On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is “right, rhetoric has consequences,” and that saying someone is destroying the country is the kind of rhetoric that can spawn violence, but Trump is a threat to democracy and “The answer can’t be that we can’t say what’s true.”
Maher said, “I thought maybe we would talk about rhetoric, because that’s what’s on Trump’s mind. He got shot at again, and he says, their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at. And then, of course, in true Trumpian fashion, always the most unself-aware person in the universe, goes on to say, when they are the ones that are destroying the country, which would be also the kind of rhetoric that would make a borderline person shoot at you. But, he’s right, rhetoric has consequences, but he is possibly the worst person to make this case.”
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens agreed that Trump is a bad person to make that case, but “he’s absolutely right that we probably should tone it down. When we’re calling our opponents the end of democracy, the end of Western Civilization, we’re not helping our arguments.”
Maher responded, “I disagree, that’s a dumb argument, I think. … That’s their argument, which is that, you guys are saying, Trump is a threat to democracy, but he is a threat to [democracy]. The answer can’t be that we can’t say what’s true.”
Later, Maher stated, “[O]n this rhetoric question, they both have things that they say about the other person that are pretty big, that’s politics. That’s always gone on. There’s only one side — there should be no false equivalency here — that uses the kind of rhetoric that they use. Like, I remember Trump’s…the tough people.”
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