Jack Cocchiarella is a “liberal” You Tuber who recently featured excerpts from Bill Maher’s appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show a few months ago, as evidence of how Maher exposed her as just another Trump supporting idiot. Strange thing is, when I watched the podcast I was struck by Cocchiarella’s utterly biased conclusions drawn from Maher’s equally biased responses to several Facts cited by Kelly which were undeniably True!
If you don’t respect the results of our elections, Maher says, you are by definition a threat to our Democracy. He was clearly referring to Donald Trump. But, Kelly responds, Hillary repeatedly said after her defeat in 2016 that the election had been stolen from her, that Trump was an illegitimate president. Maher simply ignores this obvious truth and cites the abominations of Jan. 6th, the broken doors and shattered windows of America’s Capitol. Perhaps feeling such details did not make his point, he cites the various deaths caused by the “insurrectionists” that day. But, Megyn points out, the protesters intentionally killed no one! Officer Brian Sicknick, for example, died of 2 strokes brought on by the stress of his situation. Refusing to acknowledge that his characterization of the protesters as murderers was a lie, ignoring the fact that Trump specifically asked them to march peacefully and lawfully, Maher smugly dismisses the suggestion that Hillary was an election denier while insisting that Trump undoubtedly was. Cocchiarella, convinced by Maher’s “logic”, calls Megyn a liar, apparently seeing Hillary’s repeated, documented denunciations of the 2016 election as utterly irrelevant.
And oh, by the way, if voting protocols have been eminently contaminated, objecting to the results of an election becomes a sign of respect rather than disdain for the Democratic process. Maher’s contempt for Trump’s “denialism” absolutely ignores the fact that Covid opened up the 2020 election to rampant abuse, to mail-in balloting and drop-boxes which entailed the possibility of all sorts of chicanery. While I know Trump can be obnoxious, I would suggest his skepticism regarding the outcome of the 2020 election is not necessarily a product of his overweening egotism. Indeed, given the circumstances, there was far more substance to his suspicions than to Hillary’s.
Pressing on in his attempt to convince Kelly that Trump represents a threat to America’s Democracy, Maher cites his illegal hoarding of classified documents at his Florida residence. While a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the charges against him in July, 2024, ruling they were leveled by Biden’s justice department for political reasons, the case has not as yet been resolved. But Kelly, in no way defending the former President, points out to Maher that Biden was accused of the very same crime, of stashing classified documents at his Delaware home even after his stint as Vice-President, a time in which he had no right to them whatsoever. Did this not make Joe also a threat to the U.S. Democracy?
In Feb. of this year, special counsel Robert Hur ruled that while Joe Biden had indeed broken the law, his status as an elderly man of failing memory absolved him of guilt in possessing documents to which he was not entitled. Cocchiarella celebrates Biden’s exoneration, saying Maher had clearly proven Megyn Kelly’s depiction of him as a criminal to be pure B.S.. While Trump is guilty, Biden is Innocent! Yet as his “innocence” is apparently based upon his mental decline, is it not absurd that fools such as both Maher and Cocchiarella supported him as the president of the most powerful nation on earth? How biased must one be to support a political leader who has officially been declared borderline senile?
Cocchiarella insists that Maher had absolutely “shut down” Megyn Kelly in their debate. Her pathetic strategy, he says, was to distract attention from Trump’s obvious criminality. Like most rational “conservatives,” I am hardly suggesting The Donald to be perfect. Yet what Maher failed to acknowledge was that a mountain of evidence suggests the Biden family profited millions from Joe’s peddling of his influence as Vice President to various foreign powers through the machinations of his son Hunter.
My reaction to the Maher/Kelly interview, therefore, was that Maher had hypocritically refused to acknowledge any fact inconsistent with his hatred of Donald Trump, smirking condescendingly at Megyn Kelly even as she made points that were clearly relevant to the issues at hand. At one point, unable to counter her position, he admitted uncomfortably that perhaps she knew more about that issue than he did. And yet Cocchiarella’s assessment of their interaction was that Maher had unequivocally proven Megyn Kelly to be a brazen liar, indeed a hypocrite typical of the “hypocrisy of all of Maga.” I do not, as I have said a billion times, idealize Donald Trump, but really, those who loathe him seem incapable of dealing rationally with a host of incontrovertible facts, indeed seem possessed of a level of hypocrisy bordering on insanity.