Pot meet kettle.
During all the Bush years, there were few harsher critics of the White House than HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher. Now, Maher is taking issue with Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly’s Super Bowl interview with President Barack Obama. On Tuesday night’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” on MSNBC, Maher attacked O’Reilly for his treatment of Obama.
“Well, actually he tried so hard. I mean, this man – I saw him with Bill O’Reilly as I’m sure a lot of people did in this country before the Super Bowl,” Maher said. “And all I could think of is – I would never be that way. I just do not have it in me to take that much, really, that much guff, shall we call it, since I’m not on HBO.”
Maher’s view on how presidents should be treated is curious given his public statements on former President George W. Bush (calling for his impeachment in 2006) and former Vice President Dick Cheney (lamenting a failed assassination attempt). Maher praised Obama for containing “the rage” he must feel from what Maher views as disrespect.
“I just feel like the most difficult part of his job must be to squelch the rage that somewhere must be inside him to say, ‘I’m the president of the United States. You don’t talk to me like this. I’m not some left – I’m not Al Sharpton, you know? I won this job,’” Maher said. “And Bill O’Reilly who claims he’s such a patriot, how unpatriotic in my view to treat a president that way. How does that look to other countries when you’re interrupting and belittling — I saw what you did, counting the number of times he was — he was interrupted. I just find it astounding.”
Watch:
Maher’s criticism of Obama’s treatment isn’t relegated to O’Reilly. He also took shots at the Chamber of Commerce, whose members gave Obama an icy reception at a speech on Monday. Maher suggested the president was responsible for saving “their ass” in the midst of a financial crisis and the audience at the Chamber should have been more hospitable.
“This idea, this attitude they have that Barack Obama won the election fair and square, by a big margin,” Maher said. “He is the president. But somehow he always has to beg them just to come to the table, or as he did with his speech yesterday before the Chamber of Commerce, apologize to them. Why is he apologizing to these guys, the business community? He saved their ass. This narrative that somehow they had to put up with this incompetent socialist the last two years, and now he’s coming around — no, they’re the ones, the business community, not them specifically, more Wall Street, but they tanked the economy, and this competent man brought it back and stabilized it. All the people who got a lump in their throat watching that Super Bowl commercial about how Detroit has come back — well, that’s Obama who got Detroit back. He’s the one that bailed out the auto industry.”
And according to Maher, opponents have nothing to complain about because Obama isn’t as “radical” as he is sometimes labeled.
“You know, the notion that he somehow is moving to the center – he’s always been there, and he’s always been very friendly and good to business,” he continued. “How this president is a radical, I don’t know where they’re getting this from. You know, he wanted to drill more for oil, he stayed in Afghanistan, health care is an old Republican plan — you know, he wants to raise taxes 3 percent on the richest 1 percent or 2 percent. This is not a radical. They do not see reality.”