Whenever Bill Maher has a certified Republican on his panel, the conversation usually gets heated quickly, and yesterday was no exception. In fact, yesterday he had Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, the chair of the House Investigations Committee, on the program, and got to ask him about that bizarre “In God We Trust” vote, demanding, rhetorically, “and you wonder why Congress’s approval rating is at 8%?”

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Maher started the panel off– Rep. Issa was joined by former New York Governor David Patterson and Huffington Post writer Alex Wagner— with the other political scandal of the week, the Rick Perry speech that made everyone ask, “is Rick Perry on something?” Between Perry and Cain, Maher argued, it was hard to take Republicans seriously when they claimed President Barack Obama was “in over his head.” “Herman Cain and this clown, and Obama is the one who is in over his head? Can you even imagine Herman Cain dealing with this Greek crisis?”

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Have Jesus?’

While rhetorical, Rep. Issa responded that, yes, he could see Cain dealing with it, while the President was employing the wrong tactic. “Leading from behind is not a strategy,” Rep. Issa declared, a serious comment Maher complimented him for, as the latter took it to be a gay joke.

Maher then turned to what Congress was up to lately, which was to turn down the Obama jobs plan and vote to reaffirm “In God We Trust” as the state motto. “America has an official motto, like we’re a bowling team,” Maher joked. Rep. Issa noted that the House was busy with plenty of other things and the vote didn’t take that much time, but Maher didn’t really buy it. As to his reminder that everyone hates Congress, Rep. Issa replied, “in my own district, I’m well above 8%,” a fact Maher quickly labeled “part of the problem,” though he didn’t mean it as a personal insult, but rather that gerrymandering had hurt the democratic process. Rep. Issa agreed, but only because California had a new independent commission for redistricting– “we have someone do our gerrymandering for us,” he joked.

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After the fairly heated exchanges between Rep. Issa and Maher, the panel does return to Cain, however, as Maher has a few

old “campaign posters” to show the audience that really should have tipped them off to his problems– posters like “Change… Into Something More Comfortable” and “It’s Morning In America (So I Took The Liberty Of Making Breakfast).”

The segment via HBO below:
Tags: Alex Wagner, Bill Maher, Congress, Darrell Issa, election, HBO, Herman Cain, In God We Trust, Real Time, Rick Perry, sexual harassment