Bill Maher Responds to ‘Roseanne’ Fans’ Push to Cancel His Show

Bill Maher, a comedian who has made countless controversial comments in his own career, responded to a Roseanne-inspired push to have his HBO show Real Time canceled during Friday’s episode.

On Tuesday, ABC cancelled Roseanne after star Roseanne Barr said former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett looked like the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and characters from Planet of the Apes. Barr later apologized and has insisted she is not racist.

In response, conservative social media users called for Maher to be fired, honing in on a 2013 joke where compared future President Donald Trump to an orangutan.

Maher replied by opening his Friday show with a segment called “explaining jokes to idiots.”

“One, Trump is an orangutan,” Maher began, reports The Wrap. “Two, white people have not been subjected to a racist trope comparing them to apes for hundreds of years. Three, my offering Trump $5 million to produce his birth certificate in 2013 to prove he’s not half an ape was itself a response to his birtherism racist bulls–.”

Back in 2012, Trump famously offered to donate $5 million to a charity of President Barack Obama’s choice if Obama publicly released his college transcripts and other records. Trump was a driving force behind the incorrect birtherism theory, which claims Obama was not born in the U.S. However, Obama was born in Hawaii. Trump did not say he was fully convinced of the place of Obama’s birth until September 2016.

Maher’s response to the 2012 offer was a joke offer. The comedian said he would offer $5 million to a charity of Trump’s choice if Trump proved he was not the “spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan.” Trump filed a lawsuit against Maher, but dropped it eight weeks later, Reuters reported at the time.

Maher ended his Friday monologue by reminding conservatives that he was already fired by ABC once. In 2002, Politically Incorrect was canceled after he made controversial remarks about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists.

During Friday’s episode, Maher also said it was a “tough week for the line” that comedians cross, referring to Barr’s remarks and Samantha Bee’s insult about Ivanka Trump. He also noted that Barr said she had multiple personality disorder in 1994, saying “one of them is quite racist.”

“Half the country wants Roseanne to go away forever and half the country wants Samantha Bee to go away forever,” Maher said in his monologue. “Now, Roseanne will always be my friend but her world came crashing down this week with a series of tweets she put out on Tuesday that were so full of racism, conspiracy theories and personal attacks they were described as abhorrent bordering on presidential.”

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