Bill Maher Fancies Himself Dotard's "Friend" - He Was More Like A Useful Idiot With His Gushing 'Real Time' Performance

   Maher glorifies Trump for 13 minutes on his Friday show - proving even smarties can be played

"The world is now seeing Trump’s America for exactly what it is becoming: a rogue state led by an impulsive strongman disconnected from the rule of law and other constitutional American principles and values. And do you know what our democratic allies do with rogue states? Let’s connect some dots.

First, they don’t buy Treasury bills as much as they used to. So America has to offer them higher rates of interest to do so — which will ripple through our entire economy, from car payments to home mortgages to the cost of servicing our national debt at the expense of everything else." - Thomas Friedman,  NY Times, "I have Never Been More Afriad For My Country's Future'

Bill Maher in a nausea -inducing 13 minute romp on Real Time Friday night, gushed that on a recently invited (by Kid Rock) WH visit, he found the president “gracious and measured and able to laugh at himself."  Cue the barf bags. Of course he was able to laugh at himself after he pulled the freakin' wool over more than 77 million voters on November 5th, and got the morons to interject a 34 count indicted felon back into power. A power now ruled by retribution - even as hundreds of Venezuelans - find themselves in a Salvadoran hellhole prison with no chance of escape. Oh, and college students find they can't get access to financial assistance because Dotard blew up the Dept. of Education.  Oh, and we now learn NASA's top astrogeology section is being dismembered under DOGE.

Sorry, but any asshole that sucks up to a guy who's responsible for all that is a useful idiot.  And being played by an orange traitor clown who likely can't believe such a PR stunt and optics win fell into his lap.  Golly freakin' gee he ain't nutso after all, he's "measured".  

How much of a loser asshole do you have to be to get "charmed" by the Dotard? Well, one of cosmic scale for sure, proving even an erstwhile smartypants like Maher can be suckered into the orange toad's fungal atmosphere and not know it.  Don't believe me?  Describing their hours-long meeting and meal on March 31, Maher chirped that Trump gave him “a very generous amount of time, and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend."  

Accept you as a possible friend? You mean another ass kisser like the dozens of butt kissing Reep sycophants in congress? Who won't lift a damned finger to put a check on Trump's lawless overreach? Sorry, boyo, you've now been relegated to the segment of Trumpers who fawn over a lawless, power mad renegade and ensure - by your 13 minute slavering- even more power and influence as he craters the global economy.

Fortunately, one WaPo columnist and author (Chaos Under Heaven) - Josh Rogin - was present to puncture Maher's fantasizing. After Maher had gushed about the Dotard being "warm and measured", Rogin pushed back and informed the wide-eyed imp he'd been used as part of a PR stunt. After all, to get a popular comic with an influential show to call a madman warm and measured has to be a PR (and propaganda) win. As Mr. Rogin put it:  

"I think you've fallen into the trap, and I think I represent 99% of the internet when I say this: you've played the game of proximity is principle. I'm not questioning your motivation, I'm questioning Trump's, OK?"

Hard to contradict that, certainly from what I saw Friday night.  Wondering to myself if Maher had smoked one too many reefers before his WH visit. 

 Certainly when Maher went off the rails when he asserted Dotard was "one of the most effective politicians because of his authenticity"  i.e.   

Bill Maher Calls Trump One Of The 'Most Effective Politicians' Because Of His Authenticity

One had to question if Maher too had lost all his marbles. Was he even in the same universe assessing an orange porker who'd already reeled off more than 37,000 lies?

Of course, Maher took umbrage that he could be so questioned for going to an hours long visit with the worst predator president ever, sending this nation over a cliff piece by piece. Confirming he's doing Putin's dirty work for him, and once again repeating the lie that Ukraine started the war with Russia. yeah right, and monkeys type out works of Shakespeare on their infinite typewriters.  Anyway, after shutting down Rogin, Maher barked:

"Did you hear what I said? What is the alternative to not talking? Just sit at your lunch table and don't talk to anybody?"

