Here we have Bill Maher kvetching about people who say that the rich don’t pay taxes, and about “progressives” who say that multimillionaires and billionaires should be taxed much more heavily. In this tirade against “progressives,” Maher also argues that the U.S., despite the plaints of Bernie Sanders and his ilk, already has a lot of socialism, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment compensation, and so on.

His point is a bit obscure to me, but seems to be that there’s too much income inequality in America, so that a few people make a lot, while many make bupkes.  And prices continue to rise, putting stuff like concerts and Disneyland, not to mention Lego kits, out of reach of the middle class. And don’t even mention healthcare!   So what’s new?

The guests last week were Governor Wes Moore (Democratic Governor of Maryland), Chris Cuomo (NewsNation Host), and Sarah Isgur (ABC News Analyst and Contributing Editor at The Dispatch). Cuomo and Isgur show up in this clip. 

All in all, Maher seems to be complaining both about the super-rich and their failure to help the poor (beyond paying taxes), and also about income inequality.  What is he asking for?

Out of curiosity, I asked Grok what Maher’s net worth is. The answer is below: he’s about one-seventh of a billionaire:

Bill Maher’s net worth is estimated at $140 million.

This figure is consistently reported across reliable sources as of late 2025 and into 2026, including Celebrity Net Worth (the primary reference used by most outlets) and recent articles from TV Insider, Yahoo Entertainment, and others.

A big part of his wealth comes from his long-running HBO gig: he reportedly earns about $10 million per year as host of Real Time with Bill Maher (which he’s done since 2003, after earlier runs hosting Politically Incorrect).

Another major boost was a smart 2012 investment: he bought a minority stake (roughly 4%) in the New York Mets for around $20 million and sold it in 2020 when the team changed hands, netting an estimated $80 million profit.

His earnings also include stand-up tours, comedy specials, acting roles, producing projects (like the documentary Religulous and the series Vice), and his podcast Club Random. He’s known for being relatively frugal with his spending despite the high income.

Keep in mind that celebrity net worth estimates are approximate—they’re based on public data about salaries, investments, real estate, and other assets, minus expenses and taxes—but $140 million has been the stable consensus for several years with no major contradictory reports.

Bill Maher’s “New Rules” segment from the week before last is about AI, its history, its dangers, and its errors.  Maher doesn’t think too much of it, for, after all, AI can’t cure cancer.  I think he gives these bots overly short shrift, and neglects the productive things AI really can do.  But he then implies that it’s run by sociopaths and could drive humanity extinct.

The guests for that week were journalist Kara Swisher, politician Rahm Emanuel, and attorney and security advisor Jake Sullivan.

There’s no real “rule” here, but simply Maher’s assertion—one that many people won’t sccept in the Time of Demonization—that people can do both good and bad things (it’s better to say that then brand someone as good or evil, though of course people can lean toward one side or another).

This monologue was prompted, of course, by recent revelations that Cesar Chavez was a sexual predator and rapist. Maher mentions others with such ambitendencies, including Thomas Jefferson, Michael Jackson, and Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia who’s particularly vexing.

Maher tries to accept the fact that sometimes the bad comes with the good, and that’s really the only life lesson you can derive from this monologue. But it’s worth pondering. For if you see what happens to people like Chavez, who are written off as too evil to extol in any way, you see the inability of many people to accept nuance (and no, I’m not saying that there should be Cesar Chavez high schools.)

The other guests include Lloyd Blankfein (former CEO of Goldman Sachs), Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted a mere ten days as Trump’s communications director.

I didn’t realize how popular Bill Maher is on YouTube: this clip, a fragment of his “Real Time” show on HBO, has garnered over 520,000 views since it was posted on Friday night.  At any rate, this week he takes on the recent conspiracy theories that alien spacecraft are appearing regularly, and that some of their spaceships and even their bodies are in possession of companies or the government.

Maher notes that the UFO believers are no longer nutjobs but reputable people: politicians and “people with buzzcuts.”  Steven Spielberg even has a movie coming out this summer about UFOs; it’s called “Disclosure Day.”

He then addresses the aliens directly, asking them not to kill us even though they could, and apologizes for America’s once firing a missile at a UFO. He even offers minerals to the aliens and then pleads for them to destroy our nuclear weapons, and to “get us off oil–and our phones.” In the end, he tells the aliens “you should think of the human race as Britney Spears. It would be nice if we needed a conservatorship, but in reality we really do.”

It’s clear that Maher, like me, doesn’t believe that these aliens and their craft really exist. He’s just using the notion to criticize what’s wrong with America.  If craft and aliens did exist, and we possess crashed ships and alien bodies, then somehow there has been a massive conspiracy to hide it by both Democratic and Republican governments—as well as by the press— to cover up the greatest news story in the history of humanity.

The panel guests for this show were Laura Coates, CNN chief legal analyst, and Stephen A. Smith, host of Straight Shooter.

Here’s a teaser for “DIsclosure Day”. There are aliens in animal bodies, and it even buys into the discredited idea that aliens make crop circles.

There’s simply no news today, I’m exhausted from lack of sleep, and as I looked at the latest draft posts I have (there are over 2,600 drafts, most of which will never see the light of day), I was not inspired to write anything, though there are two science posts that I’ll be working on. We’ll see if anybody reads them.

Ergo, enjoy Bill Maher’s comedy-and-politics bit from his latest episode of Real Time. In this 8.75-minute segment,  Maher decries Terminally Online Disease (TOD), one of whose symptoms is the fervent need to express an opinion on everything. (The video begins by excusing cat haters, who include Oscar-winning actress Jessie Buckley—not a propitious start.) Maher then goes on to criticize people who spend all their time doomscrolling through social-media sites on “devices”, mistaking what they read for a national or international consensus and apparently anxious to get outraged.  The scrollers are contrasted with regular people who have “shit to do.”

All told, it’s a pretty curmudgeonly bit and not as funny as his usual shticks.  But it’s all I got.

The guests were Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, Paul Begala, CNN contributor and Democratic strategist, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL). 

Bill Maher’s latest news-and-comedy shtick on “Real Time” deals once again with the flak he got for having dinner with President Trump. Remember? Despite Maher constantly criticizing the President’s policies durin gthe dinner, he also reported that he found Trump affable and friendly.

That was enough for liberals to come down on Maher like a ton of bricks, despite the fact that he simply gave his reaction. Trump’s policies were reprehensible, Maher averred, but he was a good host.  In today’s world that will do you in. Larry David, for instance, wrote a satire of Maher’s reaction in a NYT op-ed called “Larry David imagines a private dinner with Hitler” (archived here), and I imagine that pissed off Maher.

Apparently Trump posted about his dinner with Maher on Truth Social (on Valentine’s Day), and Trump’s post was full of lies (surprise!). Here Maher corrects the record, and gets a few shots back at Trump for lying, while calling out people with true “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”  (“Get a life: stop making him your whole personality”.) But he adds that Trump bears some responsibility for promoting TDS because his racism, misogyny, anti-democratic acts, and corruption “make people crazy.”  Maher further also ticks off a few good things that Trump did, including asserting that “penises don’t belong in women’s prisons,” which will simply anger “progressives” more.  Maher argues that he may be “the last person from the Lunatic Left that is still an honest broker when it comes to Trump.”

Maher winds up addressing Trump directly, calling him out for his many detestable acts—after he’s given the President plaudits for some things.  Yes, Maher seems defensive here, but he’s honest and I still like the guy.  I don’t have much truck with people who say that Trump never did anything good, and, in fact, it’s impossible for that to happen.

Bill’s guests were Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), journalist Don Lemon, and author Annabelle Gurwitch/