Bill Maher centered the conversation of Friday\u2019s \u201cReal Time\u201d episode on the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, addressing the topic in his monologue and discussing the fallout with his guests, The Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro and The Atlantic writer Tim Alberta.<\/p>\n
\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 Representative] 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 began in his monologue. \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
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Maher then poked at President Trump\u2019s comments on the heated political environment left in the wake of Kirk\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\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 continued, drawing a laugh. \u201cHe\u2019s a different kind of cat. His message is, \u2018Let the healing stop.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Later in the episode, Maher welcomed Shapiro and Alberta for a roundtable conversation. Shapiro began the talk by saying that a poll showed that \u201conly 57% of Gen Z say there is no excuse for violence in response to speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are at least 42% that believe that there are some times that the violence ought to be a response to speech, which is deeply terrifying,\u201d Shapiro said. \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
Alberta, who described himself as having been a \u201csparring partner from a distance\u201d to Kirk, added 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, particularly to Ben\u2019s point among younger voters, that this is becoming mainstreamed and becoming acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way this starts to get better is if both sides admit, \u2018Okay, 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 Maher said.<\/p>\n
Maher and Shapiro disputed reporting on the political ideology of the suspected shooter, who was taken into policy custody Friday and identified as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do know that this kid was of the political left,\u201d Shapiro began, citing reporting from The Guardian and Tablet Magazine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s two days out. We don\u2019t know shit. The internet is undefeated in getting it wrong to begin with,\u201d Maher responded.<\/p>\n
Kirk had appeared on Maher\u2019s podcast Club Random in April.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old Kirk, who became an ally of Trump as a co-founder of the nonprofit Turning Point USA, which advocated to mobilize the youth vote for him, was shot Wednesday afternoon during a debate event he was hosting at Utah Valley University. Kirk was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n
After an extensive manhunt, Trump appeared on Fox News on Friday morning to announce that a suspect in the Kirk shooting had been taken<\/a> into police custody.<\/p>\n Along with Alberta and Shapiro, guests on Friday\u2019s episode of HBO\u2019s \u201cReal Time\u201d included Charlie Sheen.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Maher centered the conversation of Friday\u2019s \u201cReal Time\u201d episode on the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[63005,36494,61370,96,57126,11175,63006,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-134635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ben-shapiro","tag-bill-maher","tag-charlie-kirk","tag-entertainment","tag-political-violence","tag-president-trump","tag-tim-alberta","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}