“You just watched history being made,” Bill Maher said at the top of his post-DNC show Thursday night, giving Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton a moment to shine before launching into a joke about her speaking fee that drew groans from his audience.
“I thought it was a pretty good speech, but of course we won’t know for sure until Donald Trump tweets about it,” Maher added.
As the Real Time host was speaking, Trump was already attacking Clinton on Twitter for not using the words “radical Islam” in her speech.
“I think the old girl came through tonight,” Maher said after introducing his panel for the evening, deliberately echoing the way Bill Clinton referred to his wife at the top of his speech two nights earlier. “I thought that was the best speech she’s ever given,” he added, calling it just “feisty” enough.
Among Maher’s favorite lines was “There is no other Donald Trump,” which Hillary Clinton said was the “sad truth” about this election. But while Maher said she hit the GOP candidate in all the right ways, he still wasn’t sure if it would do anything to reach the white working-class voters she needs to get on her side.
Maher’s guest Salman Rushdie mostly agreed, calling Thursday’s address the “best speech” he’s ever heard from Clinton and saying she even “looked happy,” unlike Bernie Sanders, who appeared to be just about as miserable as he’s ever been during the numerous times the camera cut to him.
Daily Beast contributor Michael Moynihan chimed in to say he liked that Sanders didn’t cheer too enthusiastically, because it proved he wasn’t “bullshitting” anyone.
Then came the unexpected question from Maher: “Was anybody surprised that in the first minute of the speech she referenced the blow job?” Maher asked. As the panel stumbled over an appropriate response, he clarified that she did not say that word “directly,” but instead thanked her husband for 45 years of marriage that has “lasted through good times that filled us with joy, and hard times that tested us.”
“It is good to point to the elephant in the room,” Rushdie said.
Commending the Clintons for having a “real marriage,” Maher declared, “Fucking around can live side by side with real love. Bill is a dog and he loves her. Two thoughts in her mind.”
“It would be great if while he was first lady, she had an affair,” Maher said later of Bill Clinton.
Eventually, the host moved on to a discussion about the differences between this week’s convention and what we saw at the RNC last week. While Republicans criticized the Democrats for not mentioning ISIS during the first couple of nights this week, Maher pointed out that Republicans didn’t mention climate change at all. Unlike the GOP, he said the Democrats didn’t omit ISIS because “they don’t believe in it.” Instead, he explained, “The object of of terrorism is to terrify, and the Democrats wouldn’t give into that.
Finally, the group moved on to continue a discussion from the night before about Trump’s call for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, comments he now claims were “sarcastic.”
“There is such as double standard in terms of what he gets away with and what anyone else does,” Maher said. “It’s just insane!”
Rushdie summed up Trump’s campaign strategy this way: “First you say the appalling thing. Then you have your vice president say the opposite. Then you have one of your flak-catchers say you never said it. Then you say it was a joke. Then you blame Hillary.”
“At the next rally, he could take out his tiny cock and fuck a pie,” Maher said, and nothing would change. Before anyone could respond to that line, it was conveniently time for “New Rules.”