Maher: “I Just Don’t Understand The Economy.” I Pay “Way Over Half” In Taxes, “It Doesn’t Seem To Get To The People”
HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher criticized the American tax system, saying he pays more than half of his income in taxes and “it doesn’t seem to get to the people.”
BILL MAHER: I mean, it’s the economy, stupid. I’ve asked this question so many weeks on this show, and I can never get an answer. I just don’t understand the American economy. I really don’t. I don’t understand how there could be so much wealth, and I pay so much in taxes. And it doesn’t seem to get to the people. Like, I don’t even mind doing it. Over half, always. Way over half. And yet it just — I never read about the homeless getting better. Anything getting better. At least in a city like this. STEPHEN A. SMITH, GUEST: The problem that I’m having with this conversation right now — MAHER: Uh-oh — SMITH: — is that we’re accusing the politicians of not knowing they know. $ 39-plus trillion in debt. Yeah. You can’t pay TSA workers a billion dollars over the last month, but you can spend $ 800 million to $ 2 billion a day, and somehow, someway, you find that money to finance a war. You knew you had the damn money. You knew where it was. You knew how you wanted to allocate it, and you knew you didn’t want it to go to the American people. That ain’t ignorance. That’s viciousness. That’s foolishness. That’s not thinking about the American public. You see, when we sit up here, and we talk about aspiring politicians and all of that stuff, you know how you win an election right now? All you got to do is look the people in the face, be straight up with them, and let them know. You about them. You got a shot. That’s all you got to do, because you look anywhere else. Where’s the leadership? Look at the Republican Party right now. It’s Trump. You know what I said the other week on my show? I said, y’all do know he’s leaving in 2028, right? Unless he circumvents the 22nd Amendment and runs for a third term. He’s leaving. J.D. Vance, you ain’t him. Don’t think you are. Marco Rubio, thank God he doesn’t try to be. The rest of these people fawning over him in such embarrassing fashion, you ain’t going to be him. And the Democrats, my God, please find somebody who can lead. Gavin Newsom is out here in California. Out here in California. Pulling off in his own way what I think he wants to. He’s being known more for trolling Trump on his podcast or with other interviews than what he’s actually doing in the state of California. They think that’s leadership because they don’t have it. They know what they’re doing.
