On Friday’s Real Time , Bill Maher compared psychics to organized religion and the GOP during his new rules segment.
“If authorities in New York are going to continue their crackdown on Times Square psychics — an industry which sucks millions of dollars out of gullible people with the vague promise of a better life — they have to answer one question: How is religion different?” Asked Maher.
Maher referred to a New York Times report on an unnamed man who was scammed out of $713,975 by New York City psychic Priscilla Kelly Delmaro. Delmaro promised her client he could be with the woman he loved, even after the woman died in 2014. Delmaro was arrested for grand larceny by the NYPD in early June.
“Although fortune telling is protected by the First Amendment, it does raise a moral question,” said Maher. “A New York detective who was working on the case asked, ‘Is it O.K. to rob stupid people?’ ”
Celia Mitchell, another NYC psychic who admitted to conning $159,205 out of a client, was arrested on grand larceny charges earlier this year. Sylvia Mitchell, a different psychic scammer, is serving 15 years in prison for grand larceny charges.
Maher ended the show by drawing a connection between the GOP and psychic con-artists.
“Now I’m not saying Republicans are like psychics, because psychics are right sometimes,” Maher joked. “Whereas trickle-down economics has never been right. Yet, Republican voters keep buying into it, even though that girlfriend has been dead since the 80s.”
Maher pointed out that former Vice President Dick Cheney predicted a disastrous outcome for President Barack Obama’s Iran Deal. Maher noted a different prediction from 2007, where Cheney told the Guardian , “There is no doubt Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.”
Maher mockingly pulled out a bag of fortune cookies, arguing the press should consider the Chinese cookies more credible than Cheney.
Maher then went on to list other Republican predictions that turned out false.
“If President Obama is reelected you will not be able to get a job,” said former Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2011. Today, unemployment is lower than it was under President Ronald Reagan.
“… when Obamacare takes effect in 2014 expect it [unemployment] to go even higher,” tweeted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2011, proving another poor prediction of today’s low unemployment rates.
Maher then pointed out other ill-fated predictions, from politicians Sarah Palin, who said there’d be Obamacare death panels, Rand Paul, who said Obamacare would “bankrupt the states,” or John Boehner’s prediction that Obamacare would “bankrupt the nation.”
[Image via HBO screengrab]
