Bill Maher says President Donald Trump might be planning another “slow-moving coup.”
The “Real Time” host on Friday pointed to the federal takeover of Washington, D.C., where Trump deployed the National Guard and federalized local police to combat the purported “bedlam” there, despite violent crime in the city being at a 30-year low.
Maher predicted an attempted power grab during the first Trump administration and has frequently cited the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection as evidence ever since. He noted Friday that he’s used the phrase “slow-moving coup” since Trump was first elected in 2016.
“And people were laughing at it, whenever I said he was never going to concede power,” the comedian and political pundit said Friday. “They would say, ‘Oh, you smoke too much pot.’ Well, turned out I was smoking just the right amount of pot.”
Maher went on to argue that these people are actually the ones in a trance.
He said Trump “does this magic trick” by flooding the discourse with humorous trivialities, and handing out pizza to law enforcement or highlighting the assault of an ex-government staffer nicknamed “Big Balls” so “we’re all laughing about what’s going on in D.C.”
“If there was a slow-moving coup, let me just describe some of the steps and you tell me if I’m being paranoid,” said Maher. “First, create a masked police force — get people used to looking at that. Normalize snatching people off the street — get them used to that.”
He continued, “Normalize seeing the National Guard and the military on the street. Then, start talking about crime in the capital, which is basically, you know, has always been a fairly crime-ridden city, [but] this is our nation’s capital — where elections are decided.”
Maher noted that six states have already sent their own National Guard troops to D.C., which “Trump can then federalize,” and warned this “permanent police presence” controlled by a power-hungry administration forebodes potentially historic turmoil.
“So when an election dispute might come up, just hypothetically …” he said half-jokingly.
Trump has made numerous comments about potentially running for a third, unconstitutional term. He joked during a high-stakes summit last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that a war could give him reason to suspend the 2028 election.
While Maher said Friday that he doesn’t want to be “a big pessimist,” many social media users are slamming him as a hypocrite, as Maher has decried Trump as a potential dictator for years — only to dine with him in March and call Trump “gracious and measured.”
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“I’m going to pretend for the rest of the duration that the Democrats do have a chance of winning, and they might win the next election,” Maher said Friday. “I just don’t think they’re ever going to take power, because this is what’s going to happen.
“I think this coup is going to go off a lot smoother than the last one,” he warned.
