If Bill Maher can do it, maybe there’s hope for us all?
The host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher spent his show’s last episode of 2024 getting ready to take a step back for an extended holiday.
Maher opened the show in a joyful spirit, with the famed atheist even wishing his audience a cheerful “Merry Christmas.” Telling the crowd that the show is heading into its winter hiatus, he added, “We will be back, if America gets picked up for another season.”
But despite that clearly Donald Trump-referencing joke, Maher said that he plans to take a break from politics.
“We have our wrap party after this, and then I’m not going to think about sh*t,” Maher explained, adding “Don’t ask me during the vacation to ‘weigh in.'”
He said he’ll be busy watching football. Maher also shared his Thanksgiving plans. Referencing a terrorist threat to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, he had a message for the terrorists: he’ll be sleeping during the parade.
In the show’s interview segment, he sat down with Neil deGrasse Tyson for an occasionally contentious chat, with Maher’s reactionary politics at times getting pushback from the more liberal (but hardly extremist) Tyson.
Maher gave his own pushback when Tyson criticized the Real Time host for coming up with reason after reason to blame the Democrats for losing.
The host responded, “You don’t watch this show, so you don’t know. You talk as if you do and you f*cking don’t. That’s OK, just don’t bullsh*t—that’s one thing they can’t ever do on this show is bullsh*t.”
The interview was perhaps slightly uncomfortably timed, moving from an extended joke about Trump administration nominees facing allegations of sexual misconduct to a man whose career took a hit as he faced down his own allegations, but we digress.
Maher, never one to skip playing into one of his own tropes, joked about getting his show’s Gen Z staff to work hard. Pulling a move right out of Jimmy Fallon’s bag, he also promoted his What This Comedian Said Will Shock You book, touting the idea of giving it as a Christmas gift.
For the show’s roundtable, Maher brought on Real Time stalwarts Donna Brazile and Andrew Sullivan. The most contentious moment in this discussion was likely when Brazile took on Sullivan for regularly blaming problems on Black women.
The mid-show desk bit was a recurring one that Maher noted he’s been doing on his show for 21 years, offering “Future Headlines” that we’ll be seeing while the show’s on break. The most biting headline predictions:
- Last Living Ukrainian Asks Congress for More Weapons
- New Alec Baldwin Western Struggles to Hire Camera Crew
But he also found time to take another shot at Gen Z with the headline, “Lazy Gen Z Terrorist Uses ChatGPT to Write Manifesto.”
You can watch the full Future Headlines segment here:
For the end-of-episode “New Rules,” Maher delivered an anti-Santa attack ad and took credit for popularizing “the Trump dance” that athletes and others have taken to doing.
Maher pointed out that he’s shown the dance on his show 17 times this year, while also reminding everyone that he’s always described it as “jerking off two guys at once.”
For the extended “New Rules” segment, Maher went after people who don’t believe in helping out those with whom they disagree, singling out a sheriff in Ohio who said he wouldn’t help Democrats, and reports of FEMA workers being told not to go to homes with Trump signs.
The centrist host emphasized the idea that Christmas should be for everyone and that, despite Democrats’ brutal loss, this shouldn’t be a reason to cut off your family. Maher took a tough shot after a show filled with rhetoric questioning trans women, saying that “family isn’t like gender” because “you can’t fix it by cutting off members.”
He also discussed the movement by women to cut off sex for men who voted for Trump, delivering what may have been the episode’s hardest hitting punchline.
“Hey, you weren’t f*cking Trump type guys anyway. Well, except for Taylor,” Maher joked, at which point the show cut to a shot of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
Summing up the thesis he’d laid out throughout the show, Maher concluded by telling viewers, “Don’t let Trump live in your brain like RFK’s worm. Don’t let him make you hate your family more than you already do—that’s what Secret Santa is for.”
“We had an election—Trump will get the White House again,” Maher conceded. “But this time, he’s not going to get my mind.”
Watch the full “New Rules” segment here:
You can stream Real Time on Max, and catch the replay of this week’s episode Saturday night at 8pm ET on CNN. Maher can also be seen getting high and having discursive longform discussions with celebrities on his Club Random podcast on YouTube.
Real Time With Bill Maher returns Jan. 17, while Bill Maher’s 13th stand-up special for HBO, Is Anybody Else Seeing This?, airs Jan. 10.
