As Bill Maher acknowledged in his opening monologue on this week’s Real Time, there’s been a lot happening in the news lately. And while his guests weren’t high-profile politicians or legendary comedians, they did have plenty to say, which led to some surprisingly insightful conversations.
That began with retired general Stanley McChrystal, author of the new book On Character. Understandably, Maher had plenty of questions for him about recent happenings in the Department of Defense, from Signal-related scandals to fighter planes falling into the ocean. McChrystal had plenty of criticism for current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, including pushing back at Hegseth’s efforts to end DEI and remove transgender service members from the military. McChrystal said that, in his experience, diversity was a good thing — and “if someone is transgender, no one cares.”
He went on to expand on where his point of view differed from Hegseth’s. “We sometimes make it two-dimensional, in the idea that you have got to be a certain profile to be a warrior,” he said. “I just have a different view of the military than Secretary Hegseth does in that regard.”
McChrystal also saw parallels between the current moment and one from the recent past. “They were still arguing about it 10 years after women were in combat, and doing very well,” he observed. And he went on to reiterate his earlier point: “Most of the people who are doing the military’s business are very practical people.”
Puck’s Peter Hanby and CNN contributor Scott Jennings stopped by for the panel discussion; Jennings’s defense of the Trump administration’s immigration policies prompted Maher to give a short lesson in Constitutional history. “So your view is that ‘bad dudes’ can be sent to a foreign prison?”Maher asked Jennings. He went on to remind Jennings — and his viewers — that “that’s not what the Constitution says.”
Of the authors of the Constitution and its amendments, Maher said, “They knew the difference between the word ‘person’ and the word ‘citizen.’”
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Is Trump’s recent EV promotion the same as Biden’s? Not by a long shot.Later in the episode, talk turned to Senator Mike Lee’s proposed bill to ban pornography. Maher was skeptical, but did point out that the industry had shifted over the years. “Porn is different than when I was a kid,” he said. “Playboy was super-tame! It was some girl standing next to a bale of hay.”
Hanby looked at the bigger picture, “Donald Trump has papered over the fact that the Republican Party has a weirdo problem, where they want to meddle in your bedroom,” he said.
Jennings, for his part, stated that he is not a fan of OnlyFans.Maher opted for a pragmatic explanation for its growth: “I think they’re doing it because the economy sucks.”
After some lukewarm closing segments, Maher took a more nuanced approach this week. In it he pointed out the number of issues that have seen partisan opinions shift over time, from EVs to calls for eating more natural foods and exercising. It ended with him calling for his viewers “to not automatically rush to the opposite viewpoint based solely on who said it.”
Other notable moments from this week’s episode:
- Maher on Donald Trump’s Middle East trip: “Bromance diplomacy, I call it.”
- Maher on whether the president might pardon Sean Combs: “Diddy’s a terrible guy, but he does have a lot of oil.”
- Jennings on whether young men are in a crisis: “These young men are somewhat in crisis because we put some things in their hands that they had to work to get.” The audience laughed; yes, there were a lot of euphemisms this week.
- Also worth pointing out: New Rules had a lot of jokes about men fantasizing about cheating.
- Real Time is off next week and will return on May 30.
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