Which shows he's as clueless as he is naive.  Because Rogin never said don't talk to anybody. If there is a Trumper not totally sucked into Trump's butthole and open to sane, logical discussion, by all means. But that is not the same as being sucked into the orbit of a traitor and felon and allowing his pseudo-charm to turn your brain into a propaganda machine.

As one recent Washington Post column put it:

"The remarks amounted to a win for the White House: One of the president’s most prominent critics, for a night, spent 13 minutes on a monologue humanizing Trump, rather than caricaturing or attacking him. Elon Musk, Trump’s billionaire ally, shared a video of Maher’s remarks that had received more than 55 million views as of Monday morning."

For the rest of us, I warrant most of the sane segment of this country, Maher's glib glorification of a traitor - who pardoned thousands of January 6th traitors - is an atrocity. One we won't soon forget.  Also, that Maher himself has lost all contact with reality, especially when he yapped:

"A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there,”

Sorry, Billy boy, but if you don't recognize you've made a sociopath and fascist sound acceptable, then I can't help you.

Some WaPo comments on Maher's meet:

-Maher should have just administered the BJ while he was there in the room. Trump earned it for the time he spent snowing this guy.

I saw the show and was appalled. I don't care how funny Trump is, or even if he has a sense of humor. For all the horrible things Trump has done to his own country and the world, being funny is the least important thing..

There are two possibilities: Maher is gullible and not that bright, so he got snookered. Or, Maher is verging toward Trumpism and not that bright, so he allowed himself to get snookered.

Like Trump it would seem Maher has had a "He likes me!" moment. I never would have believed he could be that naive. You've joined the multitude of folks who have been hoodwinked by the creatures 'charm' offensive, Bill. Sad.

I look forward to when Maher gets a tour of the Salvadoran prison  like his delightful tour of the WH and declares as a smug “centrist” his equivalent of “there’s nice people on both sides.”

Maher’s comments only heightened my concern about the country’s future. When I thought the Orange One was just an amoral jerk selling himself to right wing oligarchs, life was just about survival until 2029.The portrait Maher paints of a sane rational being creating a caricature to promote chaos is scary.

See Also: 

Donald Trump | Fascism

‘Don’t You See What’s Happening?’ Experts Call Trump’s Latest Moves ‘Full Blown Fascism’

by David Badash | April 15, 2025 - 6:20am | permalink

— from Alternet

President Donald Trump’s recent escalating rhetoric and actions across multiple fronts have alarmed political experts, who are now warning that the United States is not just drifting but accelerating toward fascism—and may have already crossed the threshold.

“He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him,” warned Republican Sarah Longwell, a political strategist and publisher of The Bulwark. “He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?”

Trump on Sunday night attacked CBS and its “60 Minutes” newsmagazine, a top-rated and esteemed broadcast for more than five decades. The President, apparently angered by its reporting, called for CBS’s broadcast license to be revoked. He also called on his hand-picked head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior,” namely, reporting facts he did not like.

» article continues...

And:

Donald Trump

Chaos

by Robert Reich | April 14, 2025 - 5:24am | permalink

— from Robert Reich's Substack

As tens of millions of Americans hussle to pay their taxes, Trump has put the entire global economy into chaos. 401(k)s are tanking, savings are shrinking, treasury bonds are losing value, supply chains are convulsing.

Even America’s oligarchs are petrified. They contributed millions to Trump’s inauguration. Many invested heavily in his campaign. They lavished praise on the new president and have supported his every move — in order to benefit from his promised big tax cut.

But the chaos he’s unleashed on the world economy is causing many of them to go public with their worries.

“Obviously,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, said in a conference call with reporters, “the China stuff is significant. We don’t know the full effect.”

» article continues...

And:

There Is No Choice: Trump Must Be Impeached

Excerpt:

Trump has figured out how to convert the slow grind of due process into a tool of mockery. Gag orders become proof of censorship. Trials are dismissed as witch hunts. The very idea of law is hollowed out and rebranded as tyranny. And the longer the system hesitates, the deeper the damage. Rule of law begins to resemble a punchline.

