Bill Maher was the featured guest on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on Monday, Jan. 7, 2013. The stand-up comedian and host of HBO’s "Real Time" told Leno that he’d spent his holiday in Hawaii looking for Obama’s birth certificate, but quickly resorted to plan B: getting stoned with Woody Harrelson. He said they got so high that they climbed Diamond Head, the large volcanic cone in view from Waikiki Beach. “That’s a lake,” Maher teased, as he giggled. Bill Maher's acerbic wit and liberal viewpoints clashed with Leno's more conservative audience, which was evident early on when Maher called Leno "grandpa" for using the word hemp instead of using the word pot.
When Leno asked Maher if he had plans to take up seasonal residency in Colorado and Washington, the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana usage, Maher quipped that he’d given pot up when he got saved. The audience hesitated on Maher’s sharp joke and only eased up when he mentioned that between marijuana becoming legal in two states and single-handedly getting Obama re-elected, it was a pretty good year for him. The audience also struggled as he told Leno that televangelist Pat Robertson was more left than President Obama on marijuana legalization, stating, “Robertson gets it. The bible only makes sense if you’re really high.”
The interview continued to touch on several subjects, including Mitt Romney. Recently, Mitt’s son Tagg said that his dad didn’t really want to become president, to which Maher responded, “What reflexive liars these people are.” He continued on, explaining that Romney wanted the job so badly that if polls showed he could have gained another vote as a black woman that Romney would have “lopped off his penis, got a weave, and changed his name to Latisha in a minute.” Leno seemed flabbergasted, and replied with a slight shocked, “Wow,” as the audience murmured with unease. On a less joking note, Maher told everyone watching that Mitt Romney ran for president under the idea that the government should be run more like a business and that “what people need to realize is that the government is specifically there to do what business doesn’t.”
During the interview, Leno and Maher discussed Donald Trump. Maher jokingly offered five million dollars to the charity of Trump’s choice (he recommended the Hair Club for Men as well as the Institute for Incorrigible Douchebaggery) if Trump was willing to provide proof that Trump’s father was not an orangutan, echoing Trump’s offer to donate five million to President Obama to produce his college records before the 2012 Presidential election.
When Leno asked Maher what he thought of Governor Chris Christie, the republican leader of Maher’s home state of New Jersey, Maher discussed Christie’s flip-flopping on the role of federal government before and after Hurricane Sandy. Maher expressed a liking for Christie’s gravitas (and gravity, har har) to call people out and put them on the spot.
Also discussed were Maher’s predictions for President Obama’s second term. Maher said that as long as republicans are controlled by their base of snake handlers and early-onset dementia patients that the president is facing an uphill battle, and with that, Maher earned a round of sighs and demure boos from the live studio audience.
Bill Maher’s television program, "Real Time," returns to HBO on Jan. 18, 2013.
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