Bill Maher: Bachmann And Scalia Are ‘The Exact Same Idiot’
After two weeks of mediocre shows, Bill Maher hit a home run Friday night, in large part thanks to two of his five guests: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who was on fire, and Maya Wiley, Founder and President of the Center for Social Inclusion. (Note to CNBC: I would fire Carol Roth for being embarrassingly ignorant about the debt ceiling.)
During Real Time’s “New Rules” segment, Maher did an excellent job linking Tea Party Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as two “idiots” cut from the same cloth.
“Reasonable people,” Maher said, “usually see Michele Bachmann as a total loon, but Scalia as a ‘serious intellectual’ — when actually, they’re the exact same idiot.”
LOOK: Why Scalia’s ‘I Have Friends I Know Or Suspect Are Homosexual’ Interview Should Scare America
This past week, as The New Civil Rights Movement reported, Bachmann and Scalia were center stage in stupidity.
LOOK: Hastening The ‘End Times,’ Obama ‘Knowingly Sending Arms To Terrorists’ Says Bachmann
“President Obama waived a ban on arming terrorists in order to allow weapons to go to the Syrian opposition,†Bachmann told conservative radio host Jan Markell last Saturday. “Your listeners, US taxpayers, are now paying to give arms to terrorists including Al Qaeda.â€
“Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand,†Bachmann pleaded. “When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.â€
Scary stuff.
But so was an interview with Justice Antonin Scalia, during which he proclaimed that the devil is a real person walking the earth — and was “offended” when his interviewer hinted she didn’t hold the same belief.
An excerpt, via New York Magazine:
SCALIA: I even believe in the Devil.
NY MAGAZINE: You do?
SCALIA: Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.
NY MAGAZINE: Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
SCALIA:Â If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.
NY MAGAZINE:Â Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
SCALIA: You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.
NY MAGAZINE:Â No.
SCALIA: It’s because he’s smart.
NY MAGAZINE: So what’s he doing now?
SCALIA: What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.
NY MAGAZINE: That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the ÂDevil’s work?
SCALIA: I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.
NY MAGAZINE: Well, you’re saying the Devil is Âpersuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
SCALIA: Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.
NY MAGAZINE:Â Right.
SCALIA:Â What happened to him?
NY MAGAZINE:Â He just got wilier.
Maher rightly took issue with these two “idiots.”
“If you believe we’re living in the end times, like Michele Bachmann does, we get to take away the car keys,” Maher told his audience. “You don’t get to vote on next year’s budget, because it doesn’t concern you.”
And concluded, of Scalia, “You see the world divided into teams of good and evil and suspect the wily one may be on the side of THEM, and when you start seeing compromising with your opponents as a compromise with evil, well, there’s the Tea Party.â€
Watch:
//www.youtube.com/embed/0PEA5QXbfX0
Maher transcript partially via Mediaite, where there is also a video if the above is removed.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
