Friday’s Real Time already featured a little surprise for longtime viewers with Maher’s announcement of his interview with President Obama and his little Trump standup show coming to Facebook Live. But there was still a show after that and surprisingly it didn’t really hit Anthony Weiner as hard as one would think. Instead, the focus seemed to be the defense for Hillary Clinton and the attack on the one part of Trump people seem to defend: his children. Ivanka Trump in particular.
Chelsea Handler was the mid-show guest with Maher and she shared her dream about Ivanka Trump or the dream scenario that would make her the hero and “good person” that most of the media paints her to be. Using her own father as an example, Handler says that Trump would’ve been an “American hero” if she would’ve come out against her father over the allegations against him. She then says that it is a fantasy, but most in the audience seem to agree with the sentiment. Trump had a big moment on the public stage where she could’ve stood out personally, but it’s also hard to blame her for sticking with her family — even if said family is making some poor decisions up and down the line.
Elsewhere in ‘New Rules,’ Maher puts forth a great idea for future election debates that would allow candidates to go to the video in order to fact check their opponent live on the stage. It would’ve been a helpful suggestion before the debates for Election 2016, but you have to think that future elections will feature the same tactics we saw from Trump and Clinton. But it would be cool to be able to shove a pie in the other person’s face during a debate and this is about the closest you’d ever get to that. The only thing better would be to have the guy from the Apollo Theater to usher candidates off stage after a certain number of lies or fabrications. That’s right, we’re turning the election into the full blown circus people have always wanted it to be.
Then in ‘Overtime,’ the Clinton defense continues and we get a little behind-the-scenes info about how all of those CNN personalities get along when the cameras shut off. Van Jones talked about what it was like with Jeffrey Lord off the air and also used his interview time to make sure we know that Donald Trump would be called a “thug” if he weren’t an old, rich white guy. There’s also a lot of drug talk on this week’s episode, mostly thanks to Maher and Handler discussing the need for people to experiment and not be closed off.
Hopefully, this is the kind of discussion that can continue when Obama shows up next week.
(Via Real Time)