Bill Maher might defend Hillary Clinton over her disaster of an e-mail scandal, but he certainly won’t be writing her any million-dollar checks anytime soon.
HBO’s “Real Time” host told BuzzFeed in an interview last week that he will support Hillary Clinton in her bid for president despite the fact that she is too “centrist” and “hawkish” for him.
“I like Obama a lot more than I like Hillary,” explained Maher. “I just think he’s better. That’s just how it is. Hillary is way too centrist for me, she’s way too hawkish for me. So am I going to be a supporter of Hillary? Absolutely. Is it as enthusiastic as I was for Obama? No. But it doesn’t have to be because we all have to grow up and realize, pick the best answer on the test. There’s no perfect answer.”
Maher predicted that, should Hillary secure the presidency in 2016, the former secretary of State won’t do much to “rock the boat” of the Democratic party.
“I am not going to worry that if she’s president she’s going to blow up the world,” the comedian explained. “What I worry about is she’s not going to make some significant progress on many issues where progress needs to be made because she’s just not enough of a rock-the-boat type.”
“That’s not who the Clintons are,” Maher continued. “They are the ones, after all, in the ’90s who could have taken the Democratic party back to where it belongs on the left but took it back to what we call the center now, but really isn’t the center. It really is the right.”
Maher added that Clinton’s past suggests that she won’t do anything to “surprise” the American people.
And, though the comedian performed his own boat rocking when he donated a whopping $1 million to a pro-Obama Super PAC in 2012, he admitted that Clinton will not get such a large donation.
“That’s not something that’s going to come around every time,” he insisted. “I’m not Sheldon Adelson. I don’t have like million dollar amounts like washing around in my pockets. So no, that’s not going to happen.”
The comedian also had some not-so-nice words for Hillary Clinton’s GOP foes, none of whom, Maher said, are “of presidential timbre.” He predicted that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will win the Republican nomination because “he’s the worst, and the Republicans, you know, they are pretty good at nominating the ‘are you f–king kidding me?’ candidate.”
Even when it comes to Rand Paul, who Maher admitted last year could win his vote, Maher no longer waxes optimistically.
“His father [Ron Paul] made a calculation: ‘Better to be true to yourself, better to be real, better to be honest and say what you really believe and not win than to sell out like these other dopes.’ And Rand Paul looks like he’s not making that calculation — he looks like he’s making the opposite calculation,” Maher explained.
