{"id":140891,"date":"2025-09-13T19:38:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140891\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T19:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:38:05","slug":"bill-maher-addresses-charlie-kirk-death-on-real-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140891\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Maher Addresses Charlie Kirk Death on ‘Real Time’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBill Maher<\/a> addressed the shooting death<\/a> of right-wing activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk<\/a> during his Real Time episode on Friday. His guests, The Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro and The Atlantic writer Tim Alberta, also discussed the topic.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a very ugly week in America with violence of all kinds: political violence, regular violence, a lot of people talking about a civil war. And then today in Congress, because Charlie Kirk got assassinated, [Colorado Rep.] Lauren Boebert stood up and said, \u2018We need to have a prayer.\u2019 So, they started to have a silent prayer. And then she started screaming, \u2018No! Silent prayers get silent results.\u2019 As if praying out loud gets big results,\u201d Maher said during his monologue, via Variety<\/a>. \u201cThen the Democrats started screaming at her that there was a school shooting in her state. I tell you, so far, the civil war is not very civil.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMaher also took President Trump to task for his remarks as political divisiveness continues to ramp up in the aftermath of Kirk\u2019s death. \u201cToday, they asked the President, \u2018What are you going to do to bring the country together?\u2019 And he said, \u2018I know this is going to get me in trouble, but I could care less,\u201d Maher said, eliciting laughter from the audience. \u201cHe\u2019s a different kind of cat. His message is, \u2018Let the healing stop.\u2019\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring Maher\u2019s discussion with his guests, Shapiro noted the disparity of viewpoints among Gen Z when it comes to violent reactions to speech. He said that a poll revealed \u201conly 57 percent of Gen Z say there is no excuse for violence in response to speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are at least 42 percent that believe that there are some times that the violence ought to be a response to speech, which is deeply terrifying,\u201d Shapiro continued. \u201cI never, honest to God, thought that we were going to get to this point. Even the assassination of political figures is not the same thing as just being shot in the throat for the crime of debating issues in the public square. And I thought wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tAlberta, a self-described \u201csparring partner from a distance\u201d to Kirk, commented that \u201cthe response to this has not been shock and horror and a reversal of the trend line in these polls. If anything, it seems as though \u2014 particularly to Ben\u2019s point among younger voters \u2014 that this is becoming mainstreamed and becoming acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe governor of the state said, \u2018Social media is a cancer,\u2019 which I think is true. When you read some of the comments from people, they really are in such a bubble that they don\u2019t understand that it\u2019s happening on both sides,\u201d Maher said. \u201cThe only way this starts to get better is if both sides admit, \u2018OK, let\u2019s not have this debate about who started it. Let\u2019s not debate about who\u2019s worse because, plainly, both sides do it now.\u2019 And the right has done it too. A lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah, was taken into custody<\/a> on Friday. Trump announced the news<\/a> Friday morning on Fox, saying that \u201cthey have the person they wanted,\u201d and that he just heard about it \u201cfive minutes before I walked in.\u201d On Real Time, Maher and Shapiro also debated about reporting on the speculative political viewpoints of the suspected shooter.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe do know that this kid was of the political left,\u201d Shapiro began, citing reports from Tablet Magazine and The Guardian, which walked back its report on Sept. 12 with an editor\u2019s note. The Guardian\u2019s note<\/a> reads: \u201cEditor\u2019s note: This article was updated on 12 September 2025 to remove quotes after the verified source who attended high school with Tyler Robinson said after publication that they could not accurately remember details of their relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tMaher presciently responded: \u201cIt\u2019s two days out. We don\u2019t know shit. The internet is undefeated in getting it wrong to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKirk \u2014 who was a guest on Maher\u2019s Club Random podcast in April \u2014 was the co-founder of Turning Point USA<\/a>, which was formed to foster a culture of conservatism on school campuses around the nation. He was fatally shot Wednesday while speaking to students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Maher addressed the shooting death of right-wing activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk during his Real Time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,50361,92325,134,70144,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-140891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bill-maher","11":"tag-charlie-kirk","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-real-time-with-bill-maher","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}