While Trump Derangement Syndrome raged on for some members of the pundit class, one outspoken comedian signaled a shift, announcing he won’t “pre-hate” the new administration.

(Video: CNN)

For nearly a decade, Donald Trump continued to live rent-free in the minds of corporate media talking heads and leftists from all walks of life as they bought into their own perpetuated narrative of the president-elect. Now, after gaslighting and propaganda had failed to deter a return to the White House, HBO’s Bill Maher claimed he’d be taking an open-minded approach to the GOP leader’s second term.

“I’m not gonna chase every rabbit down the hole like I did the first term,” the commentator said on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” while promoting his new HBO standup comedy special, “Is Anyone Else Seeing This?”

“He’s a kooky guy who says a lot of kooky things, and I’m just not gonna pre-hate anything. I’m just gonna hope for the best, and then when something serious happens, I’ll comment on that,” continued Maher. “Otherwise, I have ‘New Rules’ and monologue as a place in the show every week to talk about invading Greenland and annexing Canada and other stuff. It’s…perfect for comedy, but I’m not going to take it seriously.”

Tapper went on to bring up Sept. 2023 remarks from Maher calling for President Joe Biden to stay out of the presidential election 10 months before the incumbent dropped out of the race where the comedian had said, “Someone has to convince President Biden that if he runs again, he’s going to turn the country back over to Trump…and go down in history as Ruth Bader Biden, the person who doesn’t know when to quit and so does great damage to their party and their country.”

Bill Maher tells Biden to drop out of 2024 race, compares him to RBG https://t.co/vMORyN74Mc pic.twitter.com/T5BoFS6ULt

— BPR (@BIZPACReview) October 5, 2023

“I felt I had standing to make that case because I had for so many years been the only person I know on television who was consistently railing against ageism,” the HBO star argued to the host. “I have been saying for years ageism is the last allowable prejudice that we can have in this country.”

“You can always do the age jokes, you can always rail on people for being too old and it was, as I said, a case-by-case basis. Some people at 70 act like they are 100-years-old and some are like 40-year-olds,” he went on. “But this was a case, okay, where Biden was too old.”

Still, despite expressing a more reserved approach to commenting on what the president-elect would be up to during his second term — all while a growing number of figures who’d previously bucked Trump, like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, sought to curry favor with the leader — Maher held on to some of the narratives around the once and future commander-in-chief.

“Do I think he’s gonna start arresting comedians, I don’t. But it’s possible,” the comedian told Tapper before noting if he thought anything he said would get him sent to Guantanamo Bay, then he’d quit.

The new season of HBO’s “Real Time” is scheduled to begin Jan. 17.

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Kevin Haggerty

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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