Bill Maher, the host of HBO’s late-night talk show “Real Time,” condemned Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) for her scheduled leftwing rebuttal of President Joe Biden’s upcoming State of the Union Address.
Rep. Tlaib, a far-left progressive who is known for her membership in the “Squad,” is expected to criticize Biden’s address from the left on behalf of the Working Families Party (WFP), Fox News reported.
WFP is a minor third party that advocates for the government to “shift resources away from policing, jails, and detention centers” and calls for an annual federal investment of $1 trillion to subsidize public works jobs.
Typically, whichever political party does not occupy the White House provides a rebuttal to the President’s speech, so it comes as a surprise that a member of Biden’s own party would seek to oppose him.
Bill Maher said, “Now, I’ve always seen the opposition party give a rebuttal. This is from the same party. This is like sacking your own quarterback.”
Suggesting that Rep. Tlaib’s response to Biden could cause more problems for the Democrats, Maher recalled a 2019 confrontation between himself and the congresswoman.
“I remember she’s very us versus them. I remember because she’s one of the Squad members. And I remember we talked about on this show on night BDS, which is the boycott that some people want to do against Isreal because Israel somehow got to be the Nazis … And I said no – that BDS is a bunch of bulls**t.”
“And then Rashida Tlaib called for me to be boycotted,” Maher continued, “So was saying we shouldn’t boycott and then her answer was, ‘We’re gonna boycott you … So, when people say, ‘You know, ‘why are you so hard on the left these days? Bulls**t like that is why. We have a different opinion about this issue called BDS and you want to just boycott me.”
In 2019, Rep. Tlaib suggested that people should boycott Maher’s show and implied that his criticism of BDS was similar to the rhetoric of South African apartheid apologists.
The Governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, will deliver the Republican Party’s official response to Biden’s State of the Union Address.
Gov. Reynolds was selected because of her effective opposition to COVID-19 mandates and oversaw an effective economic recovery as the pandemic wanned.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, “She handled Covid by choosing freedom over lockdowns and personal responsibility over mandates – leading to real economic recovery from the pandemic. She kept kids in school and critical race theory out.”