Anyone who was expecting fireworks when Sen. Ted Cruz appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher was sadly disappointed as the pair engaged in mutual adoration for each other.
Maher, who has routinely mocked the Texas senator, including saying that he spent his entire freshman year “stuffed in a locker”, seemed to find a lot of common ground with Cruz on Friday night.
Cruz, who is promoting his new book Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America, started the appearance by heaping praise on Maher, calling him an “old-school liberal” and “funny as hell.”
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“I feel so bad about all the jokes I have done about you,” Maher replied.
The comedian acknowledged that he is constantly being accused of becoming more conservative because he won’t “bend the knee” to the left and get on the “crazy train.”
Cruz continued fawning over Maher, saying “I actually really appreciate what you do” and that he has tweeted out Maher’s monologues “at least a dozen times.”
“You have a show where the right and left talk to each other, I don’t know of another show on TV that does that. We live in these separate echo chambers,” Cruz said.
After Cruz messed up a joke about how many Harvard students it takes to screw in a lightbulb, Maher said politicians should try not to be funny.
“You can’t do this job without laughing or enjoying it. There are too many politicians who act like they’ve got a stick up their ass,” Cruz said.
“I never saw this side of you,” Maher said, impressed.
It was an interesting line from Cruz, given Maher has previously joked that the senator “calls the stick up his ass, Hank.”
While the pair did clash briefly over Cruz’s previous reluctance to say that Joe Biden had won the last election legitimately, it appears that the Republican may have a new BFF.
“Let’s say this is the beginning of a friendship,” Maher said.
