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Bill Maher has said that the day of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was “one of his favorite days of 2024.”
The comedian has denounced the shooting several times in the weeks since a 20-year-old would-be assassin opened fire during a Trump rally in Butler, rural Pennsylvania, on July 13, nearly killing the former president, whose ear was grazed by a bullet.
But while being interviewed on The Daily Beast podcast “Friends In High Places”, Maher revealed: “That is gonna be one of my favorite days of 2024.”
Host Matt Friend then interjected and asked: “The Trump assassination attempt?”
“Yeah that day, because…It would be different if he got killed, he didn’t…” Maher responded.
“I love that day because I remember it was a Saturday, we flew to Minneapolis, I had a show that night. As soon as the car pulled up to the hotel, before we got the bags out of the back, the guy from the hotel said ‘Trump’s been shot!’”
He went on to explain how once he learned Trump was stable, he had two hours to write a new 10-minute segment for the show about the shooting.
“That’s something I couldn’t have done at 26,” he said.
Maher told the podcast that, while others might have made jokes saying “what a shame they missed”, he never would have gone down that route.
He said: “You don’t fool around with this kind of thing and it’s not funny and it’s not right.
“Nobody is more against Trump being president than me, but that is not something you fool around with… Liberals don’t laugh at other people being shot even if they don’t like them. So I was glad I staked my opinion on that.”
But he quipped at the end: “The other reason I said I am glad he is ok is because now I can keep doing jokes about him.”
Hours after the assassination attempt, 68-year-old Maher warned his audience at his comedy show that the gunman “has done so much damage to the left”.
“Whoever was the shooter has done so much damage to the left,” Maher said. “Lost a lot of moral high ground in the ‘you’re the violent people.’ You know, ‘liberals don’t shoot people, liberals don’t solve it that way.”
But he also condemned the violent rhetoric on both sides of the aisle.
“The 2025 Project that is the plank of the Republican Party, which starts their convention tomorrow in Milwaukee,” he continued, referring to the RNC.
“The guy who wrote [the 2025 project], he said ‘This is our new plank.’ He said, ‘This is our new revolution of America,’… and he added, “It’ll be bloodless as long as the liberals let it happen.””
He added: “That’s not cool either. This s*** has got to stop because none of this violence happens in a vacuum.”
Maher also said that Trump was “the luckiest motherf***** that ever walked the face of the earth.”
