Bill Maher is never afraid to share his opinion, especially on political issues, yet he thinks other late-night talk show hosts should keep their political leanings to themselves.
Speaking to The Sopranos alum Drea de Matteo on the latest episode of his Club Random podcast, Maher said he missed the days when late-night hosts kept politics out of comedy. “Letterman, Leno, you know, Carson…they never told you their politics,” he said, per The Daily Beast.
He then took aim at The Late Show‘s Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart, Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver, and Jimmy Kimmel, saying they “very predictably” parrot “whatever MSNBC was saying” on their late-night shows.
The Real Time host went on to say that the problem is “that everybody makes their decisions based on the politics of the art and not the art itself,” adding, “I’m not knocking them… The audience, and of course half the country, was like, ‘Well this is just insulting to me.’”
As an example of a late-night host keeping politics out of comedy, Maher pointed to Jay Leno, explaining, “Leno just played it right down the middle. He was just like, ‘I will make fun of everybody.’ And that’s, in a different sort of way, what I’m doing also. I just don’t stop criticizing just because you’re on the left part. If you do something stupid, I’m going to call it out no matter where you are.”
Leno drew ire back in July for making similar comments, telling the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, “I love political humor, don’t get me wrong. But it’s just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other. Why shoot for just half an audience all the time?”
While Leno received backlash from various late-night hosts, including Stewart, who called the former Tonight Show host’s take “f****** ridiculous,” Maher said he agreed, noting, “the most important thing” in this new “era” is “to signal to the audience what your politics are.”
Maher, who argued late-night hosts should keep away from politics, visited the White House earlier this year for a meeting with President Donald Trump. After the meeting, Maher described Trump as “gracious and measured.”
“A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House,” he shared on an episode of Real Time after his visit. “A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is f***** up. It’s just not as f***** up as I thought it was.”
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