What To Know
- Bill Maher criticized Donald Trump for adopting left-leaning economic policies, labeling recent government interventions in major companies as “socialism.”
- Guest Tara Palmeri argued that government stakes in companies and actions benefiting Trump’s own investments amount to “crony capitalism.”
- Libertarian commentator Matt Welch described the administration’s aggressive tactics toward corporate leaders as unprecedented and “thuggish” in modern U.S. history.
Bill Maher blasted President Donald Trump‘s unexpected swing to the left, declaring, “This is socialism!”
During the Friday, August 7 episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, the late-night host, 70, called out the POTUS, 80, and Democrats in one fell swoop.
“The democratic socialists very recently were true socialists,” Maher explained. “They were founded by this guy, I think his name was Michael Harrington. His name is now a slur. That should tell you where they’ve gone.” (Maher echoed this disdain last week, when he eviscerated the Democratic Socialist of America.)
The stand-up comedian continued, “It’s so interesting, the wrinkle in this story. Because now that they’re communists, there’s an opening for socialism. And you know who’s filling it? Donald Trump!” Maher pointed to a 9.9% stake in Intel by the government, in addition to a 15% cut of Nvidia’s chip sales to China, and a golden share following Nippon Steel merging with US Steel.
“We basically run their boardroom now,” he pointed out. “And you know this is socialism, I think, because Bernie Sanders agrees with it all. He wants to do it with the AI companies.”
Bill Maher (Real Time With Bill Maher/YouTube)
Meanwhile, guest Tara Palmeri, a political journalist and investigative reporter, said, “The free market is dead.”
“They have decided that the government wants to control 30 different companies,” Palmeri explained. “And Intel alone, which was a loser because of Nvidia, they have, they basically own 9.9% of that company. And that’s a lot. And President Trump, after they invested in this company, he then went on to buy stocks in Nvidia, which shot up 200%. Okay, so he actually made a ton of money on this. His government created a floor on a stock that he owns! It’s crony capitalism too!”
After Maher agreed that it was “crony capitalism,” his other guest, Libertarian political commentator and journalist Matt Welch, declared the actions “thuggish.”
“Donald Trump was out there saying we need to maybe fire the CEO of Intel because I think he’s a Chinese spy,” Welch said. “It’s like, what? The president is just singling out a huge CEO of an important company, and so they had to scramble the Jets and have a meeting at the White House, and what happened at the end of that meeting? Okay, you say we get 10% of your company. That is thuggish behavior. We have never seen anything like this in modern times.”
What do you think of Maher’s remarks?
Real Time With Bill Maher, Fridays at 10/9c, HBO