On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that the Obama administration’s attempts to try to bring Iran back into the international fold “only failed because Trump undid it, we never really tried it.” And also said that “Iran is for” 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.
Former Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said that Obama and Biden and Harris’ “policies have been feckless, in particular in connection with Iran and the Middle East and support for Israel. I think what has happened is, when they came back into office, they resurrected the same failed policies of the Obama administration in connection with trying to welcome Iran back into the international order, under the hope that Iran would moderate –.”
Maher cut in to argue, “That only failed because Trump undid it, we never really tried it.”
Maher added that America has “four enemies in the world. We have China, we have Russia, we have North Korea, and we have Iran. … You can’t fight everybody at once. I would say, if you’re going to find two who you could bring into the family of nations, it’s probably Russia and Iran. Because I don’t think the populations of those countries want to be where they are now. China? Too much of a surveillance state, too much of a dictatorship. North Korea is just a basket case of brainwashed people. Those aren’t going to happen.”
Maher then turned to arguing in favor of the Iran nuclear deal, which McMaster disagreed with. During the exchange on the Iran deal, McMaster stated that the money Iran received under the sanctions relief in the deal went to fund the IRGC, which Maher acknowledged.
Later in the show, Maher stated, “Russia is at it again with the election interference. It seems to me like this was not that long ago, 2016, when I really had never heard about anything like that before, when Trump came out and said, if you’re listening, and then George Stephanopoulos asked him, is it okay if you take information some other country? Yeah, I think you could look at it, he said. It just went from like unheard of, to heard of, and now I feel it’s the virus that got out of the lab and is just here with us now, because not only is Russia doing it, China’s doing it, Iran is doing it.”
He then said, while laughing, “It’s funny, Iran is for Kamala, and Russia is for [Trump]. So, maybe they just cancel each other out.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
