Bill Maher Is Still Pretty Touchy About Being Fired by ABC

As Bill Maher continues his quest to sweatily pitch his new book to conservative audiences, the Real Time host appeared on former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace’s interview show Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? The pair talked about everything from the Trump campaign to Maher’s love of weed. Somehow Wallace restrained himself from distractingly fiddling with an assortment of liquor bottles during all of his guest’s answers. 

But things got a tad awkward when Wallace asked Maher about his exit from ABC. Not “Billy Bob Thornton will only talk about his terrible music” awkward, but still awkward.

Famously, Maher’s late-night panel debate show, Politically Incorrect, was canceled not too long after he made controversial comments concerning 9/11 less than a week later, on September 17, 2001. 

While discussing whether or not the September 11th attacks were perpetrated by cowards, Maher responded: “We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building — say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.”

A lot of people flipped out, taking the comment as a criticism of the U.S. military. The ensuing backlash led to sponsors pulling their support from the show, and some ABC affiliates yanking Politically Incorrect from their schedules altogether. Maher even penned an apologetic statement clarifying that he never meant to suggest “that the men and women who defend our nation in uniform are anything but courageous and valiant.”

When Wallace brought up the incident during his interview, Maher became visibly uncomfortable, refuting the suggestion that he was attacking the military and bemoaning the fact that the topic had been raised at all. “First of all, this is so old,” Maher complained. “Really? That’s of interest still?” 

“Well, yeah. I mean, we’re talking about your career. We’re talking about 20 years,” Wallace countered.

Maher went on to suggest that he was really just following George W. Bush’s instructions. “I mean, George Bush said… the terrorists win, unless we go back to doing what we were doing. So I went back to doing what I was doing, which was telling the truth as I saw it.” He again pointed out that his comment “wasn’t about the military,” adding, “I said ‘we.’ We as a society.”

Incidentally, ABC denied that they canceled Politically Incorrect because of Maher’s 9/11 comments, stating that the decision was made due to years of “declining ratings.” The show was axed in June 2002, just a few months after ABC began wooing David Letterman to take over the 11:30 p.m. time slot. While Letterman ultimately stayed at CBS, ABC eventually opted to replace Maher’s show with the more conventional late-night program Jimmy Kimmel Live! So it seems entirely plausible that Maher was fired simply because the network wanted to switch formats and take on The Tonight Show.

But, seemingly, Maher would rather stick with the narrative that he was canned by the mainstream media for his rebellious truth-telling. While chatting with Wallace, he also noted that he’s “glad” that ABC canceled Politically Incorrect because he “wound up in so much of a better place.” 

In other words, he’s a big fan of cancel culture!

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