Friday’s edition of Real Time with Bill Maher featured several segments where Maher lit into President Donald Trump. During Maher’s signature “New Rules” portion of the program, the comedian directly addressed a subject that several news outlets have seemingly been dancing around—Trump’s racist rhetoric.
“If Donald Trump keeps insisting that he’s the least racist person anyone has ever met, he has to explain why the single most consistent thing in his whole life is he loves to pick fights with black people,” Maher said.
Maher has previously faced severe public criticism for referring to himself as a “house nigga” and calling Islam “the only religion that acts like the mafia.” But despite Maher’s own public history with racially insensitive remarks, he laid out a thorough, anecdotal case for the argument that Trump repeatedly targets black public figures.
Maher ran down a list that included Trump’s targeting Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem and withdrawing a White House invite from a clearly uninterested Steph Curry. Outside of the sports world, there’s also the matter of Trump perpetuating racist stereotypes about Haiti and the entire continent of Africa. Trump also doubled down on his assertion that the five men exonerated in the 1989 “Central Park Jogger” case should have received the death penalty despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence.
“Is it just a coincidence that he’s perpetually pissed off at the NBA and the NFL, but golfers and hockey players never seem to bother him?” Maher asked.
It’s telling that Maher got through such an exhaustive list and still had room for more of Trump’s targets, which includes Corey Booker, John Lewis, and Ben Carson.
You can view Maher’s full “New Rules” segment, which also includes a series of fake tweets Trump could direct at some of his non-black critics, above.
