Bill Maher defends Hillary Clinton from Black Lives Matter

Bill Maher calls Black Lives Matter activists “f**king idiots” for protesting at a Hillary Clinton event

Bill Maher took the Black Lives Matter movement to task on Friday’s episode of his HBO show Real Time for criticizing Hillary Clinton while ignoring GOP candidates such as Donald Trump.

The comedian started the segment by sarcastically remarking, “we all know that racism’s epicenter is the Oscars and Hillary Clinton,” referencing the #OscarsSoWhite campaign to boycott the Academy Awards due to its lack of diversity, as well as a protester recently interrupting Clinton during a fundraiser to ask her to apologize to black people for mass incarceration.

“Of the thousand things I could complain about with Hillary Clinton, being a racist really doesn’t rise to the top of it,” Maher argued. Meanwhile, he cited that 20% of Donald Trump’s supporters in South Carolina disagree with the Emancipation Proclamation.

“This is who you’re going after?” Maher asked. “This is where we start the battle? You f**king idiots!”

However, Maher’s panel immediately disagreed with his assessment, including Clinton supporter Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Georgetown, who argued that Black Lives Matter wasn’t calling the Democratic presidential candidate a racist.

“What they’re saying is that negative racial consequences flowed from mass incarceration,” Dyson said, while pointing out that she apologized for calling black people “super predators” during a speech in the 1990s. “But I’m saying, I think it’s sexist for people to impugn Hillary Clinton for what her husband did.” The former president acknowledged last year that his crime law has made mass incarceration worse.

“One party doesn’t even acknowledge that racism even exists. They think it’s an urban myth,” Maher countered.

Dyson responded that the Black Lives Matter movement showed the humanity of the Democratic Party because they’re at least responding to their concerns, while actor Mark Ruffalo, a Bernie Sanders supporter, offered that “the party that was supposed to be for black people has continuously let them down.”