Bill Maher’s HBO show famously bashes all things Republican, but he gave an especially hard-hitting missive around the GOP’s lack of ability to empathize with the people they’re elected to serve on his show this week. Of course, there was still that wry Bill Maher humor injected in the segment, as well. Addressing what he refers to as the “empathy gap” in the GOP, an inability to understand others’ struggles unless it directly affects them, and sometimes not even then.
“New rule: you can’t spend the first half of a debate b*tching about how immigrants are ruining the country and the second half on the uplifting stories of your immigrant parents. The Republicans all talk about ‘building walls’ and deportations and making them learn English, and then, John Kasich: ‘My grandmother was an immigrant who could barely speak English.’ Ted Cruz: ‘My father was an immigrant from Cuba who didn’t speak English.’ Marco Rubio: ‘My parents arrived with no money barely speaking English.'”
Of course, Maher had to throw in his joke about Donald Trump’s orangutan father for which Trump sued the comedian for $5 million before dropping the lawsuit. Bill Maher publicly agreed to stop making the joke only after Trump released his birth certificate to the public.
Soon though, Maher got to the heart of his criticism:
“While Republicans generally do lack the empathy gene – that is, the ability to see other people suffer and then make the complicated leap to ‘I wonder if that hurts?’ – there is an exception to this: They do often get on the humane side of an issue when it hits them right in their own home.
For example, Dick Cheney is so conservative he got an artificial heart just to make sure he never felt sorry for anyone, but he’s a big supporter of gay marriage because he has a gay daughter and he needs to stay on her good side in case he needs a kidney. Likewise, Jeb Bush is very compassionate about Mexican immigrants because he married one…one of the ‘good ones,’ I’m sure. Jeb also had a fairly enlightened drug policy because his daughter had a serious problem with cocaine; although, on the bright side, at least someone in that family is high energy. But that’s the pattern…
You know, Lady Gaga sang a song at the Oscars called “‘Til It Happens to You.” It’s like that, it has to happen to them…On so many issues, you can only get Republican support if it touched one of their own.”
See the full segment below:
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
