What To Know
- Bill Maher compared Donald Trump’s and Barack Obama’s approaches to illegal immigration, criticizing Trump’s administration for harsh ICE raids targeting long-term undocumented workers.
- Lara Trump defended the raids as necessary law enforcement, acknowledging collateral damage but insisting rules must be enforced.
- Maher argued that while Obama also deported many people, he did so without cruelty or excessive force, suggesting Trump’s methods go too far.
Bill Maher recently made a blunt comparison of President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama when it comes to illegal immigration.
On the November 24 episode of Maher’s Club Random podcast featuring Lara Trump — wife of Donald’s son, Eric Trump — as his guest, the Real Time With Bill Maher host called out Donald’s approach to undocumented immigrants.
“That’s one of the reasons the natives are restless on your side, even your people,” Maher told Lara. “Because they voted for, ‘Let’s get the criminals out of the country.’ And what they got was, ‘Um, no, let’s find people who’ve been working here for 10 years and go to Home Depot and get them.’ We don’t like that.”
To that, Lara admitted, “I hear it. And there’s nothing that feels good about seeing people who had good intentions, generally speaking, leaving our country in this manner. However, we either have rules or we don’t. We either have laws, or we don’t.”
She continued, “They are targeting the worst of the worst. They are targeting the gang members, the criminals, the drug dealers, the human traffickers. …Whenever they’re doing these raids, and they’re getting the bad guys, sometimes, yes, there are other people who are collateral damage. And I’m not saying they’re bad people. But they did break the law to come here, and unfortunately, we either have rules or we don’t.”
Maher paused for a beat before telling Lara, “Yeah, that’s not the way to handle it,” of the ongoing ICE raids across the country.
“Unfortunately, it’s the nature of the beast, though,” Lara insisted, falsely claiming that former President Joe Biden let “tens of millions of people come over the border illegally” and “somebody has to be the bad guy and get them out.”
To that, Maher said. “No one is defending that. But once it happened, once it was a fait accompli, especially people who have been here a long time… And again, even people on your side don’t love this. This tackling people at their workplaces.”
He then bluntly pointed out, “But you know what? Obama deported a lot of people, too. He just didn’t do it by being an a**hole. By being a thug. By being masked. By tackling people. By being cruel — sending them to other countries to like, basically consign them to this kind of hell of the worst kind of prisons in the world.”
To conclude his thoughts on illegal immigration in the U.S., Maher told Lara, “Yes, maybe you shouldn’t be in this country if you don’t belong in this country legally. But you also shouldn’t get that as the punishment. It’s like everything goes too far.”
Real Time With Bill Maher, Fridays, 10/9c, HBO