In the wake of the horrific Paris attacks carried out by ISIS-affiliated jihadists that left 130 people dead and scores more injured, the chest-thumping, xenophobic rhetoric emanating from the clown car of GOP presidential hopefuls has reached levels bordering on fascistic.
Just this week Donald Trump, the racist-and-proud ex-reality star who lives in a penthouse made entirely of gold—and whose hue oscillates between White Walker and Oompa Loompa—suggested that he’d go Hitler-adjacent on Muslims, requiring all in the U.S. to register in a database.
Well, on Friday night’s finale of the HBO late-night talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, the titular host lashed out against Trump for his fear-based ideas, which have led to a post-Paris bump in the polls.
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“[Trump] floated the idea of closing down mosques, but he’s going to do it his way: he’s going to buy them, turn them into casinos, and then slide them into bankruptcy,” said Maher. “He’s kind of walking this back, but he was talking about this yesterday—setting up different places across the country for every Muslim to register so they can be tracked. This is going to take a lot of manpower! It sounds like we’re going to have to hire Mexicans.”
Maher later ripped the GOP over their anti-refugee stance, saying that, “Republicans are tripping over each other to try and look tougher over the Syrian refugee issue.”
But then the political satirist took a hard right turn and, as is his wont, criticized the “values” of the Muslim Syrian refugees who wish to come to America.
“Fifty-six percent of Americans believe that the Syrian refugees… their values are at odds with our values. That may not be wrong,” said Maher. “If you are in this religion, you probably do have values that are at odds. This is what liberals do not want to recognize. You may be from a country—as there are many, many Muslim countries—that either have Sharia law or want Sharia law. Those values are not our values.”
If that weren’t enough, Maher quotes U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, who said, “The root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself. Let’s not forget our strongest weapon: our own liberal values.”“[Cameron] talks about the horrors of forced marriage; he talks about how the utter brutality of female genital mutilation is too common in his country with nearly 4,000 cases, and that’s just the reported cases; 11,000 cases of honor-based violence. I’m not saying this is going to happen in America, but this idea that somehow we do share values, that all religions are alike, is bullshit. And we need to call it bullshit.”
Later on in the program, Maher tussled with a few of his liberal panelists over the number of “extremist” Muslims within the Islamic faith. The Real Time host argued that, according to polling, there are staggering numbers of so-called moderate Muslims who support ISIS.“Six million people [in Turkey] agree with ISIS, and you’re telling me it’s the same as our culture?” he exclaimed.When he was accused of “demonizing,” Maher delivered a fiery rebuttal: “I’m not demonizing, I’m just reporting!” he said. “We’re saying the ideas need to be changed.”
