During an extended interview on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Real Time host Bill Maher shares his thoughts on Trump's candidacy and on his supporters, who, as Maher explained are more than happy to live in alternative reality where facts don't matter and lying isn't a deal breaker for their candidate.
ZAKARIA: Whatever happens with this election, the big question I think we all are still trying to puzzle is how Trump, why Trump? What is your explanation as to why Donald Trump erupted onto the political scene the way he did?
MAHER: Well, you have to look at the people who voted for him. I mean, it's depressing to think that you share the country with so many people who you share nothing with. You know, Donald Trump is a reflection. And what we learned is that there is a lot of vulgar, tacky, racist people in this country, more than I thought. I knew there were some. But it's the proverbial lifting up of a rock and what we found when we lifted it up was the basket of deplorables, and I know that they hate that term, but if the basket fits, and it does.
ZAKARIA: There are a lot of people that talk about economic anxiety, the dislocation, and the pain. In your last monologue, you don't buy that.
MAHER: Well, I mean, we found out it was a myth. I mean, the typical Trump voter in the primaries made, I think, $72,000. They're not hurting economically like they say they are. No more likely to be hurt by trade or immigration, no more likely to be out of work. You know, the base problem is that they live in this factory bubble. If you've ever seen one of his rallies it's a completely fact-free assessment of this country, the problems facing it and his always Constitutionally impossible solutions. It's funny, the Internet was supposed to make us smarter but it just served as a seal for knowledge to get in.
ZAKARIA: The perfect example of that is he keeps citing these on-line non-polls. It's like, we won all the polls.
MAHER: Oh yea. He said this week that ISIS was not only going to take over their part of the world but take over America. You know, back in the day, if you were in the John Birch Society, you had to go door to door with pamphlets and you have to talk to people, whatever. Now they're right in chat room. You can just spew your nonsense and there's lots of people who, that's what they want to hear and they want to believe, so they do.
So we live in this element where it's not even a race between ideologies anymore. It's not Republican and Democrat or conservative and liberal. It's reality versus alternative reality. This reality of their their own choosing. And to make it even worse, they don't care about lying. Lying, bold-faced, caught on tape lying is no longer a deal breaker at all. They don't care. They know, they don't know, it doesn't matter to them. He's their guy.
