Bill Maher Slams Kamala Harris For Opposing Trump’s Iran War: ‘I See So Much Happiness’

“Real Time” host Bill Maher continued to paint himself as a progressive critic of President Donald Trump while also taking a swipe at former Vice President Kamala Harris for criticizing the Iran war — admitting on Friday that he doesn’t “hate it.”

“Also, this week, war,” said Maher. “Did you hear about that thing? We bombed Iran and it’s going on. Now, if you expect me to say I hate it, I don’t. Sorry! When he puts boots on the ground, yeah, then I’ll hate it. Now, I know too many happy Iranian Americans, sorry.”

He continued, “You cannot name one horrible thing that has happened in the Middle East in the last 50 years and not connect it to this fascist theocracy. They’re like six degrees of ‘they don’t eat bacon.’ And it’s popular!” Maher made no mention of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the abduction and torture of Iraqi civilians at Abu Ghraib.

The host then criticized partisan reactions to the conflict in Iran, especially Harris’s take.

“When it comes to the war … everybody assesses everything by way of, ‘Did my team do it? Then I love it. If their team did it, I hate it,’” he said.

“I mean, Kamala Harris made a statement, she said, ‘This is a war the American people don’t want,’” Maher continued. “And who knows more about what the American people don’t want?”

The comedian went on to joke about his personal rift with Trump following their private dinner together last year, before continuing to endorse the Iran war with guests Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former CNN host Don Lemon.

“I just don’t get what liberals don’t get about liberation,” said Maher. “I see so much happiness. I see it in Venezuela, I see it here in Iran. Could we skip the part where we talk about, ‘Oh, they had so many different reasons for going to war,’ ‘regime change’ and ‘we gotta get rid of the nukes’ and ‘they were supporters of terrorism.’”

Maher argued that it’s all of the above, stating that “nothing in the Middle East was ever going to get better” with a government of this kind remaining in place. He then made the case that Trump is trying to replace Iran’s theocracy with a democracy.

CNN host Dana Bash, however, reported earlier in the day that she had spoken with Trump herself, to intriguing results.

“I said, ‘Well, would you be OK with a religious leader in Iran?’” Bash said Friday on CNN. “And he said, the answer is yes. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a democratic leader in Iran. It just has to be somebody who treats the U.S. and Israel fairly.”