‘Real Time With Bill Maher’ Returns, Gavin Newsom Calls Out ‘Timidity’ Of Democratic Party

Real Time with Bill Maher returned for its 22nd season on HBO last night and featured a one-on-one interview with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who explained why he debated Ron DeSantis, among other things.

First, Maher asked Newsom why he didn’t do any “jawboning” to help resolve the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes sooner.

The late night host asked the politician why he didn’t just go to both sides and say, “You knuckleheads are going to find a number that you agree on at some point. It always happens, instead of putting these people out of work for all these months and all this suffering and heartache. Can we just get it done today?”

Newsom responded, “Well, we did all of that except the knucklehead part was expressed on multiple occasions, down here on many, many occasions.”

He said that involved “not only meeting with both sides, meeting with individuals, phone calls, text messages, emails, working behind the scenes, national groups, state groups. So it is all part of the art of the possible in the deal, in the context of not showing your cards and showing a bias upfront, so you can be constructive behind the scenes when both parties call you when you are needed.” He added that “sometimes you are more public, sometimes it is behind the scenes.”

Maher then mentioned the Fox News debate between Newsom and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that was moderated by Sean Hannity, implying that Newsom prefers to keep the two political parties divided.

The HBO host said he “didn’t want to live in a civil war” and told Newsom, “You seem like you purposely want to set up this dichotomy between, ‘Oh, this is a blue state and that is a red state.’ And I don’t want to live in that. I like Florida.”

Newsom said he agrees with Maher and also likes Florida, but that he was not going to “sit back and watch” people trying “to bring us back to a pre-1960s world. America in reverse. Rolling back voting rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights. Not just access to abortion but contraception.”

He added that “you can sit by and say, ‘Well, I really want to get along,’ as these guys are rolling back the clock, or you can stand tall and assert yourself. And the reason I started to go into those red states, the reason I started to take on DeSantis, and the reason I started doing ads in those red states, is I didn’t feel my party was doing enough. I was CRT one year, and then it is ESG, and then it’s DEI. Anything with three letters, and these guys keep coming….I just thought there was a little timidity in our party and I thought we needed to call this stuff out.”

The California Gov. then mentioned the “cancel culture” of the Republican party. “Ask Bud Light. Target. Disney. That’s just the private sector. Banning speech not just in the classroom but in the boardroom as it relates to issues of race. Look what they have done — 3,362 books just last year they are banning.”

He added: “This is a serious and consequential moment, the cultural purge that is going on in this country. So I just felt like we needed to call that out as Democrats and put them on the defensive since we’re consistently on our heels as the Democratic party.”

As Newsom was wrapping up his comments, Maher half-jokingly asked: “Can you teach that speech to Biden?”

Check out a clip of the interview above and catch new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher on Fridays at 10:00 p.m. ET on HBO or stream them on Max.