Season 24 of Real Time with Bill Maher kicked off on HBO last night. There was the good, the bad, and the very ugly, per usual, though the past few seasons have seen the comedian increasingly mock and attack the illiberal tendencies on his own side. Maher has praised Ron DeSantis for doing a better job on COVID, reading the science rather than the science fiction, as Cuomo did in New York, which got people killed, and credited him with not being too far off on concerns about Disney hiring creeps.
What made things more entertaining was that Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was a guest. He took Maher to school on immigration and the negotiations about some compromise on that issue, which will never happen, because Democrats want amnesty across the board:
Bill Maher gets absolutely SCHOOLED by Senator John Kennedy on immigration reform — Kennedy said it’s not only illegal immigration, it’s LEGAL immigration that needs fixing.
— Overton (@overton_news) January 24, 2026
And the number he dropped at the end caused Maher to do a double take.
He was out of his depth.… pic.twitter.com/rj3J5hfEVG
MAHER: “Okay. So he [Trump] made his point. He is the tough guy.”
“It gives him the opportunity now to be the guy who says, okay, I’m actually going to do comprehensive immigration reform because this is been…how long have you been in the Senate?”
KENNEDY: “10 years…in dog years that’s about 70.”
MAHER: “Why couldn’t Trump be the one to get this done? You talk to him, I bet you could put that bee in his bonnet.”
KENNEDY: “You know what the real answer is? The real answer is immigration reform. That’s the real answer.”
MAHER: “Well, we did that, we closed the border.”
KENNEDY: “I’m talking about not only for illegal immigration but also for legal immigration.”
“And the truth is, Bill, if you are honest, and you are, we have let more people into America legally every year than anyone in the world, because the whole world wants to come here.”
“When’s the last time you heard of somebody trying to sneak into China? I mean, they want to come to America.”
“But we could do that better if my Democrat friends would sit down and talk with us.”
“But when we sit down to talk, the first thing they want is amnesty, amnesty, amnesty. And that dog is not going to hunt right now.”
MAHER: “Couldn’t there be some sort of agreement on that? Because people are saying…even people from your own party…is that yes, we wanted to get rid of the criminals, we were all for that. And there are some…”
KENNEDY: “Yup, it’s about 47%.”
MAHER: “47%?!”
KENNEDY: “Yup, I saw numbers this morning. About 47%.”
MAHER: “Sounds bullshitty to me…but maybe.”
Bill Maher breaks his silence over the ICE killing of Renee Good and compares it to the infamous Tet Offensive execution.
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) January 24, 2026
“That woman. That was an execution in the street. I’m sorry, but it was. When I saw it, you know what I thought of?”
“…Remember Vietnam, the Tet Offensive,… pic.twitter.com/GTxCjSFnsj
Yet, based on the image, you could probably guess that Maher considered the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis to be an execution, comparing it to the image of the South Vietnamese national police chief executing Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém on the streets of Saigon in 1968. It was all captured by the Associated Press. That’s not what happened, Bill. Good rammed her vehicle into the ICE agent, and he defended himself. It’s all on video. Kennedy also took Maher to task over who really weaponized the government against their political enemies:
Senator John Kennedy won over Bill Maher’s audience by calling out Joe Biden’s weaponization of government.
— Overton (@overton_news) January 24, 2026
The two went toe-to-toe in a duel over presidential power.
Kennedy REFUSED to back down.
KENNEDY: “President Biden, for the first time in this country’s history,… pic.twitter.com/Bnd11caQO4
KENNEDY: “President Biden, for the first time in this country’s history, prosecuted a former president, a former opponent, who was his current opponent.”
MAHER: “I understand it—”
KENNEDY: “He unleashed spirits he could not control.”
[Audience applauds]
MAHER: “Again, it was the first time we did that, it was also the first time that something PROMPTED us to do that!”
KENNEDY: “No! Wait a minute. No, wait a minute.”
“They allege…I’m not defending the president or his conduct, you can make your own judgement.”
MAHER: “Well…”
KENNEDY: “But you can be worried about the president and not defend the conduct. They allege that president Trump defrauded the American people. Okay?”
“Well, what does that mean? How about when president Obama said if you like your insurance you can keep your insurance? Is that fraud?”
MAHER: “No, come on…it wasn’t the best thing he ever said and it turned out to not be completely true. It’s well within the realm of political—”
KENNEDY: “How about the people around President Biden who hid, studiously and successfully, the fact that he had neurodegenerative disease? Should they be prosecuted?”
Bill Maher tries to prove he doesn’t have Trump Derangement Syndrome — and Senator John Kennedy tells him he’s just “yelling at the wind.”
— Overton (@overton_news) January 24, 2026
MAHER: “He came out and said the Nick Fuentes wing of the party, we’re not with you, we don’t want you.”
“And Venezuela, do I love… pic.twitter.com/P5czmbpLZ6
Bill Maher admits Mark Kelly is creating a dangerous “slippery slope” by urging soldiers to disobey Trump.
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) January 24, 2026
Senator Kelly suggested Trump has or will issue an “illegal order,” and even Maher thinks that goes way too far.
“I may not have been for those firings [on… pic.twitter.com/jgwVzesnz7
The irony about Maher’s take on the Minneapolis ICE shooting is that his take is a liberal media bubble position, something he said we should move out of to close the show:
Newsfeeds are like high-priced fetish escorts. They understand that their whole job is to give it to you how you like it. pic.twitter.com/7yErb8ibnr
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) January 24, 2026
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