“Real Time” host Bill Maher is sounding the alarm about President Biden’s sudden push to debate, saying it means he “knows he’s losing.” The HBO host also revived his push to swap Biden off the Democratic ticket, at one point wondering, “Is it too late to switch out?”
“To me it says Biden knows he’s losing because otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed,” Maher said as he kicked off his panel discussion Friday night. “Only the loser wants to debate.”
Maher marveled at the idea of a summer debate with the first one slated for June 27, pointing out “They haven’t had the convention yet!”
“Well, they’re not getting any younger,” The Free Press reporter Nellie Bowles quipped.
The HBO host then posed the question if “any of this is going to make a difference to the election.” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul responded by saying the debates “are not going to be decisive” while Bowles suggested they “might swing people.”
“Well, I think the guy who has more to prove is Biden,” Maher said. “Trump is a known commodity. They know he’s gonna be an a– h–e. He’s gonna be lurking and growling and not obeying the rules and everything else. But Biden, they want to see proof of life.”
Paul responded by saying Biden has “already shown that he can stand up and give a rousing talk when need be,” likely referring to his State of the Union address earlier this year. Bowles joked that there might need to be “drug testing” before the debates.
“I feel like we have turned a corner though,” Maher later said. “Like after the last election, it was ‘Trump is finished.’ And then a year later was ‘Well, he’s not going away.’ And then it was ‘Uh oh, he could win again.’ And now it seems like the consensus is almost Biden can’t win. And he is losing in all the swing states I think except Wisconsin and by bigger and bigger numbers.”
“Is it too late to switch out?” he then asked. “Because in these swing states where Biden is losing, it’s interesting. The Democratic Senate candidate is not losing. So it just says something, which is it’s not the party necessarily somewhat, but it’s the guy. They just don’t see him as the guy no matter what he does. He has plenty of victories. It doesn’t seem to ever move the needle, but the Democrats will have to get off their keister now. Now!”
Paul responded by alluding to the possibility of the 81-year-old president’s passing, which Maher quickly clarified they were “not rooting for that.”
“We sound like three kids around the hospital bed,” Maher quipped.
Maher previously pushed to switch Biden off the ticket in February after the release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report that fueled questions of the president’s mental acuity.
