OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Comedian and political commentator Bill Maher has not been a Democrat who walks to party line, to the chagrin of many of his fellow Democrats.
On his show “Real Time” on HBO last week he had guests actor Rob Reiner and Sen. Amy Klobuchar on when he tore into the media burying the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“Is it okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of Trump?” he said.
“Now look, let’s not pussyfoot around this; he was selling the influence of his father, Joe Biden. I mean, most political sons do, but let’s not pretend at least that was going on… so Hunter Biden’s laptop was buried by the press. Even the head of Twitter Jack Dorsey said that was a mistake,” the host said.
“It’s a little bit of a thorny question because once you go down this road- this is sort of where we are in this country, the other side is so evil, anything is justified in preventing them from taking office. Is it?” he said.
Reiner, who played “Meathead” Mike Stivic on “All In The Family’ began by avoiding the question.
“You know what’s not justified? Using armed violence to try to kill people in the Capitol. That’s not justified,” the actor said.
“They buried the Hunter Biden story before the election because they were, like, ‘We can’t risk having the election thrown to Trump. We’ll tell them after the election,’” the host said before Reiner acted like he did not know the story was buried.
“And we know for a fact that that’s what they did?” the actor said.
“Of course! You don’t follow this?” the host said.
“I don’t know that they did,” the actor argued.
“I know because you only watch MSNBC,” the host said before Reiner said he also watches Fox News.
This Bill Maher clip with Rob Reiner and Amy Klobuchar is instructive—replace the Hunter Biden laptop story with putting people in camps or anything horrible the government would do to the Right, and here’s approximate the response you’d get. pic.twitter.com/ewAYTNOkVK
— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) August 27, 2022
The interview comes after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed how his company handled the story on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
Rogan and Zuckerberg were talking about how and why Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story and the Facebook CEO said that the FBI warned him, not in relation particularly to the laptop story but in general, that foreign actors would be attempting to influence the decision and to be wary of such possible stories.
“Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,'” the Facebook CEO said on Thursday.
“We just kind of thought hey look, if the FBI, which I still view is a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement- they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something then I want to take that seriously,” he said.
BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for 7 days based on a general request from the FBI to restrict election misinformation. pic.twitter.com/llTA7IqGa1
— Minds💡 (@minds) August 25, 2022
Zuckerberg explained that the FBI did not expressly tell Facebook to censor or limit distribution of the Hunter Bidens tory, but the company thought it “fit the pattern” of potential propaganda to limit its distribution for 5 – 7 days but it was still allowed to be shared.
This was in contrast to Twitter which did not allow the story to be shared.
That brought scorn from House Minority Leader and California Rep. Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy took this admission by Zuckerberg as FBI collusion and he warned Democrats that they would pay for it.
The FBI colluded with Big Tech to silence news stories weeks before the 2020 election in an attempt to control your access to information.
Democrats in Congress have been intentionally ignoring the facts. When Republicans are back in charge, we will hold all of them accountable. https://t.co/kUc8J9OAvq
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) August 26, 2022
“The FBI colluded with Big Tech to silence news stories weeks before the 2020 election in an attempt to control your access to information. Democrats in Congress have been intentionally ignoring the facts. When Republicans are back in charge, we will hold all of them accountable,” he said.
