Bill Maher used Friday’s episode of “Real Time” to renew his warnings about the Democratic Party’s leftward drift, telling his audience that “these people want communism” and arguing that moderates should use this week’s midterm results to reassert control of the party.
Maher made the comments during a roundtable discussion with writer and podcast host Coleman Hughes, who raised concerns about socialist economic policy. “My issues are high rents and crime,” Hughes said. “Socialists don’t tend to be good on those issues because they institute policies like rent control, which sound good and then end up increasing the rents in the long run.” Hughes added, “We got a hundred years of data on socialism. It’s not good for the economy. It’s not a new idea.”
Maher agreed, drawing a distinction between what he called acceptable, existing forms of government-run programs and what he sees as a more radical agenda from the party’s far left.
“We already have a lot of socialism and a lot of it is appropriate. That’s not what these people are selling, these far-left people.”
Maher listed Medicare, the Marine Corps and Social Security as examples of programs he considers socialism in a form he supports. “It’s anything the government does and the private sector doesn’t,” he said. “You just read what they say in their manifesto. They want the government to take over everything. That is a prescription for failure.”
He framed the midterms as a potential turning point, saying the results handed moderates leverage against the party’s left flank. “To me, one of the great results of this election was it gave moderates a big stick to beat them off with,” Maher told viewers, adding that he hopes party moderates will use the wins to assert, “This is the Democratic Party, you are doing a whole different thing.” He repeated his core claim: “We already have a lot of socialism, and I’m for most of it. We need most of it, but these people want communism.”
Maher has made similar arguments for months. At an event in June, he noted how quickly political circumstances had shifted following the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which found Louisiana’s revised congressional map to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. He also referenced the election of three democratic socialists in New York at the time, calling them “crazy” and questioning how the party would manage its direction.
Election results fuel the debate
Maher’s latest remarks follow a sweeping Democratic performance in this week’s midterms. According to the Associated Press, Democrats won at least 254 U.S. House seats, giving the party its largest House majority since 2009.
At the same time, the party’s democratic socialist wing notched its own victories. Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist, defeated incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass this week, becoming the latest democratic socialist elected to lead a major American city, following New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s win last year.
Pushback from the left
Democratic strategist Kaivan Shroff rejected Maher’s framing in comments to Fox News Digital, arguing the comedian misunderstands the programs he cites as examples of acceptable socialism.
“There is something perfectly ‘Bill Maher’ about declaring it an ‘indictment of our educational system’ that young people supposedly do not understand socialism, and then immediately revealing that he does not understand it either. Medicare and Social Security are social insurance programs. The Marine Corps is literally a branch of the military.”
Shroff argued that Maher’s definition stretches the term past usefulness. “If every service the government provides counts as socialism, then courts, cops and Congress are socialist too and the word has basically lost all meaning,” he said. “He is mocking other people for being uneducated on the subject while demonstrating the same sloppy understanding himself.”
Shroff also pointed to Maher’s relationship with President Donald Trump, including a White House dinner last month, suggesting Maher applies his socialism critique selectively. “If Maher really wants to worry about socialism, he might want to look a little harder at his dinner buddy Donald Trump,” Shroff said. “Trump’s government has taken roughly a 10 percent stake in Intel and about a 15 percent stake in MP Materials. Those examples are far closer to socialism than Medicare is. Yet somehow Maher’s socialism panic gets a lot quieter when Trump is the one doing it.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Maher for comment.
