Bill Maher wants Donald Trump’s party flattened at the ballot box in November.
He even picked out a crude phrase for the beating he expects.
But the HBO host let one fear about his own side slip out, and Democrats won’t enjoy hearing it.
Maher Calls for a Thumping, Then Slams on the Brakes
Maher sat down with Chris Cuomo on The Chris Cuomo Project and didn’t bother with subtlety when it came to his midterm forecast.
He told Cuomo that Republicans are headed for a “historic a** whooping” because, as Maher put it, “there’s a message that has to be sent.”
And he made it plain who’s doing the sending. “The voters have one piece of business on their mind right now and that is, you know, half the country didn’t like Trump to begin with,” Maher said. “Any chance to give him a thumping, they welcome.”
He tossed in a jab about the President’s second term, too, describing a lame-duck feel to the whole thing and claiming Trump is “just not King Kong anymore.”
That’s about what anyone would expect from a Los Angeles comedian who built a good chunk of his HBO career on mocking the folks who keep voting for Trump.
But Cuomo asked a follow-up that Maher clearly had strong feelings about. Cuomo wanted to know whether a Republican beating would mean Democrats had actually won the argument with voters.
Maher didn’t hesitate for a second.
“Absolutely not!” Maher exclaimed. “They have not renounced they are crazy at all. In fact, they’re going full steam ahead. That’s why I’m so worried about 2028.”
The One Word Maher Keeps Using About His Own Party
Maher’s real worry centers on what the far left will do with a November win. “And a lot of the far-left will take it, Trump’s loss, they will misinterpret it as a recommendation for what they’re trying to do,” he told Cuomo.
Then he went where most Democrats in Washington, DC refuse to go. “When you talk about taking over the means of production and taking over all the private industries, that’s communism, folks. You can look it up.”
And here’s the kicker. Maher admitted Trump had been sounding that exact alarm. “I know Trump says it,” Maher said, before adding, “that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
Read that one twice. A man who has ripped Trump for years just conceded the President got the central argument of the next presidential cycle right, and got there first.
This isn’t a one-time slip, either. In July 2026, fresh off collecting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Maher sat down with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s This Week and unloaded on his own party. “Democrats are cowardly,” he said.
Karl asked whether Maher could see himself voting for Vice President JD Vance in 2028. “If this is the Democratic side, yes,” Maher answered.
He pushed it even further in an interview with Vanity Fair, naming Vance and Marco Rubio as Republicans he’d consider “unless the Democrats come up with someone who will full-throatedly denounce this Jew-hating, communist-flirting wing of the party.”
And Maher told Cuomo the left’s hostility toward Israel over its Gaza campaign sits right on the list of Democrat “crazy.” His verdict on whether the party can fix it was less than confident. “We’ll see if they can check themselves on that,” Maher said.
The Socialists Wrote It All Down
Maher isn’t seeing ghosts. The Democratic Socialists of America, the openly Marxist outfit whose candidates have knocked off establishment Democrats in primaries, publishes a platform that calls for public ownership of major industries and the abolition of the US Senate.
“I’ve read the quotes from the DSA platform from their own mouths,” Maher told Karl over the summer.
Government seizure of private industry isn’t some fresh idea from a Brooklyn coffee shop. Karl Marx sketched it out in 1848, and the last hundred years ran the experiment from Moscow to Havana to Caracas. Bread lines, empty shelves, and secret police showed up every single time, and the middle class got wiped out right along with the private companies.
But Democrats keep insisting the label doesn’t fit. Maher himself mocked that dodge, saying he knows the talking point is that it’s socialism, not communism.
Maher’s Lecture on Hate Has a Blind Spot
Near the end of the Cuomo interview, Maher got philosophical. He griped that each party walks into power and immediately sets out to erase whatever the other side did, calling it “no way to run a railroad.”
“When hate takes over, people stop listening to any of the logic,” he said.
Now go back to how Maher opened. He predicted a historic beating that runs on one fuel, and he named it himself: half the country never liked Trump and will jump at any chance to give him a thumping.
That’s a grudge. By Maher’s own standard, that’s exactly the kind of hate that switches off logic, and he cheered it on about ten minutes before scolding everybody for it.
Maybe that’s a little harsh. Maher at least admitted a Republican loss wouldn’t mean Democrats earned a single thing, which is more honesty than most of his Hollywood neighbors could muster.
Midterms punish the party in the White House more often than not, and that has nothing to do with the merits of anybody’s agenda. Barack Obama watched Democrats lose 63 House seats in 2010. Nobody in his party took that as a sign that voters wanted fewer government programs. They just waited it out.
And that’s the scenario keeping Maher up at night. A strong November hands the DSA wing a story to tell, whether or not voters meant to tell it. The same crowd that campaigned on abolishing ICE and defunding the police will turn a referendum on Trump into a permission slip for seizing private industry.
There’s one more wrinkle Maher didn’t mention to Cuomo. He told Vanity Fair he could never join the GOP because Republicans are “too religious.” This is the same comedian who made Religulous back in 2008 to sneer at people of faith.
So Maher’s coalition of the reluctant looks something like this: he can’t stand Christians, he can’t stand communists, and he’s warming up to the America First heir apparent who sat across the table from him and didn’t flinch.
Vance, for his part, didn’t need to change a single position to win Maher’s grudging respect. He just showed up, which Maher says Democrats won’t even do.
Maher says he’s worried about 2028. He might want to start with the voters he just told to treat a grudge like a mandate.
Sources: Mediaite, “‘I’m So Worried About 2028!’ Bill Maher Frets Democrats Will Squander Midterm Victory”; Fox News, “Bill Maher admits he could vote for JD Vance, warns ‘cowardly’ Democrats face socialist takeover”; Legal Insurrection, “Bill Maher Says His 2028 Vote is ‘In Play’: ‘I’m Not Living in Communist America’”; TV Insider, “Bill Maher Rips Apart GOP While Sharing 2 Republicans He’d Vote for in 2028”; Washington Examiner, “Bill Maher says ‘yes’ he could see himself voting for Vance in 2028”; The Blaze, “Bill Maher makes astounding threat to Democrats unless they abandon communism”