FROM DECIDER: Bill Maher didn’t hold back on Friday night’s Real Time, dedicating his monologue and roundtable to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk — a killing that’s rattled Washington and sparked a bitter debate about political violence.
“It’s a very ugly week in America with violence of all kinds: political violence, regular violence, a lot of people talking about a civil war,” Maher began his opening monologue. “And then today in Congress, because Charlie Kirk got assassinated, [Colorado Representative] Lauren Boebert stood up and said, ‘We need to have a prayer.’ So they started to have a silent prayer. And then she started screaming, ‘No! Silent prayers get silent results.’ As if praying out loud gets big results. Then the Democrats started screaming at her that there was a school shooting in her state. I tell you, so far, the civil war is not very civil.”
Ben Shapiro and Tim Alberta joined Maher later. Shapiro cited a troubling poll that said “only 57% of Gen Z say there is no excuse for violence in response to speech.”
“There are at least 42% that believe that there are some times that the violence ought to be a response to speech, which is deeply terrifying,” Shapiro added.
Alberta, who called himself a “sparring partner from a distance” to Kirk, said, “The response to this has not been shock and horror … If anything, it seems as though, particularly to Ben’s point among younger voters, that this is becoming mainstreamed and becoming acceptable.”
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