state Trumpers who’s a moron, who thinks that Bill Gates put a chip in the vaccine and you just want to own the libs by not getting vaccinated, and you’re old and obese, you’re going to die from this. You’re going to get it, and you’re going to die because everyone’s going to get it. The new one is more transmissible. It gets more transmissible, basically, and less severe, in general.
MR. LEONHARDT: When you look across the country at counties, which I think is sort of a better way to do it because obviously, New York state has a lot of conservative counties and Florida has some liberal counties. What you see is a huge difference in deaths, right? Huge difference. Red counties have much, much higher death rates. Because they’re not taking the vaccine. And you can see virtually no difference in case rates during Omicron, even though when you look at things like restaurant reservations, mask wearing in liberal communities, people aren’t going out to eat. They haven’t been for months. Much, much lower restaurant things. And they’re wearing masks. They’re not wearing them that well. You put those two things together.
What it tells me is there are all kinds of things that liberal America is doing out of very good instinct that make very little difference, and that the vaccines really work and save lives. And by not taking them, conservatives are damaging themselves and damaging the country. And the word you use, balance, I think, is perfect. I think conservatives haven’t taken COVID nearly seriously enough. And I think liberals, if we’re being honest about this, have some performative aspects of the COVID response, wearing masks because it feels like a badge of I’m a progressive. Even though a lot of those masks, particularly with Omicron, which is so contagious, are doing very little to protect people. I’m not anti-mask, wear one. If you go into a nursing home, if you’re going to a hospital, wear a KN95 or an N95, but don’t think that these mask mandates, where you wear some cloth mask into a restaurant and then you take it off so you can eat, is doing anything.
Watch above via HBO.
