Rep.-elect Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, leaves after attending orientation for new members of Congress, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Bill Maher sometimes says some things that are worthwhile, such as calling out media for pushing coronavirus “panic porn.”

But he also has severe TDS. So much so that he at one point basically indicated he’d be willing to have a recession, even if it meant hurting Americans, if it meant helping to get rid of President Donald Trump.

Maher had Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) on his show and tried to dunk all over Trump while leaving out critical things that Trump did in response to the pandemic in the context of when he did them, leaving out things Trump did in January like activating the CDC, forming the virus task force, declaring a public health emergency and restricting travel with China.

But Crenshaw was having none of that, because he was there in Congress, seeing what was being done in real time, while Maher is only going off media quotes. Not only did he talk about Trump restricting travel, rebutting Maher’s claims, but he also pointed out the context.

Bill Maher gets REKT without the high production spell that is Hollywood. No phony studio audience to save him. Great job by @DanCrenshawTX. pic.twitter.com/FWBgGsYJnO

— Essential Fleccas 🇺🇸 (@fleccas) April 19, 2020

From Fox News:

“Republicans always get asked this question and this demand where we have to answer, ‘What do we feel about him? Don’t you want to comment about his latest tweet and the way he lashed out? And no, I don’t,” Crenshaw said. “I can’t defend everything. He doesn’t have the same style as I do. I don’t consider him to be my spiritual guide by any means.” [….]

Maher then challenged Crenshaw on the travel ban, accusing Trump of “lying” about it since people “are still coming in” from China and said Trump’s order affected only “foreign nationals.”

“The reality is about 40,000 people came in after that,” Crenshaw said. “These were U.S. citizens and green-card holders and passport holders being repatriated. U.S. citizens. So you have to make the argument then that we shouldn’t allow them in.

“It sounds to me that you’re fully agreeing with President Trump on this one and everybody else disagreed with him,” he told Maher. “And if you’re saying that the travel restriction should have been more extreme, then fine. You clearly had the foresight back then but nobody else did.”

He pretty much leaves Maher stuttering without much response.

Crenshaw then took apart House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, pointing out how they had spoken against the restrictions, even observing that Pelosi posed legislation to stop it.

He poked holes through Maher’s argument that Trump had not acted, also pointing to what Pelosi was doing at the time, that she was more concerned about pushing a ban on flavored tobacco than about the virus at the time.

“Your criticism appears to be based on one thing — that Trump was overly optimistic,” Crenshaw said. “That’s his style. You can criticize it, that’s fine, but it’s not connected to the actions that were actually taken.”

The GOP lawmaker also asked Maher whether the American people “would have accepted” a lockdown of the country sooner — when there were “only 102 cases” of coronavirus in the U.S. on March 3.

“I provide all of that context as we try to basically accuse this man of … he’s being accused of having blood on his hands,” Crenshaw said. “And context is so important here. If we’re going to criticize somebody’s actions, we have to do it with the facts they knew at the time. So I’m just trying to be fair here. I don’t really care about defending him or his actions. I just care about letting people know the truth. And when people make these accusations, I have to ask them: Is the goal to make Trump look bad or is the goal to get to the truth? Because there are two separate sets of answers for that.”

Crenshaw showed why he has a lot of future in the party with that response.