Last night on HBO‘s Real Time with Bill Maher, there were many topics up for discussion including nepotism in Hollywood, Chat GPT and TikTok, but the topic of Donald Trump‘s impending indictment seemed to be an initial focus of the panel discussion.
Maher began the discussion by presenting a case for why bringing criminal charges against the former President would be a bad thing. It has been rumored that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is preparing to charge Trump for financial crimes related to the Stormy Daniels 2016 hush money probe.
“I really don’t want to give Donald Trump the satisfaction of talking about him,” said Maher to preface his rant. “I thought when he was gone, he’d be gone a little bit. But, you know, there is an ex-president out there now who’s going to be arrested — possibly. And he is talking about violence in the streets of his supporters if he does.”
He added: “I just would like to go on record in saying I think this is a colossal mistake if they bring these charges. Not just one, you know. I mean, yes, he’s done a lot of bad things, and I’m sure he did this — everything they accused him of [doing], he did. But first of all, it’s not gonna work. It’s gonna be rocket fuel for his 2024 campaign. And it’s just gonna look to MAGA nation like, ‘Oh, you know, you tried with Mueller, you tried with Ukraine, you tried with January 6. Now we go to the porn star? Really? You’re down to that?!”
Maher’s guest Annie Lowrey, staff writer for The Atlantic, agreed. She pointed to recent GOP primary polls where Trump has gained a substantial lead over his likely rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“I think that we’ve seen in, you know, the past however many years at this point that the more attention is on heavy regardless of what that attention is about, the more the circus has him in the center of its rings, the better he tends to do,” said Lowrey.
NYU professor Scott Galloway said if Bragg moves forward with the indictment, “it’s going to be a perp parade, not a perp walk.”
“If they do this, this increases the likelihood he’s the nominee, they need to put wood behind the arrow that sticks. That’s Georgia. This is just not sufficient,” Galloway said.
He cited a poll that shows “75%” of Republican voters understand that the accusations against Trump are bad but also don’t think “any of these charges really matter.”
During Maher’s opening monologue, which you can watch above, the HBO host said “all week everyone’s been on pins and needles because we thought the word would come down that Trump was going to be indicted and arrested, and it’s true… Trump may be indicted in a criminal investigation.”
He quipped: “And everybody in this country said the same thing: ‘which one?’ – there’s four!”
