Bill Maher says Democrats lack backbone to confront socialists in their ranks

Comedian Bill Maher said Friday night that Democrats lack the backbone to confront the socialists in their ranks, but argued that fight can wait because the coming election is a referendum on President Trump.

Mr. Maher made the remarks on HBO’s “Real Time,” Breitbart News reported. Fellow panelist Kid Rock said Democrats claim they don’t want socialist ideology creeping into the party, but he doubted they have the nerve to stand up to it.

Mr. Maher agreed. He said the party’s current message is that it wants a big tent, but that whether the Democratic Party is broad enough to hold those socialists is a question for the next election. For this one, he said, “This election is about Donald Trump.” Mr. Maher also said that in many cases the people in question are really communists, not socialists.

The exchange came during a panel that, Variety reported, also featured Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei and included a pointed disagreement between Mr. Maher and Kid Rock. Kid Rock, who attended an Oct. 15 White House dinner with Mr. Trump and Mr. Maher, compared Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the 9/11 hijackers. Mr. Maher countered that the hijackers weren’t assimilated, and said on the issue of Muslim candidates that “the left is naïve and the right is hysterical.”

Mr. Maher has made similar warnings before. He said in June that his vote would be “in play” if the Democratic Party moved toward the Democratic Socialists’ direction.