I don't think there some mystery to be solved. I believe that Trump can be an entertaining host.

I wonder how much they censor his show when they air it on CNN on some weekends?

It happened under Hitler. It also happened under Pol Pot. It happened in El Salvador. It happened in Chile. And there's the Armenian Genocide. The Rwandan Genocide. The Bosnian Genocide. We aren't special.

The really fucked up thing is that, in our current American political climate there's so much hate and insanity coming from the right directed at minorities (and "immigrants" in particular), that I don't think there would be much opposition to death squads or extermination camps. Like most things, 40% would wholeheartedly endorse it, 40% would oppose it, and the other 20% wouldn't have an opinion because it didn't affect them.

I don't think they censor it at all. Still loaded with "fucks." Which is weird to hear on CNN.

Yes, it's not like Hitler just sprung out of the ground in 1939 and started killing Jews. There was a whole power grab that happened in 1933 and a whole process that led up to that. There was almost six years between the Reichstag fire (when Hitler was granted dictatorial powers through the Enabling Act granting him the ability to unilaterally create and enforce laws without the involvement of either the president or parliament) and Kristallnacht (when it became open season on German Jews).

During the 1930s, few took Hitler as a serious threat. He even hosted the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. And then, three years later, Germany invaded Poland, Great Britain declared war on Germany, and WWII broke out. And the 1940 Olympics were cancelled.

So, yeah, when I'm sitting at home seeing him host rallies where he's screaming about immigrants poisoning the blood of our nation, declared his intent to become a dictator on day one, has gangs of thugs waiting to do his bidding (everything from Proud Boys, militias, and biker gangs), pardoned all of the brownshirts who stormed the Capitol, starts acting unilaterally while bypassing the checks and balances of congress and the courts, is censoring everything from climate change to "DEI," has a HHS secretary who stood up declared persons with autism are not contributing to society and days later declared the intent to start making a registry of them, has an army of ICE agents out disappearing people, is stripping immigrants of due process, says he wants to take over Greenland, Panama, and Canada, declared his intent to remain president even after his constitutional limit has been met... I can't help but get the feeling that we're heading toward a very, very dark chapter in our history. And, keep in mind this is only the first three months.

Nah, nah … Maybe we are wrong, Josh.

Maybe we should just wait and see.

You know, sarcasm and “just saying” and all that.

The future can’t hurt us if we ignore the past and present.

Did Bill address it on his show this week? I'm kind of curious, but not curious enough to actually watch his crappy show anymore

Most sociopaths are definitely able to suppress or hide their worst qualities when it will benefit them.

A little bit, yeah, but in a "I'm always right and people who say otherwise are wrong" sort of way. He didn't dwell on it too much as I'm sure he doesn't want it to escalate more than it has. He has to realize how bad he's coming off.

Years ago the CFO at my company was such a guy. He was bullying and harassing several people at the company. I didn't have a lot of contact with him, he always behaved professional towards me, but I knew how he mistreated people I liked. My wife met him at a corporate retreat and he was the nicest person. We played golf and my wife hit a ball into a ditch. He went down the ditch, getting the ball back for her, even getting wet shoes and my wife thought he was a perfect gentleman. We're talking about a guy who counted the gummy bears in a jar, just to check, if the cleaning lady would "steal" some.

Maher has himself compared Trump to Hitler. In 2015 he made such comparisons more than once. So fuck him and his newly-found "you lose as soon as you invoke Hitler" bullshit. He's just upset he got called on his gullibility.

The U.S. and native americans, conquistadors and Aztecs, Mayans, Incas. Who knows what all went on thousands of years ago with Romans and Egyptians.It went on before Hitler and continues to go on after Hitler. What makes it Nazis stand out is that they industrialized it. They ran Holocaust Inc. like General Motors. Assembly line extermination. Ship in raw material (people) on supply trains, and process into final product (ashes)'
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!
That is a distinction the Nazis own.
Still, Hitler had already achieved his reputation before the Holocaust became known. By the time people found out about it Hitler was dead.
Interestingly, even before the holocaust became known, the allies were already beginning to believe that Hitler was insane, and if captured alive, considering going easy on him because he wasn't fully responsible due to mental incompetency.

I'm gonna avoid excess political commentary (though there will be a little, sorry), but I think overall Bill Maher and Donald Trump aren't that far apart. At the end of the day for both of them, it all comes down to "ratings", either literal in the case of Maher, or via polling and elections for Trump. And both know how to stoke an audience in search of those precious ratings. I'm not saying Maher will go out there and say the moon is made of green cheese if it gets him a ratings bump, he has some integrity, but there's still a bit of a huckster in him and I think on that level he can connect with Donald Trump.

Then there's the more unfortunate aspect of how Bill Maher has lately been more and more anti-science, and I firmly believe he's prejudiced against Muslims (that he uses his anti-religious views as an excuse to hide his bigotry), and he certainly sees eye to eye with Donald in that aspect. He's also one who is on the "anti-woke" train, and if he and Donald were talking about that, I'm sure their views would align quite a bit.

I'm willing to bet their dinner together was mostly about things they agree upon already, a "strategy" that was employed by both of them, and then it's no surprise they got along so well.

Oh, and it's also one of many reasons I stopped watching Maher's show several years ago.

I have not seen Louis C.K.in years though he joked about what got him in trouble but not a big discussion and just talk mostly about his new novel.