Bill Maher Says George Santos Fooled Democrats To Get Elected To Congress On ‘Real Time’

Bill Maher is back for the 21st season of HBO’s Real Time and things heated up during the premiere on Friday when the host railed on Long Island Democrats for believing the lies that Rep. George Santos (R-NY) told to get elected to congress.

“Of course, we’ve seen liars before,” said Maher during his “New Rule” segment of the show, “but it was always about tacking from the extreme to the center of your own party.”

What Santos “pioneered,” he argued, is the idea that “since we’re all in our own hermetically sealed media bubbles,” he could “pretend to be everything to voters in both parties.”

While the perpetual liar did indeed pander to the far right by going all in on Trump’s election lies and claiming he was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, Maher claimed that the real reason he won his election is that he convinced the left to come out for him in a somewhat blue district.

“How did a Trump-loving, election-denying white nationalist get elected in a Democrat-leaning district?” he asked. “Simple, he told them what they wanted to hear too.”

“What do liberals love?” Maher asked. “Identity politics and victimhood.” That’s why, in his estimation, Santos claimed to be one of the earliest COVID cases as well as a “Jew-ish” descendent of Holocaust survivors.

“Everybody keeps asking, how could a guy like this get elected?” he continued, chalking it up to “tribalism” with Democrats as much if not more at fault than the Republicans who have mostly rallied around him even after his lies were exposed.

As Maher put it, “Republicans love a winner and Democrats love someone whose life story makes you want to kill yourself.”

Ultimately, he concluded, it was Santos’ identity as a “brave, sad, proudly gay, half-Black, Latino Holocaust victim” that apparently convinced enough Democrats to put him in office. “Vote for him? I’m surprised they didn’t have him host the Oscars!”

You can watch the full clip above.