On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that while he thinks President Joe Biden “did well” in his State of the Union, he should stay in his basement like he did in 2020 because whenever he does interviews and press conferences, he messes up and looks like a “zombie” and the State of the Union was good because it was on a teleprompter and Biden only had to go off script every so often.
Maher said, “I think the strategy that Joe Biden should employ if he wants to win this election is just to come out every once in a while. I’ve been — when I first said he is going to be Ruth Bader Biden — and I still think that may be the possibility, I still think we still would do better with a younger candidate, but okay, maybe not, we’ll see. He did well last night. But everybody said, and I said, well, he can — I don’t think he’s doing a bad job as President, he can do the job, I don’t think he can win the job, because it’s a grueling thing to run for President. And everyone said, yeah, well, he can’t do what he did last time because there was a pandemic, stay in his basement. Yes he can. No one gives a shit about that, … the chattering classes will talk about it, and the public will [say,] what do I care, I don’t want to watch this all the time anyway, I don’t need to see him every day, he doesn’t need to go around the country. Stay where you are, every once in a while, make a speech like this. Trump proved in 2016 — he saved all his money and put one big ad at the end and people liked it better, they weren’t sick of him.”
Maher added that Biden shouldn’t do more interviews or press conferences “Because he f*cks up. … That’s a terrible strategy. This was great, it was on the teleprompter, and once in a while, they played right into his hands, somebody heckles him, he can riff, because he’s not too feeble to do that. But being on the [campaign trail], one bad piece of fish, one slip on the ice, one slip of the tongue, which he does all the time, they’ll just –.”
Maher further stated, “I think it’s better to have them say you’re a zombie than to look like one.”
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