We’ve seen this before, just not here. From Orbán to Erdoğan to Putin, we’ve watched elected leaders keep the outward forms of democracy – elections, courts, legislatures – while draining them of substance. The systems look intact, but their spirit is gone. Power is centralized, opposition is marginalized, and the rule of law becomes rule by law. Trumpism is not some American anomaly – it is part of a broader global drift toward strongman politics cloaked in democratic rituals…

 That’s the grim lesson for us now: there is no clean exit from this crisis, no perfect choice. But doing nothing is not caution – it’s capitulation. A constitutional democracy cannot survive if it’s afraid to enforce its own rules.  If this moment doesn’t justify impeachment, then the mechanism is a dead letter. 

And:

Bill Maher went to Washington. He got played.

Excerpt:

Trump made him feel comfortable and listened to. In their conversation, which included “an amazing tour of the whole house,” Trump remained empathetic. “He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public,” Maher recalled. “Why can’t we get the guy I met to be the public guy?” 

It’s unfortunate that Maher allowed himself to get played like this. In private, many of history’s most brutal leaders have been described by their contemporaries in surprisingly human, even affectionate, terms.

By agreeing to meet with Trump, allowing himself to be privately charmed by a charismatic leader and then sharing his softened new take on the president, Bill Maher has made the task of holding Trump accountable that much more difficult. 

Solutions To Basic Elements Of Abstract Algebra Problems

  Solutions: 

(1) By the Euclidean (division) algorithm there exist numbers q, r ∈  Z

Such that 0 < r < n,   and a is of the form:

a = q n + r

By definition of   [a ]  mod n  =   [a]

 r  ∈   [a] ,   And:   r = a + (-q) n

  (2) Let Z be the integers.  The ideal:

 

           (5)  =   {5 j:  j ∈  Z }

Show all the congruence classes with respect to this ideal.    

(Hint:  [a] =  {a + j: j ∈ [(5)}  = {a +  5j: j ∈   Z } )

The congruence classes are:

[a]   =  {a + j: j  ∈  (5)}  =  {a + 5j: j ∈  Z }

[0]  =  {0 + 5 j: j  ∈  Z}  =  { 5j: j ∈  Z }  =  (5)

[1] =  {1  + 5 j: j  ∈  Z}   =  {1, 6, -4, 11, -9}

[2]  =  {2  + 5 j: j  ∈  Z}   =  {2, 7, -3, 12, -8}

[3]  =  {3  + 5 j: j  ∈  Z}   =  {3, 8, -2, 13, -7}

[4]  =  {4  + 5 j: j  ∈  Z}   =  {4, 9, -1, 14, -6}

[5]  =  {5  + 5j: : j  ∈  Z}   =   5 (j+ 1) : j  ∈  Z}   =  [5] = [0]

3) Using set notation we may define:

A ·  B  =  {x ·  y: x ∈ A,  y ∈ B}

A +  B  =  =  {x +  y:  x ∈ A,  y ∈ B}

4) Take S as the set of integers, Z. Let the ideal I = (2) so that S / I =  Z ₂     Thence or otherwise, find:

a (a)     [0]     b)   [1]     c) S/ I  =  Z ₅       

 

Take S =    Z.  I = (2)  so that S / I =  Z ₂    

a) [0] =  {0, + 2, + 4, + 6…..}  =  I = (2) 

b) [1]  =   {1, 3, -1, 5, -3, 7….}

c)If S / I  =  Z ₅       

S/I =  {[0], [1], [2], [3], [4]}

5 ) Show every ring S has two ideals: S itself and {0}.

Every ring S always has at least two subrings, namely S and the zero ring,  S _0.

Further, if S is also a  field then the only ideals in S are S and {0}.  Further:

 if 1   ∈ I  then I = S. (Let I = S be an ideal,  I = {0} is also an ideal. )

 (In a field F, the only ideals are 0 and F)

Basically, an ideal of a ring S is an additive subgroup a  of  S with the property that:

a   ∈ S    and a  ∈  a    imply  ra  ∈  a  .  Clearly then the set containing the single element 0 and the set containing the whole ring S are ideals.

