HBO host and comedian Bill Maher recently insisted that he’s in the political "middle" and doesn’t "pre-hate" everything President Trump does just because MSNBC wants him to.
In the latest episode of his "Club Random" podcast, Maher told actor and comedian Tom Green how he thinks there are huge issues on both the left and right and insisted that he refuses to hate everything Trump proposes just because Trump is the one proposing it.
"That’s just my thing with Trump. I’m not going to pre-hate everything," Maher told Green.
During the latest episode of his podcast, comedian and talk show host Bill Maher called out MSNBC for hating everything that President Trump does. (Screenshot/HBO)
The "Real Time" host mentioned having a "long list" of Trump ideas and proposals he hates, but stressed that he’s not against every single one of his ideas.
Separating himself from MSNBC’s negative coverage of Trump, he noted, "There's also a list of things I don't hate that a lot of – I mean, everybody on the MSNBC world automatically hates the whole list."
"I'm not that guy, and I don't want to be that guy," he added.
Trump came up again in the conversation after Green mentioned that the president and business mogul fired him from the second season of his NBC reality TV show, "The Celebrity Apprentice," that aired in 2009.
Green said that Trump fired him after seeing him hungover on set after a night out drinking with fellow "Apprentice" contestant and ex-NBA player Dennis Rodman.
Maher found the anecdote hilarious, joking that it’s one of the few good moves he thinks Trump has made. The HBO host followed up by mentioning serious parts of the Trump agenda he’s not against.
Bill Maher on the set of his podcast, "Club Random." (Screenshot/Club Random Media)
"No, you can’t trust anything he says, because the next day he changes his mind, or whatever, but, I think he said last week he wanted to cut the defense budget by 50 percent. I’ve been saying that for years," he said, asking, "Am I gonna hate it now because he says it?"
U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Pentagon to develop plans to slash 8% from the Department of Defense budget in each of the next five years to align with President Donald Trump's priorities, specifically to achieve peace through strength, officials said.
Maher also indicated he agreed with Trump’s wish to phase out the penny.
Later in the interview, Maher stressed his centrist position, calling himself an old-school liberal who can’t get on with radical ideas. The host has been criticizing the woke excesses of the Democratic Party in recent years. In a Wall Street Journal interview last month, he ripped the left for not having the stomach to listen to opposing views. "This is one of the issues I have with the left. They can’t stand to have to endure a moment of hearing something they don’t already agree with," he said. "Not that the right doesn’t do it, too, but the left does it worse."
"It’s amazing, when you are somebody who’s in the middle like me – and not in the middle in like a namby-pamby way – in a just like, ‘Yeah, I’m a proud old school liberal, but no I’m not going to go along on the crazy train to Nonsense-ville."
He went on to grill reporters who take his clips railing against either the left or the right to claim him for their side.
"Watch the whole show!" Maher told those who have a false impression of his beliefs.
"And people just want to hear what they already believe fed back to them. So, if you already believe on the left, that I'm some sort of red-pilled person who's now become a conservative, you can be fed things where all you see me doing is saying, ‘Yeah, I don't hate this, let's get rid of the penny or whatever it is.’"
"So, it’s a lonely place in the middle," Maher added.