WATCH: Bill Maher and NY Times’ Dave Leonhardt Beat Up on Republicans for Being ‘Obsessed With Pedophilia’
Comic and pundit Bill Maher joined NY Times “The Morning” newsletter author Dave Leonhardt and Duke Professor Nancy MacLean in bashing Republicans for being “obsessed with pedophilia.”
On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host asked his panel about the confluence of threads involving pedophilia that Republicans have been pulling on of late: newly-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sentencing record, the “grooming” accusations they’ve begun lobbing at opponents like Disney, and the Qanon umbrella:
MR. MAHER: All right, so I want to pick up on something I was talking about in the monologue, maybe this is not the most important issue in America, I don’t know. But I can’t take my eyes off it like a car accident. It’s this. It seems like in a very short time, the Republicans have become obsessed with pedophilia. And I remember when pedophilia was like the worst thing you could ever call somebody, a pedophile. And now it’s like casually thrown up, out by senators. What happened to my good friend from across the aisle? You know, I mean that now it’s my pedophile? This is coming from Qanon, right? I mean, I’m only a couple of years ago, we were making fun of cute. I’m like, it was such a fringe thing. I pretended I was Q… I mean, I really am. Does this mean it’s mainstream republicanism now?
MS. MACLEAN: Absolutely. I mean, I think what we’ve seen is the Republican Party go off the rails to the MAGA faction and they’re making the Make America Great Again faction, which is now dominating the party ranks, but also the party’s elected officials. And you know, you see this also, I think it’s very important to point out this is coming from very smart people, some of them, in office. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, between them, they have degrees from four of the most elite universities in America. Princeton, Yale, Stanford. And what’s the other one? Harvard. And yet they are engaging in this absurdity. Why? Because they’re playing to this Qanon base for voters. But also and I think this is crucial. They understand that their party has no popular policy positions. So they, you know, Democrats are for reducing prescription drug costs. Thank you. Democrats are for reducing the crazy cost of prescription drugs are for living wages. They’re for action on the climate. All these things that are tremendously popular. So perversely, I think that this focus on pedophiles is a way of recognizing that they’ve left the normal constitutional and policy universe to play to these voters because they have nothing else to offer them except fear.
MR. MAHER: Well, yeah…
MR. LEONHARDT: I mean, you were just sort of apologizing for bringing it up, right, saying it can’t be the most important thing, but I actually think it is really important because it is this sign of how radicalized the Republican Party has become, and how disconnected from truth it’s become in some big ways. I mean, when I hear a political argument, whether it’s from the right or the left. I always look for what’s the grain of truth here? What’s the part? That’s right? And like on the pedophilia argument, the answer is nothing, right? I mean, these are just lies, about Ketanji Brown Jackson
Watch above via HBO.
