Super Bowl LI: Bill Maher says rooting for Patriots is like rooting for Donald Trump
By Josh Hill
Bill Maher is rooting for the Atlanta Falcons as a form of protesting the pro-Trump New England Patriots.
Super Bowl LI is this Sunday, and the whole world will be fixated on Houston and two teams battling it out for football immortality. While there has been a lot of ‘stick to sports’ talk on Twitter when it comes to sports writers giving their political opinions, Real Time host Bill Maher flipped the script and stuck to sports in his closing statement of this week’s show.
Well, sort of.
After his ‘New Rules’ segments, Maher launched into a rant about how he was rooting for the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI because the New England Patriots are so closely tied to Donald Trump.
“The Falcons are playing a team where the owner, the coach and star quarterback all love and support Donald Trump,” Maher said. “So I’d really like for them to lose by a score of a million [expletive] thousand points.”
This drew a huge roar from the Maher-friendly crowd, but there was a point to the lead-in on his final word. Maher then related his rooting for the Falcons so that he wouldn’t be rooting for Trump supporters to everything in the country — down to a chicken sandwich — being politicized in some way or another.
“He’s made us into the campus nut who can’t buy a chicken sandwich without making it political,” Maher said. “He’s made me love the Atlanta Falcons. That’s like saying your favorite boxer is Mickey Rourke.”
Maher then threw shade — for a second time in his closing statement — at Ryan Gosling for not being able to sing. He then brought it all back to the Patriots, white privilege and how they represent what liberals all hate about Trump.
“Mostly I love [the Falcons] because Tom Brady was one of the first to display a Make America Great Again hat,” Maher quipped. “Because America has been so tough on Tom so far.”
He then gleefully ripped into head coach Bill Belichick after reading his “fan letter” to Donald Trump prior to the election.
“[Expletive] you, Belichick,” which set Maher up for a Deflategate shoutout. “[Explective] you and your deflated balls, you joyless cheating [expletive].”
Maher wrapped up his statement by saying that even football has been politicized, something that is a growing trend in America. He blames Trump, but it’s hard to not see where he’s coming from. From athlete protests to boycotting companies because of one employees political opinion, Maher wants to get us all riled up about chilling the hell out a little bit.
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Real Time will return next Friday on HBO at 10pm ET.