Bill Maher concedes that his Nov. 16 New York Comedy Festival performance won’t be the most important thing on New Yorkers’ schedule in a month that includes a presidential election and a World Series that could involve a local team or two. (He owns a small share of the Mets.)
But the HBO “Real Time” host welcomes the challenge of trying to put together a stand-up show that will be somehow topical and up-to-date when the result of the race might not be known for days or weeks.
“There will be a lot of rewriting and reorganizing,” the 68-year-old political comic from River Vale, N.J. told the New York Daily News by phone from southern California, where he’s preparing for next month’s Beacon Theatre show.
According to Maher, the 2024 presidential election storyline has already been so full of “plot twists” that he’s had to rewrite material on a regular basis. But he’s confident this story ends with Kamala Harris playing the role of the nation’s 47th president.
“The Democrats were going to definitely lose because they were going to nominate a guy so old his bad kid with a drug problem was (almost) 55,” he joked. “Then the guy he was running against, let’s call him ‘ex-President Shortbus’ — got shot at!”
Donald Trump appeared to have thing sewn up after that July assassination attempt energized his base, Maher thought. Then Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Harris, roughly 20 years younger than Trump and Biden, entered the picture.
“Oh my god, Kamala, it was you all along!” he joked. “It was like a rom-com.”
But, Maher warns, don’t expect a Harris win to mean the end of Trump claiming he was cheated and pushing conspiracy theories.
“We’re past that in America,” he said. “It never ends. We don’t expect it to.”
Another ongoing drama for Maher has been his repeated attempts to interview conspiracy-promoting Trump surrogate and internet personality Tucker Carlson, Maher claimed.
“We’ve offered many times and many times they have teased us that it’s going to happen and it never does,” Maher said. “He’s afraid to, and I don’t blame him.”
Maher famously hosts guests who don’t share his Libertarian politics. He said it’s important to him that he speak with people who say “terrible things.”
Carlson, who was cut loose from Fox News last year remains a prominent voice in right-wing media thanks to his continued online presence. He’s been criticized by mainstream media and praised by his supporters for promoting the racist Great Replacement Theory, normalizing Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and whitewashing the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Those are things Maher would like to address with the 55-year-old MAGA pundit.
“The things he does are so indefensible,” Maher charged. “If I was Tucker Carlson, I wouldn’t want to go on a show like mine either, because I never give anyone any quarter if they’re wrong or if they’re liars in my view.”
When the Daily News spoke to Maher before his 2022 New York Comedy Festival appearance, he said one person he wouldn’t give airtime was rapper Ye, (formerly known as Kanye West), who’d just gone public with his antisemitic politics. At some point later, Maher did wind up later speaking with Ye for a podcast that went pretty much as expected.
The interview still hasn’t aired.
“He’s not a malicious guy, but he is a guy with issues,” Maher surmised. “And he’s a guy with some very bad information in his head, which I was trying to help him sort out. At times he sounded like he got it, then he’d go back to some old trope.”
Just don’t ask Maher about his own life outside of showbiz.
The funnyman was recently photographed leaving Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont hotel with Al Pacino’ ex-girlfriend, 30-year-old film producer Noor Alfallah. But Maher doesn’t think that’s newsworthy.
“God almighty… can’t I just grab a bite with a friend?” he marveled. “You just get complacent one time… It’s not a thing. I’m not going to comment.”
