The Dictatorship
Bill Maher’s hypocrisies are on full display in new Max special
In his new comedy special, “Is Anyone Else Seeing This?” which premiered Friday night on Max, comedian Bill Maher trundled though the issues that obsess him: Donald Trumpwokeness and liberals, trans people and drag queens, freedom of speech and “cancel culture,” religion, those with larger body sizes and kids these days.
Like many popular comedians in the digital age (Matt Rife and Dave Chappellefor example), Maher uses his performances to serve up steaming platters of his well-established beefs. As a matter of course, Maher also addresses how his jokes about these cultural flashpoints are generally received.
The dividend of all this is a rather listless set. That’s partly because Maher’s positions on these issues are so well known that his punchlines failed to surprise. He also seems unwilling to put in the craftwork needed to make his stand-up material edgy or thought-provoking.
‘Free speech,’ he avers, ‘used to be a liberal thing, but then they got it in their heads that getting their feelings hurt is more important than the First Amendment.’
Maher’s superpower, I’ve always thought, is not stand-up but comedic dialogue with others. His stand-up monologues to the camera are fine, but where he excels is in conversation (in front of an audience). His genius is to frame questions about fraught political issues in a pithy, provocative way and then joust, often dexterously, with his typically controversial interviewees. Few other comedians possess this rare skill, and he has honed it to perfection on shows like “Politically Incorrect,” “Real Time” and his podcast “Club Random.”But “Is Anybody Else Seeing This?” is a stand-up special, and Maher isn’t about to use his monologue to question himself the way another stand-up might. He’s not going to ask whether there’s anything ironic about how much speech he devotes to the subject of limitations on speech. Louis C.K. could famously use a “Saturday Night Live” bit to confess he was mildly racist. Shane Gillis could fret that, politically speaking, he was becoming his Fox News dad. But Maher doesn’t use this opportunity to address an equally obvious critique of his recent work: Namely, that he seems to have transmogrified into an old, conservative white guy shaking his fist at Gen Z, new gender categories, EpiPens and anything else that didn’t exist in 1964.
These problems become apparent in his (many) asides about free speech. “I’m very supportive of the trans community,” he affirms, before he goes on to say, “I’m also … super supportive of free speech, and I love anybody who won’t let the mob tell them what to say about anything.”
“Free speech,” he avers, “used to be a liberal thing, but then they got it in their heads that getting their feelings hurt is more important than the First Amendment.”Such riffs encapsulate a political tension in Maher’s art. He claims to be an ally to the left, but he loathes the left’s posture on free speech. His approach to the 45th and 47th president manifests this tension in reverse: Maher is aggressively anti-Trumphaving famously likened him to an orangutan. Yet his comedy is awash in a theme that must be music to Trump and the MAGA movement’s ears (specifically Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”). This theme maintains that freedom of speech is being curtailed in America by humorless “woke” “liberals” who censor any idea they don’t like. (For years, I’ve argued that Maher confuses liberals for the radical lefta confusion that Ben Shapiro recently noted as well.)
Maher espouses a strain of free speech absolutism that’s more often associated with libertarian thought. At the same time, he excoriates political figures, like Trump and Ron DeSantis, who make similarly maximalist First Amendment claims. Is Maher on the right? Is he on the left? (Maher strenuously denies in the special any suggestion that he’s gone Republican.) One might argue that Maher is advocating a kind of anti-Trump libertarianism (readers might remember Trump was met with boos when he addressed the libertarian convention last year).
Then again, Maher might just be showing us how he’s managed to remain relevant and commercially viable in this media environment: equal helpings of scorn for liberals and conservatives alike.
Maher might just be showing us how he’s managed to remain relevant and commercially viable in this media environment: equal helpings of scorn for liberals and conservatives alike.
The strategy is working. His “Real Time” segments now have a weekly place at CNN. Would Warner Bros. (which owns BLN) offer a plum platform like that to, for example, Tig Notaro or Rosanne Barr — comedians who are not exactly known for espousing a bipartisan comedic worldview?This “balanced” version of Maher may be commercially viable, but does it make him politically interesting or comedically pioneering? On the basis of Friday’s special, I think the answer to both is no. His bits seemed predictable and ranting. The jokes have a formulaic quality. The punchlines land on the same beat over and again.
This gag about social justice warriors sort of sums up the night: “[Liberals] have this idea in their heads that, you know, people who lived 500 years ago really should have known better.” Take slavery for example: “Everyone did it back then. The Greek did it. The Romans. The Egyptians. The Arabs. The British. All the way up to P.Diddy.”
Then there are all of his self-aggrandizing proclamations (as opposed to the signals) of virtue: “I’m a noticer, that’s what I do”; “I don’t hold my tongue for anybody,” etc. Maher insists he doesn’t get the woke youth of today “not because I’m old, but because your ideas are stupid.”
If Maher wants to convince his audience that free speech is under assault, he’d win over more listeners — and probably arrive at considerably more nuance — by continuing to dialogue with people who disagree with him. When he’s up there on his own in “Is Anyone Else Seeing This?” however, he merely celebrates his own positions, confusing smug certainty for a punchline and rendering his monologue monotonous.
Jacques Berlinerblauis a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. He has authored numerous books about the subject of secularism, including the recent “Secularism: The Basics” (Routledge). He has also written about American higher education in “Campus Confidential: How College Works, and Doesn’t, For Professors, Parents and Students” (Melville House). With Professor Terrence Johnson, he is a co-author of “Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue” (Georgetown). His current research concentrates on the nexus between literature and comedy on the one side and cultural conflicts on the other.
In an explosive interview with NBC aired Sunday, President Donald Trump cut the grilling short and left the set after peppering “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker with insults.
