Last night on HBO‘s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host reacted to Donald Trump‘s guilty verdict in his criminal hush money trial, predicting an all-out race war if the former president goes to jail.
Just this Thursday, a New York jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. His sentencing is scheduled for July 11, although his lawyers are expected to appeal the decision.
In typical fashion, Maher first joked about the news before getting a bit more serious. “Yeah, he’s pretty distraught and pissed off these days,” he noted. “But I gotta say, Don, if there was a silver line to this, you finally did something that made Stormy [Daniels] come.”
He added, “You know what they say: don’t do the porn star if you can’t do the time.”
Speaking on the appeal, Maher said, “Their big talking point today is, ‘If they do it to me, this could happen to anyone.’ Yes, of course. I’ll have to remember that next time I’m cheating on my third wife with a porn star to pay her off when I’m running for president.”
He then noted how Trump supporters have been reacting to the ruling. “Did you see when he walked out of the trial after the verdict? They’re all out there singing, ‘For he’s a jolly good felon / for he’s a jolly good felon,’” Maher quipped. “Remember all those Republicans who were dressing like him? Yeah, now they’re all in orange jumpsuits. I mean, it’s very weird.”
Later during his panel discussion, he posed the question of whether or not Trump is going to jail.
“Here’s the key question: is he going to jail? Will this judge dare do that? And should he?” Maher asked his guests, which included John Waters, Ken Buck, and David Axelrod.
“I mean, I’ve heard some people say if his name wasn’t Donald Trump, he would definitely get jail time. But sending a former American president to jail, I don’t know if that’s something- I’m asking,” Maher continued.
“Listen, a lot of people in my tribe don’t like it when I say this, but yeah, I think there is something about jailing a former president, especially on something like this,” said Axelrod. “That is, to me, worrisome for our country. And I would really be shocked if this judge gave him a prison sentence for this.”
“I mean, MAGA nation will go nuts,” Maher said. “I don’t know if that’s a reason to or not to do something, but they will.”
Maher also predicted that sending Trump to jail could spark a “civil war” that would turn into a “race war,” since it was a Black district attorney and a Hispanic judge who ruled on Trump’s case.
“A civil war in this country, I’m sorry to say, becomes a race war,” Maher said. “That’s the sad truth about this country. And if they put him in jail, I mean, the first thing his supporters are gonna say is, ‘Oh, that’s what it is.’ A Black district attorney. You know, all these people who are the district attorneys, they’re black. The judge was not White. This is what it is.”
You can watch Maher’s opening monologue above and just as a reminder, you can catch new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher on Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO or streaming on Max.
