Bill Maher Stands Up for Free Speech and the Right to Say an Election Is Stolen

Bill Maher has some good thoughts and discussions on his "Real Time" show.

He had a few this weekend. He had on Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who argued in favor of giving downpayment assistance to illegal aliens to be able to buy homes. She also said she wanted to make them all "documented," which sounds like she was saying the quiet part out loud about the Democratic agenda.

Then he also mocked some of the Kamala Harris CNN interview and noted that she had "three bad years."

Bill Maher Torches Optics of Kamala Interview, Mocks Her, and Notes Big Voter Problem She Faces

But he had some more interesting comments, this time on people talking about elections being stolen. As we know, that became a no-no on social media and if you said such things, you might have been suppressed. Maher spoke against such censorship, as our friends at Townhall observed.

He was speaking in the context of the arrest in France of Telegram founder Pavel Durov and the worry that the heavy hand in that case and in places like Brazil -- which is blocking X -- was going to come down again here and clamp down on the people behind the platforms, like Elon Musk.

Bill Maher believes Americans should have the right to claim the election is stolen:
Bill Maher: "Trump was off Twitter for a long time before Elon put him back on Twitter. It was kind of like keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame.
Can you say, if you're a Republican, or a… pic.twitter.com/t7MWhu3LmU
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) August 31, 2024

Maher argued for free speech. "Can you say, if you're a Republican, or a Bolsonaro supporter, 'The election was stolen' That's my opinion [sic]. I think you can, and should be able to. That's still opinion. That's still free speech."

Political commentator and Columbia professor John McWhorter, who was on the panel, said he thought that you could make "exceptions" for rare things -- and he thought Trump was one of those things. "Exceptions," however, just equate to excuses to censor people who you want to shut down, as the left did with Trump. McWhorter said there should not be censorship by the elite of what they don't like, but that's exactly what happened in the past on Twitter, including the censorship of Trump.

While there was censorship of Trump and others, the shoe wasn't on the other foot when Democrats like Stacey Abrams raised questions about elections. There was always a double standard.

That problem has only eased a bit because of Elon Musk buying X. Other sites still are susceptible to those questions.

The panel also spoke about Mark Zuckerberg's revelations and "mea culpa" on being pressured by the Biden-Harris administration to censor COVID information they didn't like.

Bill Maher and the panel cover Mark Zuckerberg admitting that Facebook was pressured into censoring content by the Biden administration:
Bill Maher: "He [Mark Zuckerberg] wrote to Jim Jordan and kind of did a mea culpa on what happened a few years ago. He wrote that his team was… pic.twitter.com/7Nbok9UfN6
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) August 31, 2024

The reason that Zuckerberg is talking now may not be because he's become enlightened on the free speech topic, as Puck's Peter Hamby observed. "This letter to Jim Jordan to me too is just Zuckerberg with his finger in the air, saying 'Trump might win, so we want to be on the right side of Republican politics.'"

That's quite likely, but that also tells you where they think things may go. Zuckerberg is seeing the signs in the wind and is trying to cover his bases.

Maher of course is right, and that's a big part of what the current battle is about, that indeed binds Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk, and others -- the fight against authoritarian control.