“You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” Trump told Welker, who kept a cool demeanor despite the president’s barrage of disparaging slurs.
Moments before he attacked her, Trump — without providing any evidence — said he believes elections in the U.S. are rigged. Then he lambasted television news networks, singling out NBC, CBS and ABC.
“They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked,” Trump said.
“To be fair, I’m not crooked,” Welker shot back. “But let’s continue.”
“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” the president told Welker, who is the second woman and first Black journalist to helm the network’s flagship program.
Trump added, “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
It was not the first time Trump has berated a female journalist on the job covering his presidency.
In November 2025, he told Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey to stop talking, saying, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” One month later, he told ABC’s Rachel Scott she was “the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place.” Last month, he called MS NOW White House reporter Akayla Gardner “a dumb person” for pointing out that the cost of his White House ballroom project had doubled since it was first announced.
He has also repeatedly lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlan Collinscriticizing her for not smiling enough.
The wide-ranging interview, which was taped last week on a farm in Wisconsin, was interrupted by the loud sound of heavy rain on the metal roof of the barn where they met. Welker questioned Trump on his war with Iran, his “anti-weaponization” fund and the upcoming midterm elections.
On his nearly $1.8 billion fund aimed at compensating people who say they were wrongly prosecuted, including Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, Trump said “people were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization. Many of those people should be compensated.”
He described the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as people who were “being ushered into the building” by law enforcement.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the fund last month and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said last week the administration would not be moving forward with the fundwhich faced bipartisan backlash.
When asked if the administration would pursue other avenues to revive it, Trump said he does not know what will ultimately happen and called Welker and her network “the fake dirty press.”
Despite campaigning on a promise to end foreign wars, Trump denied that he made such statements. He characterized the Iran war, launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28, as necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
When asked about the rising cost of living as a result of the war, specifically gas and fertilizer, Trump chastised Welker.
“Are you ready? Am I allowed to talk? You keep asking questions and you don’t listen to the answers,” he said.
“I love the farmers and the farmers love me,” Trump said, adding that prices will come down after the war.
Welker suggested to her viewers Sunday that she and the president had a cordial conversation Saturday, saying they both “acknowledged the complications” posed by the rain. “He agreed to sit down with me for another ‘Meet the Press’ interview,” she said.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Iran said visas were denied to key members of its national soccer team ahead of the World Cupwhich a U.S. official insisted was necessary so that Iran does not try to “sneak terrorists into the United States.”
In a post on Xthe Iranian embassy in Turkey said “visas were denied to a large portion of the managerial and executive staff, technical advisers, and others” on its team.
“You have now escalated the deliberate and discriminatory treatment against Iran’s national football team to its highest level,” the embassy said, accusing the U.S. of the “worst possible form of politically biased interference in sport” and “depriving Iran’s national team of its right to play in the World Cup under normal conditions.”
Iranian officials are accusing the U.S. government of violating FIFA regulations and breaching its obligations as one of the host countries of what is widely regarded to be the biggest sporting event in the world. The diplomatic standoff between the two countries comes just days before the World Cup is set to kick off and more than three months after the U.S. and Israel waged war against Iran.
A Trump administration official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the subject told MS NOW in a statement that the visas “necessary for Iran to compete in the World Cup, including for athletes and necessary support staff, have been issued.”
The official added, however, “We will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretenses.”
The statement from the Iranian Embassy in Turkey came in response to a post on X by U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack praising embassy staff for processing visas for the Iranian national team.
According to The Associated Presssome of the team’s officials have not received visas to enter the U.S., which is co-hosting the World Cup with Mexico and Canada. Games are set to begin Thursday.
Problems with getting U.S. visas had already led Iran to move its World Cup training base from the U.S. to Mexico. But Iran is still listed on the official World Cup schedule to play its first two games in Los Angeles on June 15 against New Zealand, and against Belgium six days later before heading to Seattle to face Egypt.
The Iran Football Federation’s secretary-general and its vice president were among 14 staff and officials without U.S. visas, AP said, citing Iranian state television. The federation reportedly accused the U.S. of “vindictive behavior.”
Emily Hung contributed to this report.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
A shooting near a community festival in Toledo, Ohio, wounded at least 12 people, and police said a search for the suspects was ongoing following an outbreak of gunfire that sent crowds scrambling for cover.
Two of the wounded were in critical condition, Toledo Deputy Police Chief Joe Heffernan said. He said it appeared there were at least two people firing weapons who were “probably shooting at each other.”
The Toledo Police Department said the shooting happened near the Old West End Festival, an annual gathering of live music and home tours in a historic district of the city.
The department said an active search was underway for those responsible.
“I am deeply concerned about the situation in Toledo tonight. Summer festivals should be safe spaces for families to spend time together without fear of violence,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement.
Multiple videos posted to social media showed people running over the sound of gunshots and emergency officials tending to others who appeared wounded.
Kevin Berry said he was sitting in the neighborhood arboretum listening to live music with his friends when he heard a handful of gunshots ring out.
“Everybody hit the deck,” he said.
When he looked back up, he saw a gun being tossed to the ground less than 50 feet (15 meters) away from him. Police officers who were already on-site for the festival immediately responded to the scene.
Berry, who has medical training and served in the U.S. Navy, said he walked around the area looking for potential victims who might need help.
He said he saw at least five people with gunshot wounds.
“The folks who were hit were spread out around the arboretum area,” he said.
The Old West End Festival is a two-day celebration in Toledo’s historic district that includes live music, food vendors, home tours and shopping.
Berry described it as the “kick-off to Toledo’s summer festival season.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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