On Friday’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher went on the attack against the Democratic National Convention, saying that it was like watching the Jerry Lewis telethon at 2 in the morning.
“Oh, and speaking of on fire, did you see the Democratic Convention?” Maher began, before clarifying that he was being sarcastic.
“Oh man, that thing, how do you describe it? It’s like, did you ever tune into the Jerry Lewis telethon at like 2:00 in the morning? It was a lot like that,” he added, according to Breitbart News. “But it accomplished what it had to accomplish. Joe Biden accepted the nomination this week in a high school library.”
Maher did, however, go on to praise former President Barack Obama’s attacks on President Donald Trump. He joked that Trump was so upset about Obama’s comments that he missed a putt in golfing.
Maher then went back to mocking Biden, joking that during his interview with the rapper Cardi B earlier in the week, the former Vice President confused her with his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
Later in the show, the liberal filmmaker Oliver Stone shocked Maher by dismissing the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report outlining Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report, which was released earlier in the week, stated that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had “directly and indirectly communicated” with Russian national Konstantin Kilimnik and other pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine during the election, in addition to Trump ally Roger Stone being linked to the WikiLeaks dump of Clinton emails, according to Fox News.
When Maher brought this up, however, Stone immediately dismissed it.
“You can’t really think that a Russian president … should be able to rat-f— our elections like this, can you?” Maher asked.
“Oh Bill, I’ve known you all too long and I think you’re sophisticated enough to know — we have to question everything that comes out of our intelligence agencies,” Stone replied. “If you haven’t learned that by now, you’ve got a long way to go still.”
“So they’re lying?” Maher asked.
“Intelligence agencies are not reliable. They’ve been screwing with America going back to the Vietnam War, going back to the Iraq Wars, the Afghanistani wars,” Stone added. “It’s very hard to find out the truth from them. Everything they publish — the rumors, the anonymous sources, the think tanks, the anti-Russia — it all adds up into this ball of wax that becomes enormous. And then they have people like you, who are skeptical generally, believing it. I would really triple-check everything, every one of those sources.”
Not stopping there, Stone went on to say that the way “they went after” Manafort was “bizarre,” insisting Manafort “wasn’t that intelligent” and was “just trying to make some money from Ukraine.”
“We’re at a moment in time where anything, anything about China or Russia is being broadcast loudly to the American people,” Stone explained to Maher. “We have a very effective western media that does this all the time. You have to go back- and you have been skeptical in the past, why do we need enemies? Why do we need these enemies? Why do we want to make this into an issue? Why?”
A clearly taken aback Maher reacted by saying that he wasn’t expecting the “conspiracy”-type response but then pivoted to Trump — claiming the president’s conspiracies “hide in plain sight,” pointing to the president’s recent remarks about U.S. Postal Service funding ahead of the election and comparing his transparent explanation of “screwing” with voters to a “James Bond villain.”
Stone, however, was not having any of it, and he doubled down.
“I’m not voting for Trump and he’s a sad figure,” Stone said. “He was the wrong choice to be president … but to make our foreign policy dependent on attacking Trump, to get rid of Trump and creating a Cold War environment with China and with Russia and with other countries is crazy and this stigmatization is not a policy.
“So they’re looking for everything possible to build up this Russia, James Bond, Dr. No scenario. You think the Russians — do you think they sit around and think about America all the time? They don’t care,” he added. “They’ve got their own problems and they have a country that is vibrant and they want to make it work. They have a lot of issues like we do. They’re not thinking about our election as you think they are.”
“Keep in mind, Bill, and you know damn well, how many elections have we interfered with and how many countries in the world interfered with — with money and all kinds of dirty tricks,” Stone concluded. “It’s a double standard here.”
This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on August 22, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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