While Bill Maher condemned the attempt on former president Donald Trump’s life last month in the shooting’s immediate aftermath, he recently admitted that the would-be assassination was his “favorite day of 2024.”
During an interview on The Daily Beast contributor Matt Friend’s podcast Friends In High Places, Maher said he felt it was fair game to get a little amusement out of the incident—because Trump survived. “It would be different if he got killed,” he clarified.
“A guy shoots Trump, the guy behind him gets shot and killed,” he said in reference to Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter who was fatally shot. (Two other rallygoers were seriously injured before the shooter was killed by authorities.) “That’s so Trump. It’s so on brand... it’s always somebody else holding the bullet or the bag.”
ADVERTISEMENT
While arguing that there's a little room to joke about the attempt on Trump's life, Maher said some punchlines go too far: “There will be people who will do jokes, comments [along the lines of] ‘What a shame they missed,’” he said. “It’s not right. Nobody is more against Trump being president than me but that is not something you fool around with.”
During his show in Minneapolis on the night of July 14, Maher argued that the shooter had “done so much damage” to the left. It's since been confirmed by authorities that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a registered Republican, though his motive still remains unclear.
Maher also shared his initial reaction to hearing the news of the shooting, and how it forced him to pivot his material. “Soon as the car pulls up at the hotel, before we got the bags out of the back, the guy from the hotel came up and said Trump's been shot. I was like ‘What?’ And he said, ‘But I think he’s okay,’ and he showed me the thing on the phone.”
Immediately, Maher got to work rewriting his show's opening to address the shooting. “I was like okay, in two hours I’m going to write this whole new ten minute thing about it,” he said, adding that he knew right away he would condemn the assassination attempt even though he’s a frequent critic of the former president.
“I was glad I staked my opinion on that, and we got it out virally which is great,” Maher said of his revised set. “But the other reason I said I'm glad that he’s okay is because now I can keep doing jokes about him,” he added. “Because I want to.”
