Bill Maher Is Chill About Coronavirus, Except That Trump Is in Charge and ‘Keeps Telling Us Crazy Lies’
On Friday’s episode of “Real Time,” Bill Maher got real with his audience about the coronavirus, arguing that people should take it seriously, but also should definitely not panic.
Of course, that doesn’t mean he thinks Donald Trump is in any way the right guy to be in charge right now.
“Is this serious?” Maher asked about the virus. “Yeah, it is. The CDC is now calling it the COVID-19, and you know a disease is serious when they give it a rap name. But panic? No. We should not panic and it doesn’t merit panic.”
Why? Because as Maher sees it, “We live in LA. The air is so toxic that anything that comes out of anybody’s mouth is killed immediately.”
Of course he noted that life will change, but “you just have to take more precautions right now. Just assume everyone is infectious, the same warning they give contestants on ‘The Bachelor.'”
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Maher joked that the one person in the country who was way ahead of everyone on the problem was Melania Trump, as evidenced by the time Trump tried to hold her hand and she slapped it away.
“Fortunately, her husband, Donald Trump is in charge, and when I say ‘fortunately,’ I mean ‘oh f—,'” Bill Maher continued, adding that he wishes we didn’t have a president “who thinks this coronavirus is a minor annoyance, like the common cold or the Constitution of the United States. One who appoints as the person to head up this massive medical emergency, Mike Pence, who doesn’t even believe in evolution.”
“No, we have a president who just keeps telling us crazy lies, that contradict everything the CDC is saying,” Maher continued.
“Just yesterday he said it’s gonna disappear,” Maher said, “‘One day, like a miracle, it’ll just disappear.’ Really, Mr. President? Because just hoping that it’ll be gone? I’ve tried that with you and it doesn’t work.”
(Brief aside, for you readers wondering, yes Trump really said this, and yes it’s as unsettling as it sounds.)
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Meanwhile, Bill Maher concluded with some uncharacteristically calming words for viewers. “Look, we’ve known each other a long time, right? I’m gonna tell you my message. You’re gonna hear some scary things, and some of them are going to be scary.”
“But just please remember what the great Jimmy Breslin once said,” Maher continued. “He said the message of TV is to stay inside and watch more TV. It is very important to remember all the other times that cable news was telling you that we were all going to die. SARS and MERS and ebola, swine flu and bird flu and this flu and that flu.”
“Please say it with me, flues will not replace us, flues will not replace us.”
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