No Changelings: MAGAs Agree They're All In For Trump's Tariffs Even As Their Savings Vanish

                          Trump supporters hail Trump after losing their savings.

                             "Thanks, dummies, for returning me to power!"

"Dumb US voters gave a stungun to a toddler. They will pay the price - the higher the better. From Europe we wish you hard lessons. We’re gonna get along without you now." - NY Times comment

"Sadly, in the age of media, a dumbed-down citizenry lacking excellence in Public Education, are more emotional than rational, critical thinkers.." NY Times comment

MAGA influencers who once condemned inflation under President Joe Biden - then going ape shit- now have the nerve to tell Americans they could make do with less. All to support their demented orange master's irrational tariffs - which will ultimately crater their lives more than any others.

These cockeyed GOP cult voters, once irate over the cost of groceries, said they are willing to give Trump a long runway "to figure things out". Of course, like mindless, low IQ dummies they believe every word he utters - even after he played them in the '24 election. Believing he'd bring prices of groceries down "the first day" even when he telegraphed all the way through his campaign he was bent only on retribution.

Which shows how divorced from reality these nitwits  are, as they were Nov. 5th when they voted this senile felon braggart back into power- expecting lower prices for their groceries and housing. Why be surprised? The bane of the lower IQ lot is that this condition prevents them from analytical thinking, from reasoning and putting causes together with effects. Which also requires a college-level ability to read.

 We know: two-thirds of white men without a college degree supported Trump this past election, according to exit polling data from The Washington Post. So did 60% of white women who didn't go to college.

That too many Americans are losing their ability to reason was already well known.. And at the bottom of their inability to read is the ingestion off too much political propaganda and disinformation. Such as issued from Musk and Trump - bombarding the swing states with such ads leading up to Nov. 5th. 

More recent op-ed examples of Right bullshit include this humdinger:

Trump’s Tariffs Are as Bad as Bidenomics - WSJ

Which actually claims the very basis for Joe Biden's 'Goldilocks' economy - "the envy of the world" according to The Economist - is just as bad as Trump's tariff shitshow. (Which most economists agree is the biggest financial unforced error since the 1930 Smoot Hawley tariffs - driving prices of everything to historic levels.)

Then last week The Wall Street Journal (editorial) treated somnolent readers to this howler:

Trump Takes Up Lawfare Against His First-Term Aides

- His orders against Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor are what Democrats did to him.

Which is total twaddle given Democrats did nothing of the sort. Indeed, via multiple impeachments and prosecutions they sought to hold a lawless Russkie asset and traitor (inciting an insurrection) accountable.  Consider:

- Trump publicly urged Russian interference in our elections in 2016. (Getting Hillary’s emails). Russia complied.

- At Helsinki, Trump publicly sided with Putin against our own intelligence agencies.  See:

Trump's Helsinki Bow To Putin Leaves World Wondering: Why? : NPR

- Trump conducted private meetings and phone calls with Putin. No transcript, nobody else present.

- Trump continued to phone and correspond with Putin, privately, after he's kicked out of office.

- Back in office thanks to brain-fucked voters fretting over the price of eggs, Trump falsely accused Ukraine of being the aggressor in Russia's war this after he PARDONS all the January 6th traitors.

- Trump  then destroyed relations with every single one of our allies, starting with Canada - asserting he wanted it annexed as the "51st state."

- Trump then began to dismantle the entire US government using a mock Musk "agency" called DOGE.

- Trump then proceeded to hire fools and butt-kissers to run all our Intel Agencies and Health and Human Services.

- In the wake of the last Trump allowed the dismantling of our public health system, ensuring that our populous will be diseased

- Trump upended the rule of law, attacking judges and lawyers, and pardoning every criminal that licks his boots

- Trump then set out to destroy our economy using the monumental unforced error of $6 trillion in tariffs setting off a global trade war

- Trump fired the head of cyber intelligence leaving us open to attacks

- Trump upbraided and humiliated Ukraine President Volydymor Zelenskyy, showing all sentient citizens how tight a leash Putin has on him.

