Real Time host Bill Maher defended former President Donald Trump’s 2018 remarks about “sh**hole countries” in an upcoming episode of his podcast series Club Random.
In early 2018, Trump referred to Haiti and the nations of Africa as “shithole countries” during a bipartisan meeting with members of the Senate at the White House.
The Washington Post reported that during the meeting, which was meant to push forward an immigration deal that failed to pass two months later, Trump questioned why asylum seekers from the island nation should get special consideration.
“Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” the paper’s source’s claimed.
Me getting ready to explain which parts of the world aren’t the shithole countries Trump referenced pic.twitter.com/7mDjGCfEjJ
— Ingenuous Firebrand 🐆 (@ING2Firebrand) December 23, 2022
A lawmaker present reportedly responded: “Because if you do, it will be obvious why.”
Further into the meeting, as the group was exploring immigration from Africa, Trump questioned why the nation would want to accept immigrants from “all these shithole countries.”
He also allegedly lamented that the United States should be accepting more visas from developed countries like Norway.
Trump denied making the remarks after the liberal news outlet released the report.
“The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used,” he tweeted.
“What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!”
The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018
Maher defended the 45th president’s reported remarks over five years later during a conversation with Mad Men star John Hamm.
“Also, it’s almost refreshing, even though I don’t agree usually with what he’s saying,” Maher stated.
“This is what people love about him. To watch a guy — you just expect a politician to say the political thing,” he went on. “This guy is like, ‘F**k it.’ There is something like…”
“He farts in the punch bowl,” Hamm supplied.
“Like ‘sh**hole countries,’” Maher excused. “As if we all haven’t said that. As if we all haven’t thought that.
“As if all the people who came from sh**hole countries, if they weren’t offended because they were like, ‘F**k, right, I’m from a s**thole country, why do you think I came here?’”
Hamm concurred as if he was an immigrant from one of those nations. “‘There’s a reason I left,’” he remarked.
“‘Why do you think I risked getting in a f**king rubber raft or whatever?’ That’s why,” Maher said during the teaser for his podcast.
“S**t like that, I do understand. People are like, ‘Yes, he talks like a person. He doesn’t lie and use you.’ Then other things are just obviously abhorrent.”
Maher has surprisingly been coming to Trump’s defense as of late, and recently broached what is perhaps the former president’s most infamous comment: “Grab her by the p***y.”
#ClubRandomPodcast w/ @billmaher and @wizkhalifa avail on all major platforms 🎧
Watch Here: https://t.co/hMqQ1yJ2iR pic.twitter.com/nYv9YTJM7h
— Club Random with Bill Maher (@ClubRandom_) June 9, 2023
Rapper Wiz Khalifa joined Maher on the most recent episode of Club Random, where they discussed the advantages of being a celebrity.
“I’m going to get three girls if I want,” Khalifa stated.
Maher pointed towards Trump’s recent town hall on CNN, where he doubled-down on the comments he was recorded making to Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush in 2005.
“I said if you’re famous and rich or whatever I said, but I said if you’re a star, you are – and I said women let you,” he told moderator Kaitlan Collins.
“I didn’t say you grab. I said women let. You know you didn’t use that word, but if you look, women let you.”
“Now, they said will you take that back? I said, look, for a million years, this is the way it’s been,” he continued. “I want to be honest. This is the way it’s been. I can take it back if you’d like to.”
“But if you’re a famous person, if you’re a star – and I’m not referring to myself. I’m saying people that are famous, people that are stars,” Trump concluded.
Maher told Khalifa that “Trump is an amazing man,” and that he’s “loathsome in many ways,” for being “both the biggest liar in the world, and he’s incapable of lying.”
“Anybody else would’ve said when she said, ‘Would you stand by that statement that when you’re a star you can grab p***ies?’”
“He basically just said what we’re saying, not that I’ve ever grabbed anybody’s p***ies, I’m sure you haven’t either,” he noted.
“But when you’re a star and you know this more than I do because this is like the level stuff you’re talking about.”
Maher added that as a celebrity, “people will do anything for you,” which includes providing drugs and women.
“[Trump] was trying to say in his clumsy way, he said, ‘well, for better or for worse,’ I think what he meant is worse for the woman…Point being, he was trying to say this is the way of the world,” the podcast host said.
“Stardom mesmerized people, not just women,” Maher concluded. “It makes people go nutty, it does.”