HBO host Bill Maher said on Friday’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” that he needed to know what happened to presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), “who was last seen standing in front of an aircraft carrier setting fire to everything he used to believe.”
“You can’t have any more Republican candidates for President,” Maher said, “until you tell me what you did with Rand Paul.”
Maher said Paul was supposed to be “my Republican option — the guy who could stand on a debate stage with a dozen pandering, cookie cutter creeps and tell a crowd what they didn’t want to hear.”
Maher, who made a $1 million contribution to Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, has been vocal about his dislike of 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Maher said last year that “Rand Paul could possibly get my vote” and he has shared his admiration for both Paul and his father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
On his show, Maher said he felt queasy when Rand Paul recently spoke at a prayer breakfast and “jumped the shark” on gay marriage.
“He’d always been the libertarian guy on personal issues,” Maher said. “Live and let live, just don’t get any on me.”
He then lambasted Paul’s statement that America needs “another Great Awakening, with tent revivals.”
“Yes, clearly this is how we steer America toward the future — with anti-gay tent revivals,” Maher said. “Behold the sodomite! Hurl your prayers at him before he be released to the children of the corn!”
Maher also ridiculed Paul’s speech in front of an aircraft carrier, which, he said, signaled that “something was wrong.”
“If you want to say, ‘I’m a new kind of Republican,’ don’t do what all the rest of them do and stand in front of the Yorktown as if to say, ‘Ship strong. Me strong. Ship kill foreigners. Me kill foreigners,” Maher sighed. “And then suggest adding 190-billion dollars to the defense budget. The one you used to want to cut.”
Maher said Paul’s change was “proof that, to be competitive, Republican candidates must say to their base, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, ‘I feel your crazy.’”
Watch the video below, courtesy of HBO:
