Bill Maher: Republican campaign ads show that Americans are 'mind-numbingly stupid'

Although Bill Maher is a scathing critic of what he views as “political correctness” and excessive “wokeness” on the left — which he believes is harmful to the liberal/progressive cause — he has no love of the MAGA movement and sees much of the modern Republican Party as dangerously authoritarian. Maher, during an epic rant on “Real Time” in early June, slammed GOP campaign ads as “mind-numbingly stupid” — lamenting that they are aimed at voters who are also “mind-numbingly stupid.”

“We have to figure out how a country can solve any problem if so many of its people are so intractably, astoundingly, mind-numbingly stupid,” Maher told viewers. “And I’m not saying that as hyperbole or just out of frustration. I mean this country just might be empirically, verifiably too fucking dumb to continue as an ongoing enterprise.”

Maher went on to show a TikTok video in which the interviewer asked some questions to random people, including an aspiring schoolteacher. Asked in what country Venice, Italy was located, she responded, “Paris?” Another interviewee, asked where Queen Elizabeth was from, guessed that she was from Egypt; another guessed Brazil.

Maher declared, “This country simply has no education standards anymore…. As I travel this country on weekends doing standup, I see the political ads that are running on the local TV markets; I think, ‘How can this possibly work on people?’ And then, I remember: Oh, yes, they think Queen Elizabeth is from Egypt.”

Mocking some Republican attack ads, Maher told viewers, “When candidates and political ads say, ‘I approve this message,’ they should have to add, at the end, ‘You dumb fucks.’” And after Maher showed a clip of ad in which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is seen firing an assault weapon, he commented, “Here’s three words that no one ever has to say to Marjorie Taylor Greene: dumb it down.”

“There is an entire species of political adds on the right where the candidate just shoots something they don’t like,” Maher observed. “A lot of these ads make no mention of policy at all. It’s just: truck, gun, me like things that you like — vote me.”

Maher added, “But here’s something I notice that’s different about the ads that conservatives make versus the ones from liberals.” Conservatives, Maher noted, brag about being conservative, whereas Democrats avoid describing themselves as liberal.

“Democrats might want to think about what that means, because the implication is that you’re embarrassed by what liberalism has become — that the term is now irredeemably coupled with woke nonsense,” Maher lamented. “Which is a shame, because despite their nonsense, it’s still generally a better product. What does it say about your brand that you don’t want to say what you are? So much of liberal politics these days is identity politics, and yet, we’ve found the one thing liberals won’t identify as: liberals.”

Watch the video below: