After inviting conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos onto his HBO show “Real Time,” Bill Maher is trying to have his cake and eat it too.
Maher has been under attack by the left for his “chummy” conversation with Milo on the February 17th episode of “Real Time.” Now, Maher is claiming in the New York Times that he meant to “expose” Milo the whole time:
When pressed by the New York Times as to whether he thought Milo’s appearance on “Real Time” helped lead to his downfall, Maher replied, “That’s what I was just saying.”
Maher has plenty of reason to worry about the left’s reaction to his show. Maher’s show has already been boycotted by one journalist, Jeremy Scahill, who said that hosting Milo was “many bridges too far” for him. Maher has much to lose by alienating his own base by catering too much to conservative guests, which may have motivated these remarks.
But Maher’s claims may also be too many bridges- the remarks that have gotten Milo such negative attention were actually attributed to reporting work originally done by The Reagan Batallion, a conservative anti-Trump news source that released a video of Milo appearing to defend pedophilia. The group also seems to refute Maher’s claims, linking to a video where Maher defends a similar situation to what Milo described:
Hey @billmaher, you should probably not be taking credit for bringing down Milo for saying the same things you said in the past. https://t.co/wMffvggi61
— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) February 22, 2017
The clip links to the story of Mary Kay Latourneau, a schoolteacher charged with the statutory rape of a 12-year old boy. Maher is at odds with the rest of his panel, asking “How can a woman rape a man?”
So while Maher may think of himself as a great defender of leftist values for his “exposure” of Milo, he may find himself being the one exposed.
