Bill Maher Asks Why More Black People Did Not Show Up To ‘Very White’ No Kings Protest

Zachary LeemanOct 25th, 2025, 2:37 pm
 

Bill Maher questioned on Friday’s Real Time why the recent No Kings protests against President Donald Trump were so “white.”

On Real Time, Maher noted that The Baltimore Sun claimed their journalists struggled to find Black people at the No Kings rallies to photograph. More than seven million people showed up for the rallies across the country.

“Here’s a question that I saw, I did not realize until it hit the news a lot, was that it was very white. What do you make of that?” Maher asked panelist Michael Steele. “The guy in Baltimore, the paper there said, we struggled to, our photographer to find a picture of black people in this march. I’m okay with that. I didn’t go and I feel like, well, you talk.”

“Well, we had a meeting,” Steele joked as the audience laughed. “And let’s just say it didn’t go too well for white folks.”

Steele called the focus on race a “distraction.”

He argued:

That is a distraction for me to go down that road because the No Kings piece is very different from another piece that that question I think gets to. And that is the relationship that broke with Democrats and the African-American community in the last cycle, particularly with Black women. And so I think the no-kings thing, I would set that aside because, you know, you look at the fact that in the first version of that, five million Americans showed up, this version seven-plus million, that’s a trend line that you pay attention to.

Maher later claimed Black people may have been less interested in taking part in the protests out of fear of being identified.

“In China, if they see you at a rally and they always do because they have cameras everywhere and they may have that here. Maybe when I go into work, I’m not going to be welcome there,” he said. “And I think Black folks have a greater understanding of this than the white folk, which is why they might not have shown up, and I don’t blame them.”

Watch above via HBO.

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Zachary Leeman

Zachary Leeman covered pop culture and politics at outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, BizPac Review, HollywoodinToto, and others. He is the author of the novel Nigh. He joined Mediaite in 2022.