 Putin couldn't have been happier if Trump himself were a Russian agent, a "Manchurian candidate" if you will.

It's Russia, Russia, Russia, dear readers, and it was NEVER a hoax or simply "collusion" as the WSJ and its trolls and minions -like Holman Jenkins Jr. and Kimberely Strassel - have maintained

This in turn suggests a lowering of IQ amongst a significant demographic (the Maggats) of whom 30% only read at fifth grade level.  Which means IQs are dropping. As the retired general Jim Mattis and Bing West once wrote, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”

Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute emphasizes that the achievement gap between the top and bottom scorers is bigger in America than in any other nation with similar data. Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, 

“Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” 

He continued, 

“It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

But every third person one meets on the street (by proportion from total U.S. population) is also a  MAGA or Trump supporter.  This is why most polling experts - like Frank Luntz- do not expect Trump's disapproval numbers to ever fall below 30 percent.

To quote David Brooks from a recent NYT piece:

"What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Donald Trump’s tariff policy. I’ve covered a lot of policies over the decades, some of which I supported and some of which I opposed. But I have never seen a policy as stupid as this one. It is based on false assumptions. It rests on no coherent argument in its favor. It relies on no empirical evidence. It has almost no experts on its side — from left, right or center. It is jumble-headedness exemplified. Trump himself personifies stupidity’s essential feature — self-satisfaction, an inability to recognize the flaws in your thinking. .. Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence."

Let's take this into the realm of extrapolation and how it applies to his MAGA base and why their inability to read beyond a 5th grade level makes them hostages to B.S., social media memes and lousy voting choices.

A week ago Trump announced he would pause or lower his country-specific tariffs for scores of nations that want to "kiss his ass" - even as a bond market selloff forced the fucker to get real. Yet his followers believe it was  "a stunt to get countries to come to the table and ultimately will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.".

This shows me the Trumpers have no comprehension of the bond market, how it functions and how it trumps a loudmouth, stupid senile orange know it all. It also shows me these losers have no comprehension of how difficult it would be to bring any scale of manufacturing back to this country. As a recent WSJ article ('What Tariffs Mean For The Job Market', April 12-13, p. A7) noted:

"A fairly simple, midsize factory would cost a minimum of $25 million and take around two years to build"

A much larger factory, say that would even employ 1,000 workers, could take a decade and nearly $100b to build. This according to markets specialist Stephanie Ruhle.  Thus as the WSJ piece adds, given new tariffs would also be added to the expense - given so many materials would have to come from abroad:

"There's no certainty that new factories would pay back their investment over time."

Can any of the Trump cult yahoos grasp that? Doubtful. That's because their brains are more entranced by Dotard's braggadocio and bombast than any rational substance - because he lacks any. His entire talent embodies using his 'Barnum and Bailey' carny barker voice to dog whistle his morons into belief. Case in point Dotard’s degenerate  description of imagined tariff success  at the recent National Republican Congressional Committee dinner, barking:

“This time I’m doing what I want to do with respect to the tariffs. … These countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are! They are dying to make a deal, begging. … ‘I’ll do anything, sir!’”

Think that will get them to make a deal when the lot of those tariffied nations could sink our economy one time by joining in a mass bond selloff? Do Dotard's cult dopes even know what a bond selloff is? Do they know what a bond is, what its function is? No, because they don't read financial pages, far less any regular newspapers.  But they might pay attention to a FOX News business guy.

Charlie Gasparino - FOX News Business reporter- last week delivered the breaking the news of Japanese bond selloffs, e.g.

Charlie Gasparino: "It is the White House who capitulated" | Media Matters for America

Excerpt:

 "You know, Bessent knows this better than anybody, when you have yields on the 10-year rising to 5%, stuff starts shutting down when you have the lending market screwed up. By the way, who's dumping the bonds? Somebody asked him if it was China, right? It wasn't, it was Japan. While he was negotiating with Japan, Japan, according to my sources, were running major money management firms that are involved in the bond market, without giving up names. Japan was dumping bonds because they believed this was not a great place to do business. That forced their hands." 

