This is how you can tell if someone’s a racist, according to Bill Maher: it’s all in the handshake.
The Real Time host explained his wild take on the latest episode of his Club Random podcast to his guest, comedian David Cross.
“The rank and file Republican is, I don’t think, a racist,” Maher said. “I think you can get them into positions that look racist. But I don’t think in their bones they’re like—what I grew up with, like a racist was somebody who didn’t want to shake a Black person’s hand.”
“What you see out of a Republican today, like just the garden variety, even the MAGA people, I mean, I’ve certainly met all of them. I mean, the vice president is married to an Indian-American,” he added, referring to Second Lady Usha Vance.
Maher, despite regularly referring to himself as “canceled,” was notably given a pass after he used the N-word on his HBO show Real Time in 2017. In that episode, then-Republican Senator Ben Sasse invited Maher to “work in the fields” of his state during his appearance on the show, at which point Maher joked that he was “a house n---a”—a slang version of the delineation between the American enslaved who worked the fields versus the ones subjected to housework.
Maher issued an apology the following day, “Last night was a particularly long night, as I regret the word I used in the banter of a live moment. The word was offensive, and I regret saying it and am very sorry.”
The late-night host insisted on Monday that racism is not as common, particularly on the right, as the “media” would have one think, after Cross brought up the late conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk as an example of MAGA’s embrace of racist rhetoric.
“It was never quite as bad as they said,” Maher said of Kirk’s “worst hits” that made the rounds after his assassination.
Among many other controversial takes, Kirk once argued that due to DEI policies, he worried whenever he boarded an aircraft with a Black pilot because they might not be “qualified.”
What’s more, Maher added, “Trump doesn’t care about gay,” so the image of a bigoted MAGA is not quite accurate, he argued.
The Trump administration has rolled back protections and rights for the LGBTQ community since he took office, including issuing an executive order declaring that the government would only acknowledge two genders, forcing the gender markers on trans people’s passports to be reverted. Celebrity MAGA supporter Caitlyn Jenner was personally affected by that order this year, she complained last month.
Maher is the next comedian to be honored for the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in June, an honor that the White House tried to rescind after it was announced, calling Maher’s selection “fake news.”
The ceremony is still expected to take place, however. Maher has said that he “respects” Trump’s attempt to block his award as he plays nice with the administration in the aftermath.
