Comedian Bill Maher slammed Twitter for flagging a tweet by satire site Babylon Bee, which posted a skit about the social media network’s workers needing therapy after Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover.
‘You do need a new sheriff,’ the Real Time host said on his show on Friday night.
‘This is well within what satire has always been.’
Maher backed Musk to turn Twitter into a ‘town square’ of thoughts and opinions rather than a ‘left wing place.’ The comedian said that Twitter was a place for people who want their news to reflect their politics.
Maher then took aim at President Barack Oboma’s opinion that Generation Z would figure out how to combat misinformation was way wrong.
‘I’d much rather have Elon Musk making the rules that a 23-year-old who can’t take the joke on Babylon Beeswax, or whatever the f*** that is,’ he said.
‘I mean, this is a generation that doesn’t know what the word ‘violence’ means. They think ‘violence’ means ‘anything I don’t like.’ Their standard of free speech is ‘I’m uncomfortable.’ That’s not where the standard is, right?’
MSNBC host Ari Velshi and former Alabama Senator Doug Jones chimed in with their views on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter
Maher backed Elon Musk to turn Twitter into a ‘town square’ of thoughts and opinions rather than a ‘left wing place.’ The comedian said that Twitter was a place for people who want their news to reflect their politics
Bill Maher said that the video mocking Twitter employees reaction to the Musk takeover was what satire is all about
Maher, 66, brought up the takeover twice during his April 29 show that airs on HBO.
The first was during his monologue, and the topic came up again during the panel discussion with former Alabama Senator Doug Jones, New York Times writer David Leonhardt and MSNBC host Ali Velshi.
In April, it was announced that Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired Twitter in a $44 billion leveraged buyout.
In his monologue at the top of the show, Maher joked that one of Musk’s promises was to get rid of bots on Twitter. He quipped that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to that promise, ‘Why are you making it personal?’
Earlier this week, Musk tweeted that his next plan was to buy Coca-Cola and have the company begin using cocaine as an ingredient again. Maher joked, ‘Sure, it’s all fun and games, until Hunter Biden gets his head stuck in the vending machine.’
Maher told his guests later in the show that Twitter has ‘failed’ being a judge over what can and cannot be said in public discourse.
He continued, ‘You failed when you threw the New York Post off of Twitter for talking about Hunter Biden’s emails. And it turned out that was a real story. You failed when you said we couldn’t read about whether COVID had come from a lab. You failed!’
Maher slammed Twitter’s suppressing of stories about Covid-19 originating in a lab in Wuhan as well as the Hunter Biden laptop story
Turing his attention to conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, Maher mocked Twitter employees for flagging a video that accused them of being too sensitive.
Velshi chimed into the conversation saying that Facebook and Twitter needed to have conversations internally about the harm they are doing to Democracy.
That prompted Doug Jones to add, ‘I’m all for the First Amendment, all Democrats are for the First Amendment for goodness sakes. But Russian bots do not have a First Amendment privilege in this country or on Twitter period.’
The former senator continued, ‘Civics in this country is a relic of the past and we’ve got to get back to that. That’s why you see different people on the one hand looking at the Jan. 6 riots was simply a group of tourists that were doing OK.’
When Maher referred to Twitter as a ‘left wing place,’ Jones retorted by saying, ‘There’s a lot of right wing garbage on there.’
In a separate part of the discussion, Jones said that the Democratic party had lost its way and that they should ‘get back to giving those messages …’We are working. We are doing things.’
Maher also said that he was worried about the lack of civics being taught in schools. The New York-born comedian said that all young people care about is whether or not their feelings had been hurt rather than learning about the first amendment.
In his concluding remarks on the Twitter takeover, Maher spoke about how the company had suppressed free speech about whether or not Covid-19 was created in a lab in Wuhan.
He said, ‘We don’t know where coronavirus came from, but there’s no reason to think it couldn’t have emerged from a lab. They have a lab in Wuhan that was studying coronavirus! And you couldn’t even discuss this! I mean, that’s outrageous!.’
Maher stated his belief that Musk will ‘fix’ Twitter.
During the Overtime portion of the show, Velshi was asked about corporations taking stances on divisive issues.
Velshi said that it was important for companies to be mindful of their employees opinions when choosing stances in order to keep workers happy.
Maher turned the conversation back toward generations saying that anyone he knows who runs a company hates Generation Z and Millenials.
He noted that although his show hires young people, ‘we don’t hire a*******.’