This means that no matter how much Trump postures no amount of tariffs will get him a final victory or the renaissance in American manufacturing his pathetic cultists fancy. As a WaPo piece last week aptly put it:

"there exists a voting bloc that never tires, never flags. Operating across continents and centuries, traders of government bonds have peered narrowly at the performance of world leaders and registered judgment in cool percentages. They are the villains of countless conspiracy theories, these minions of international finance, precisely because they cannot be steered by populist frenzies or demagogic appeals."

See Also:

Opinion | The bond market just sent a big warning for Trump - The Washington Post

Excerpt:

“Investors started dumping U.S. government bonds. They sold and sold and sold. This is not normal. Typically, U.S. government bonds are a safe haven. Whenever stocks tank or there’s turmoil around the world, investors rush to buy plain vanilla bonds from the U.S. Treasury. It’s the equivalent of chicken soup for unhealthy markets. But suddenly, those bonds turned bitter. Ultimately, Trump caved to the bond markets. He didn’t want to follow the fate of British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned in humiliation in 2022 after a similar bond market fiasco in reaction to her policies.

This unsleeping, unfeeling, unsentimental voting bloc forced Trump to change course on his tariff tornado. Other forces sagged into exhaustion in the face of Trump’s obsession, but the votes of the bond markets kept piling up, second by second, hour by hour, day by day. Forget about memes, sick burns and capital letters on Truth Social. The market eschews parades and petitions and marathon speeches. It is an endless murmur of individual transactions, each one a vote, and a landslide swept Trump away.

Trump and his team tried to happy-talk their way past the stock market collapse, but the tireless voters weighed in. His attempt to brush off his defeat in the bond markets by saying that traders had gotten “yippy” fell flat. This is the world’s infrastructure of finance we’re talking about, and it’s built on the value of government promises. Yips have nothing to do with it.

And the pillar of this infrastructure is the credibility of the United States.”

And:

How a trade war becomes a shooting war

And:

Donald Trump bends to the power of the markets

And:

Donald Trump

Chaos

by Robert Reich | April 14, 2025 - 5:24am | permalink

— from Robert Reich's Substack

As tens of millions of Americans hussle to pay their taxes, Trump has put the entire global economy into chaos. 401(k)s are tanking, savings are shrinking, treasury bonds are losing value, supply chains are convulsing.

Even America’s oligarchs are petrified. They contributed millions to Trump’s inauguration. Many invested heavily in his campaign. They lavished praise on the new president and have supported his every move — in order to benefit from his promised big tax cut.

But the chaos he’s unleashed on the world economy is causing many of them to go public with their worries.

“Obviously,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, said in a conference call with reporters, “the China stuff is significant. We don’t know the full effect.”

» article continues...

And:

China | Trade

What America Misunderstands About China’s Trade Resolve

by Jianlu Bi | April 9, 2025 - 4:57am | permalink

— from Foreign Policy In Focus

Following the U.S. implementation of new reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods, China’s swift and decisive imposition of a 34 percent tariff on American imports, coupled with tightened export controls on rare earths and the blacklisting of U.S. companies, underscores Beijing’s resolve to defend its economic interests against what it perceives as unilateral bullying. The timing and scale of China’s response, just days after the United States unveiled its own reciprocal tariffs, sends a clear message: Beijing is prepared to play hardball.

The notion that China would meekly acquiesce to Washington’s demands, even with the dangling carrot of a TikTok deal, has been soundly rejected. Instead, China’s actions signal a new era of economic confrontation, where reciprocal measures and targeted sanctions are the weapons of choice. The 34 percent tariff, effective April 10, represents a substantial blow to American exporters, particularly those in the agricultural and industrial sectors, and the suspension of sorghum and poultry product exports demonstrates China’s willingness to leverage its market power.

» article continues...