Bill Maher is advising the media to tone it down with doom-and-gloom reporting of the coronavirus pandemic — because he thinks it will help Donald Trump’s chances of winning the November presidential election.
Hosting once again from his backyard, Maher took the media to task on Friday night’s edition of “Real Time”.
“News sources have to rein it in,” he said in his show-ending monologue. “Everyone knows that coronavirus is no walk in the park — ‘cause you literally can’t walk in the park. But at some point the daily drumbeat of depression and terror veers into panic porn.”
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As Maher explained, everybody already knows things are not great at the moment, and the continuous stream bad news is just amplifying it, joking, “you don’t have to put hot sauce on a jalopeño!”
In fact, he warned that by projecting worst-case scenarios and harping on how bad things could become, this allows Trump to cast himself as a hero when things turn out to be less dire than anticipated.
To make his point, he referenced a recent headline in the New York Times reading, “It’s Terrifying.”
Noting the headline was a quote, he asked “who are they quoting?” Reading the story beneath the headline, he revealed that quote came from “an event planner in North Hollywood. No offence to the event planners of the world — it’s amazing what you can do with pine cones and a few cans of silver spray paint — but why are you in my headline? How about this: Just tell me millions are out of work without the flashlight under the chin and I’ll decide how I feel about it.”
He also took a shot at recent Fox News appearances by Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, with the latter declaring that a mortality rate of “only” two to three percent was an “appetizing” reason to reopen schools and get people back to work.
“Death is horrible, of course, no matter how it comes,” he said. “I’m against it — and I don’t care who knows it!”
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He concluded by cautioning, “Giving the proper perspective isn’t a cover-up of the truth. It is the truth,” he said. “We need the news to calm down and treat us like adults. Trump calls it fake news. Don’t make him right.”
