“Real Time” host Bill Maher ripped into the “Disinformation Governance Board” executive director Nina Jankowicz during his Friday night panel discussion.
Maher stated that the Department of Homeland Security board had a “creepy name” and argued that the new initiative itself is “even creepier,” Fox News reported. “Yes, they’re right to compare this to Orwell in the ‘Ministry of Truth.’ That’s exactly what it sounds like,” he continued, according to the outlet.
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While Maher appeared to support the idea of the board going after Russian and other forms of foreign disinformation, he took issue with the definition of “disinformation” used by the board, Fox continued. “‘Disinformation is defined as false information that is deliberately spread with the intention to deceive or mislead,'” Maher quoted from a Department of Homeland Security memo released May 2.
“Well, you could have said that about ‘If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,'” Maher said, referencing the Obamacare lie spread by former President Barack Obama, that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” which was declared the “Lie of the Year” by PolitiFact in 2013. He then noted that there’s a phrase in the memo, “can take many forms,” and warned that the phrasing meant “we’re going faster down the slippery slope,” Fox continued.
“Okay, so government should not be involved in deciding what’s true or not true!” Maher exclaimed, before questioning, “a lot of people are saying and my follow-up question would be, ‘who do you think the truth czar is going to be in 2025?'” (RELATED: ‘You Fight Back’: DeSantis Takes On Disney, Woke Corporations)
Maher then turned to comments made by Jankowicz where she wanted to “essentially edit Twitter” in order to “add context to certain tweets,” to which he responded “that’s what Twitter is! When somebody says something and you add context.”
Maher concluded the segment by saying, “these are not bright people in our government.”