Bill Maher opened a new episode of “Real Time” on Friday night with a comic strip comparing the president to Taylor Swift, referencing Trump’s 1,300-word tirade against him on social media following their dinner at the White House earlier this month.
After a sit-down interview with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who was busy selling his new book about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Maher welcomed his panel: Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei and onetime rap singer Kid Rock., “Young ladies, young ladies, I like underage, see / Some say it’s legal – but I say it’s mandatory.”
Kid Rock was present at the White House dinner with Trump, Maher and ESPN pundit Stephen A Smith on October 15, and appeared to defend Maher against a series of claims from Trump in his record-breaking Truth Social post.
Maher said, “He said I was drunk. I wasn’t drunk,” to which Kid Rock replied, “You were pretty drunk.” “We had a good time and it took four hours, right?” asked Maher. “We had a good time,” Kid Rock said, adding, “I had to leave early but yeah that was it… Was he talking about dinner or everything?”
Following the exchange at the White House dinner, Maher talked about how former President Obama campaigned for Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim and Democratic candidate for the Michigan Senate. “The left is naive and the right is hysterical when it comes to this issue regarding Islam in America and Muslim candidates,” Maher said. He later quoted Trump as saying about El-Sayed: “If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite jihadist armies to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror so full of violence that we won’t even have a Christmas.”
“You don’t really believe it,” Maher questioned Kid Rock, who grew up on a sprawling lot in the suburbs of Michigan. Kid Rock later compared El-Sayed to the 9/11 hijackers, saying: “People talk about assimilation all the time, too, right? This guy is very assimilated – well-educated, well-spoken, even a good-looking guy -.” [but] You know who else assimilated very well? Those scumbags who flew those planes into our World Trade Centers. Fort Hood shooter. This has happened all over the world and this Islamic extremism scares the hell out of me. “I don’t know, a wolf in sheep’s clothing or just a wolf in wolf’s clothing?”
Maher responded: “It’s not a big deal, but the 9/11 hijackers did not assimilate here. They were from Saudi Arabia.”
“Were the people flying the planes from Saudi Arabia? No,” Kid Rock responded.
In fact, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon, and the first hijackers to arrive in the United States arrived in January 2000, so they were not “very well assimilated” as the man formerly known as Robert James Ritchie boldly claimed.