Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, is weighing in on the New York Times anonymous op-ed criticizing Donald Trump’s behavior in the White House. The comic says that he knows which of the senior staff members wrote the letter and it’s Trump’s chief of staff, retired General John Kelly.
The Daily Beast says that on his show, Maher dedicated much of his hour talking about the anonymous letter and pondering on the identity of its writer, and how close to Trump that person actually is.
“This is the week that Trump found out everyone hates him — and I don’t mean people like me, I mean the people that work for him.”
Maher said it must be driving Trump crazy that someone he brought into his administration considers themselves to be part of the “resistance.”
Jimmy Kimmel opined on his show that it was Vice President Mike Pence who wrote the letter, but Maher thinks that the use of a Pence word, “lodestar” was a red herring.
“I think it’s General Kelly. I do. First of all, I think the McCain funeral was the last straw for several people. Look, he’s not been happy for a very long time. The list of people who have called the president an idiot, Kelly has been in there. I think in the Woodward book he says something like, ‘We’re in crazytown, there’s no point in even trying to talk to him. He doesn’t understand anything.’”
Bill Maher thinks John Kelly penned the anonymous New York Times op-ed bashing Trump: “I think the McCain funeral was the last straw for several people. Look, he’s not been happy for a very long time…” https://t.co/PvQ3PHzK6t
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) September 8, 2018
Bill Maher added that it’s not a coincidence that this happened the week before Bob Woodward’s book, Fear , is released, dishing out stories of what really goes on in the West Wing. Woodward quotes Kelly as talking about his discontent.
“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
Bill Maher said whether it’s John Kelly or someone else, that person deserves praise and not criticism.
“I would like to say to them, ‘Thank you for your service.’ Seriously. Let me explain why. The United States has made the same mistake overseas so many times. Take out Saddam Hussein or somebody we don’t like, and not think about: what comes next? Yes, Saddam Hussein was terrible, but what came next? ISIS. What comes next if these people, who are preventing him from doing really crazy things, go? I think General Kelly would love to leave. This has got to be worse than Iraq. He said it. He said, ‘This is the worst job I’ve ever had.’ He was in Fallujah.”
