“Real Time” host Bill Maher took a blowtorch towards San Francisco’s “crazy” reparations plan that would give Black residents millions of dollars.
During the panel discussion on Friday night with former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., Maher asked if the reparation proposal is going “too far,” saying it’s “quite a lot” to give each Black resident $5 million.
“Even I didn’t go this far,” Yang quipped, alluding to his universal basic income policy he ran on in 2020.
“I mean it seems like, you know, when people ask why are you talking against the woke craziness- because it’s crazy. Isn’t that crazy?” Maher said. “And by the way, San Francisco doesn’t have a history of slavery or anything like that, you know. It would cost every citizen left $600,000 each. This is madness, is it not?”
Yang chalked up the proposal as being a “political statement,” telling Maher “We have a lot of people at various stages of public office who are putting out bills and policies that are more for the messaging and stoking the fires on social media than actually trying to get something passed.”
The HBO star also addressed the turmoil that erupted at Stanford University where progressive law students shouted down Trump-appointed federal Judge Kyle Duncan, who was invited to speak on campus but the disruption was supported by the law school’s dean of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) Tirien Steinbach.
In a clip shown by Maher, Steinbach is heard asking Duncan “is it worth the pain that this causes.”
“‘Is it worth the pain?’ Is free speech ‘worth the pain?’ And is it really painful? Is it really painful? If you don’t like this guy, don’t go to his lecture!” Maher exclaimed.
Slotkin responded by insisting that college campuses should be a place for free speech regardless of their politics, but knocked Duncan as being “a little bit of a fragile flower.”
“I mean, push through, man. Like, just keep going,” Slotkin said.
“It was impossible,” Maher pushed back. “You don’t have a problem if the officer of the university is up there and defends the hecklers and not the speaker? Because that’s what she did. She defended the hecklers, not the speaker.”
Maher then pivoted the University of Michigan where he cited a stat claiming the college has “142” DEI staff members on its payroll.
“That’s a lot, is it not?” Maher reacted. “Has it become a cottage industry? I mean, is it something where these are jobs now? And these people ever gonna want to give up their jobs?”
“I don’t have any problem with any institution looking at themselves and hiring people to do that. I have friends who do it for Fortune 100 companies. It’s a good thing to do that,” Slotkin responded. “I don’t know about 142 jobs, but I don’t have a problem with institutions reflecting and trying to do better in their own way. I don’t have a problem with that.
“So when I was running for president, I was trying to figure out why college has gotten two-and-a-half times more expensive and it has not gotten two-and-a-half times better- news flash,” Yang said. “And it’s because they’ve hired two-and-a-half times more administrators. So there’s bloat in a lot of different directions.”