Irate Bill Maher Calls Out Trump and Republicans’ ‘Patriotic Immunity’ Over USS Abraham Conditions: ‘It Just Makes My Blood Boil’

Bill Maher admitted his blood was boiling reading about reports of the conditions service members are allegedly facing on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

On Friday’s Real Time, Maher cited reports about the Nimitz-class nuclear powered warship, which is stationed in the Arabian Sea and has been at sea more than 250 days, facing food supply issues, poor conditions, and mental health struggles with service members aboard. One person stationed on the vessel reportedly jumped overboard and was rescued less than an hour later. The vessel’s deployment was originally supposed to end in May.

Maher called out Trump and other Republicans, accusing them of benefitting from “patriotic immunity” that Democrats don’t have:

I’ve used this phrase before, but Republicans, they have this patriotic immunity.

They can do things that are so unpatriotic and they don’t seem to pay a price for it the way a Democrat would.

When I hear about troops being on a ship where the toilets aren’t working and there’s not enough food and they’re so morose about this that at least one of them jumped off the ship…it just makes my blood boil.

Pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson argued the war has not articulated well to Americans and service members may “not feel like they’re there for any kind of mission that’s worth fighting.”

Maher pushed back, saying changing the “dynamic” in Iran was a worthy cause:

I disagree with that. There was a mission worth fighting. We f*cked it up how we did it.

Iran having a nuclear weapon, Iran being the actor in the Middle East that has f*cked everything up in that region for the last 50 years, changing that dynamic was not an unreasonable thing to try.

They did it at the wrong time. They f*cked it up. They should have done it when the people were in the streets. They didn’t and now we’re here where we are.

When asked about concerns regarding the USS Abraham Lincoln, Trump told reporters the vessel hadn’t been deployed “nearly long enough.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US CENTCOM have lashed out at the media, accusing them of amplifying a false representation of conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

“Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody,” Hegseth told reporters this week. “What they do in those high seas and those austere conditions with fewer port calls — it’s incredible. Americans don’t understand what it’s like to do that.”

Watch above via HBO.

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