Adolf Hitler comparisons were rife during former Fox anchor Megyn Kelly’s talk with Bill Maher on Friday.
The duo began speaking about the Russia-Ukraine War, but quickly devolved into a debate about whether Republicans or Democrats were “on the wrong side” of history, with accusations of fascism generously peppered into the argument.
“In the news this week, I mean, we thought when the Ukraine War started, Putin would be isolated. He‘s not isolated. He had the BRICS nations—that‘s Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now four or five other countries—it‘s about half the world’s population, around 35 percent of the GDP,” the Real Time with Bill Maher host prompted.
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“These are the dictator countries. There’s a very World War II feeling here, when the dictator countries are getting together. I mean in World War II, what did Hitler and the Japanese have in common? Nothing! Except they saw the world one way: fascism,” he said.
Maher then suggested that history might be repeating itself with partisanship between dictatorships and democracies, and hinted that Republican nominee Donald Trump fell firmly into one camp.
“Somehow the world seems to be dividing between the ‘good guy’ countries—the democratic countries—and these autocracies. And, if your guy gets in, we’re gonna be on the wrong side of this one."
Kelly defended, “Okay, if my guy gets in I think we‘ll go back to the time that we had when he was president, which was the only time we didn’t start a war and get involved in a war.
“Putin did not invade Ukraine until Biden took over. We had the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which projected weakness through the world. People understood that we were enfeebled, and that is what was provocative. Weakness is provocative.
“Trump destabilized these people. They didn‘t know what to expect of him. Next thing you know, he’s bombing Soleimani. Trump did strategic strikes that had people on their heels, they didn’t know what he might do to them,” she said.
“Yeah, it‘s what he might do to us that I’m a little more worried about,” Maher countered.
“We’ve had four years of Trump. Trump did not go after his political enemies with the Department of Justice, that was Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Kelly said.
Maher then returned to historical comparisons, using Hitler’s Third Reich as a sounding board.
“Well, we had Hitler in the 30s and things were okay, and then we had Hitler in the 40s and they got way worse. Just because we had him...”
Kelly interrupted, “He hid his Hitlerism the first four years and is going to come out full force in the second term?”
“Well he tried to do things like that, he tried to do dictatorial, fascist things and he was stopped,” said Maher.
Kelly then suggested that President Joe Biden “flouted the law” with student loan forgiveness plans and rent abatement, and claimed that “he and Kamala Harris unleashed this Department of Justice against their political enemy Donald Trump, their number one chief rival for the presidency.”
As the audience began laughing, she demanded, “Is it funny? ‘Cause they did it. You wanna talk fascism, that’s fascist.”
“I think history is not gonna be kind to your point of view...” Maher concluded after the audience’s titters died down.
