Discussing the Dallas police shooting with Stephen Colbert wasn’t the only thing Real Time‘s Bill Maher was up to on Thursday. He also stopped by Chelsea Handler’s Netflix talk show to chat about Donald Trump. The Chelsea host often takes pot shots at the presumptive Republican nominee, and this particular incident was no different — especially when Maher made a rather intriguing comparison between Trump’s adult children and Saddam Hussein. You know, the late Iraqi dictator Trump praised just last week.
“What do you think about his children?” Handler asked, noting the Trumps who weren’t running for president were involved in just about every aspect of the campaign. (Meetings with running mate Mike Pence, for example.) “They’re part of everything.”
In true Bill Maher form, the comedian-turned-political commentator said he “didn’t like it” and described the family’s involvement as “very third world.” The latter drew an all too obvious muted response from the Chelsea audience, but Maher went on to explain that the Trumps’ participation reminded him of Saddam Hussein:
“It’s very banana republic, to involve your children to that degree. I mean, that’s what Saddam Hussein did.”
The pair went on to ridicule the Trump kids individually, calling Eric Trump “Douchebag Von F*ckface” and the “worst looking person” among other insults.
Yet the most interesting part is the Trump/Hussein family comparison. For starters, Maher wasn’t referencing the Banana Republic clothing chain, but the political term from which its name derives. The political science-y phrase was often used to describe unstable Latin American countries whose main exports were bananas and other tropical items, and whose governments were family operations.
Hussein’s Iraq wasn’t necessarily a banana republic, but it shared many similarities. Like the fact that his sons worked as members of his political entourage. The oldest, Uday Hussein, was so notorious that his exploits became the subject of The Devil’s Double, a 2011 film starring Dominic Cooper.