Remember Ken Bone? The round, unassuming fella in the red sweater who went viral after posing questions to candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the second presidential debate by virtue of the fact that, well, he looks like Ned Flanders’ hefty older brother? Well, for god knows what reason, he’s back.
On Friday night, Bill Maher—whose show Real Time was renewed until 2020 despite a controversy-laden year—welcomed “undecided voter” Bone on his HBO program to discuss his thoughts on the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, and whether he regrets maybe not voting for Hillary Clinton.
You see, Bone still to this day refuses to disclose who he voted for in the election, a development that seemed to irk Maher to no end during their brief exchange at the top of his show.
“I have a dog in this fight,” said Maher. “I want to convince you that you should’ve voted for Hillary instead of Godzilla.”
“Well, I’ll tell you that much: I didn’t vote for Godzilla,” replied Bone, meaning he did not vote for Trump. “I didn’t vote for Jill Stein, either.” When asked if he’d reveal exactly who he voted for, the resident of Shiloh, Illinois, replied, “I promised before the election that I wouldn’t say who I voted for, because like it or not we’re obsessed with celebrities in this country, and even an F-list celebrity like me, people put stock in their opinion.” (For what it’s worth, precious few people put stock in Ken Bone’s opinion.)
Bone kept dodging Maher’s questions on Hillary Clinton’s likability or lack thereof (“I was willing to let the investigation play out,” he said of her email scandal), as well as the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia—though he did acknowledge that Russia was trying to influence our election even though he neglected to say for whom.
While Bone remained mum on 2016, he confessed to voting for John McCain in 2008 and Barack Obama in 2012, and told Maher that he either voted for Trump, Clinton, or Johnson in 2016. Since he’d already said he didn’t vote Trump, refuses to divulge his pick, and self-identifies as “a libertarian,” the odds are in Gary “what is Aleppo” Johnson’s favor.
“If I had to label myself, I’d be a libertarian,” he said. “If you want to live your life the way you want to live it, go ahead. If you want the government to stay out of your life, that’s great. But when the government comes and takes our money, and they’re going to, let’s spend it a little more responsibly. Let’s not worry about giving tax breaks to the very richest people who aren’t missing that money in the first place, because we’ve proven that that money doesn’t trickle down to me in the middle class, it doesn’t trickle down to my mom who’s unemployed.”
“You’re a confusing man, Ken,” shot back a frustrated Maher. “I don’t see why it was that difficult a choice! I’m going to let you go and I’m going to ask you one more time why it was such a difficult choice, because it seemed like this one man [Trump] was preposterously unfit for office and the other lady [Hillary], maybe not the best candidate, but certainly would have put us in a better place.”
With that, Bone said his final piece: “Well, I promised myself that I would wait until after the debates to lock in my choice, because there was news coming out every day—more about one than the other—but there was news coming out every day, and by the time I cast my vote, I was very confident in it. I wasn’t even a shade of undecided.”
Well, there you have it (although not really).