Screenshot via Club Random podcast
Bill Maher went off on “the left” as intolerant after his guest Jay Leno noting that Sammy Davis Jr. received backlash decades earlier for embracing then-President Richard Nixon.
On the most recent episode of the Club Random podcast, Maher was joined by Leno and the pair discussed everything from Johnny Carson to Leno’s recent accidents. At one point, the pair discussed the late Sammy Davis Jr. and Leno brought up the fact that the musician was called a “traitor” by activists after taking a photo with Nixon in the White House.
“So what?” Maher said of the two embracing.
“I know, but at the time he was seen as a traitor,” Leno, who sang Davis’s praises, said.
Maher went on to compliment Davis’s response to the backlash, saying the musician said he would simply support any politician getting “results” for the American people.
Maher argued:
It’s so funny you mention that because today we live in this time where you’
re not allowed to have friends from the other side or cross lines politically, and I forgot that there’s an example of that way back when. A guy who crossed lines politically. Oh, the worst thing you could ever do. Be friends with a Republican? Ah! Call 911! This is what I fucking hate about the left. You know — and they’re not going to get me over to the Trump side, which they think they will sometimes — but just the idea of ‘cut your family off for Thanksgiving if they voted for the wrong guy.’ Fuck off, you fucks.
Following President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory, some called for cutting off MAGA-supporting family members. The View co-host Sunny Hostin was one of these critics, saying she agreed with cutting off conservative family members around the holidays, saying they “voted not only against their families but against them.”
Maher added that Davis contrasts with the “virtue signaling” from celebrities today and he was an early sign of cancel culture, something the comedian regularly goes after on his shows.
“Sammy, when he hugged Nixon, he was ostracized by the left a lot. That was an early harbinger of that,” he said.
Watch above via Club Random (revelant portion begins 17:22).