Bill Maher Says Trump Not the Republicans’ Main Problem: ‘Isn’t the Problem Their Voters?’

You would think that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was responsible for the imminent demise of the republic, to hear some people talk about him, but the real estate mogul-turned-white-enthuser has found an unlikely defender in left-leaning comic and Real Time host Bill Maher. During the online-only “Overtime” portion of this week’s show, Maher argued that the problem Republicans face isn’t Donald Trump, but a base of voters that overwhelmingly craves his brand of resentment politics:

Isn’t their problem their voters? I mean they didn’t want Trump, a lot of them. And we see a lot of these Vichy Republicans who go along because they don’t want to upset the apple cart. They know better. They know where their bread is buttered, where their voters are. But you can get rid of the Trump, you can’t get rid of the voters. That’s who they want… The base is deplorable.

Maher’s quip is a reference to Hillary Clinton‘s remark that half of Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables,” but to Maher’s point, polling data has consistently shown that it’s actually more than half of Trump’s supporters who hold the views Clinton described.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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