Bill Maher zeroed in on China during the latest edition of “Real Time”, targeting the winter Olympics in Beijing during the “New Rules” segment.
“Someone has to tell China, you can steal our trade secrets, our software and our intellectual property, but we draw the line at our hot freestyle skiers,” quipped Maher, referencing skier Eileen Gu, an American citizen who decided to compete for China at the Beijing games.
“Is that cool now?” Maher asked. “To choose to represent a totalitarian police state over America.”
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As Maher pointed out, America is “at least for the next three years, a democracy based on freedom, and they are an authoritarian surveillance state based on how’d ya like to disappear for a few months?”
After listing a litany of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government Maher called out LeBron James for his comment about the NBA’s 2019 trip to China, claiming that Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey “needed to be better educated on the situation” over his comments that he stands with Hong Kong. “The situation being, ‘I got some shoes to sell,'” Maher quipped.
LeBron James speaks for the first time since the NBA's trip to China, says Rockets GM Daryl Morey was "misinformed" about the ramifications of his tweet, and "not educated about the situation." Here are LeBron's comments in full: pic.twitter.com/Rwjnchm2w3
— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) October 15, 2019
“‘Kowtow’ is a Chinese word, but boy have Americans gotten good at it,” Maher added, using John Cena’s embarrassing apology last year for referring to Taiwan as its own separate country, something that is simultaneously true but offensive to the Chinese government.
Here's the English subtitled version of the embarrassing John Cena apology to China on Weibo for referring to Taiwan as a country pic.twitter.com/hdLpmk5Y78
— Anthony Brian Logan (ABL) 🇺🇸 (@ANTHONYBLOGAN) May 25, 2021
“And I thought steroids shrunk your [testicles],” joked Maher.
As Maher sees it, American corporations are more than happy to ignore China’s record of human rights abuses, so long as there is a nickel to be made.
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“We’ll give access to our billion-plus consumers,” said Maher, “as long as you shut up about the whole police state, genocide thing.”