Bill Maher Shocks Audience With Trump Prison-Rape Joke
Bill Maher did the unthinkable and joked about former President Donald Trump being raped in prison after being convicted of 34 felonies in his hush-money trial.
Before diving into an important segment on prison reform during his show Friday night, Maher questioned why rape jokes are inappropriate except, according to him, when it’s about prison.
“Someone has to look into the puzzling paradox of why it is that rape jokes are completely unacceptable and unthinkable and totally out of bounds. But raped-in-prison jokes? Fucking hilarious!” he said to uproarious laughter from the audience. “Never a bad time to do the one about how if you drop the soap in the prison shower, don’t bend over for it!”
Then, he moved on to Trump’s pending sentencing—though, it’s unlikely the former president would go to prison since he is a first-time non-violent offender.
“Look, with all the talk now about Trump possibly going to jail, we’ve all been [making jokes]. I mean, come on, it’s Donald Trump,” Maher said. “Given the opportunity, it’s natural to want to imagine him getting fucked in the ass.”
To that punchline, Maher received overwhelming applause from the audience. But then, the comedian became serious for a moment to address why even prison-rape jokes are not OK.
“I’m just saying, maybe we shouldn’t. Not for him, but for the nearly 2 million people behind bars at any given time in this country,” he said. “That’s more people than 12 states.”
Maher took the topic into a much-needed conversation about America’s high incarceration rate, with numbers higher than Russia and China.
However, Maher went right back to making jokes.
“But for some reason, Americans accept [that] not only do we lock up more people, but then if you’re a criminal of any kind, yes, sodomy is the appropriate come-uppance,” the talk-show host and political commentator said.
After tossing in jokes about Sean Diddy Combs and Britney Spears, Maher went back to the task at hand and berated the prison system for not living up to its name as “correctional facilities.”
“If we’re trying to make inmates into criminals for life, it’s working,” he said. “Corporations, it turns out, don’t run prisons to improve society. They run them to make money, which means putting more people in the system. The more prisoners, the more profit.”
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