Bill Maher fancies himself as one of the last honest liberals left in the media, and in a lot of ways, he is. He calls out the radical left for its embrace of woke gender ideology, and few on the left are willing to do that. But that’s just about all he deserves credit for, and that doesn’t make him a moderate or an independent.
For example, he had Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on his show Friday night, and anything involving Kennedy is going to be entertaining, of course. However, it was also a revealing moment of how, even though Maher is critical of wokeness, he’s still a brainwashed leftist.
For one thing, he called the shooting of Renee Good “an execution,” even though Renee Good literally attempted to run the ICE agent over with her car. If Maher can’t be honest about the video evidence, well, that means he’s hardly any different from the rest of the left.
On the broader issue of immigration enforcement, Maher suggested that Trump was being a tough guy and should soften up, and Kennedy absolutely schooled him.
“Just, okay, so okay, we— he made his point. He’s the tough guy. It gives him the opportunity now to be the guy who says, ‘Okay, I’m actually gonna do comprehensive immigration reform,’ because this has been on the table— how long you been in the Senate?”
“Ten years,” Kennedy replied.
Maher jumped in. “Ten. Okay, this has been on the table—”
“In dog years, it’s about 70,” Kennedy quipped, getting a laugh and immediately establishing who had better command of timing and tone.
Maher kept pushing, invoking Obama-era failures and suggesting Trump could succeed where others did not. “But why can’t… Why couldn’t Trump be the one to get this done? You talked to him. I bet you, you could put that bee in his bonnet.”
Kennedy cut straight to the core of the issue. “Well, you know what the real answer is? The real answer is immigration reform. That’s the real answer.”
Maher tried to declare victory. “Well, we did that. We closed the border.”
Kennedy shut that down immediately. “No, no, no, I’m talking about not only for illegal immigration, but also for legal immigration.”
From there, Kennedy calmly walked Maher into a corner using facts and common sense.
“And the truth is, Bill, if you, if you’re honest, and you are, we admit more people into America legally every year than anyone in, in the world, because the whole world wants to come here,” Kennedy said. “When’s the last time you heard of somebody trying to sneak into China? I mean, they wanna come to America… But we could do that better if my Democratic friends would sit down and talk with us.”
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Then came the line that explained everything. “But when we sit down to talk, the first thing they want, amnesty, amnesty, amnesty.”
Kennedy added, “And dog’s not going to hunt.”
Maher tried one last time to salvage his argument by appealing to vague bipartisan sentiment. “Okay, but couldn’t there be some sort of agreement on that? Because what people are saying, even people from your own party, is that, ‘Yes, we wanted to get rid of the criminals. We all were for that,’ and there are some.”
Kennedy did not blink. “Yeah, about 47%.”
Maher looked stunned. “47%?”
“Yep. I saw numbers this morning, about 47%,” Kennedy said.
Maher could only respond with disbelief. “Sounds bullsh***y to me, but maybe.”
Bill Maher gets absolutely SCHOOLED by Senator John Kennedy on immigration reform — Kennedy said it’s not only illegal immigration, it’s LEGAL immigration that needs fixing.
And the number he dropped at the end caused Maher to do a double take.
He was out of his depth.… pic.twitter.com/rj3J5hfEVG
— Overton (@overton_news) January 24, 2026
Typical leftist. When you don’t like the fact, pretend they’re wrong.
I appreciate it when Maher speaks honestly about the woke left, but that doesn’t change who he really is. I suspect most people on the left don’t buy into gender ideology but are afraid to speak out. Maher may not be afraid, but that doesn’t change who he really is.
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