Legendary actor and activist Jane Fonda had some choice words for comedian and Real Time host Bill Maher after he criticized liberals and leftists.
The confrontation happened during Fonda's recent appearance on Maher's Club Random podcast.
During their chat, Maher trotted out the current dimwitted talking point du jour—that the Democratic Party has gone so "far left" that most voters think they're insane and that's why they lost to Donald Trump.
Never mind that Kamala Harris ran the most conservative campaign of any Democrat in recent memory and took positions to the right of Ronald Reagan on certain issues, notably immigration.
Or the fact that Harris never spoke about trans rights unless asked, never made an issue of her own gender and rarely spoke about any social issues besides her plans to help working-class Black Americans.
The ridiculous notion that Harris was simply too "far left" for the American electorate has calcified into arguably the most idiotic conventional wisdom of recent years, and Maher has seemed eager to be a foot soldier for this silliness.
He told Fonda:
"There is two parts of the Trump coalition. There’s about a third of this country that’s very hard right. Of course they love Trump."
"When he left office, he had an approval rating of 34%. So he really only had those people. Why is he now, like, tied?"
"Because the other part of the coalition are people who, they don’t really like him that much. They just think the far left has gone so nutty on so many issues."
He's not wrong about that—polling has shown that right-wing voters do think this. That doesn't mean it's true, of course. Right-wing voters think a lot of things that aren't true. We have the polling data showing that, too.
And Fonda thinks she knows why—or at least one reason, anyway. She immediately agreed with Maher's assessment, but not for the reason he likely expected.
"That’s what they’re being told...by people like you."
When Fonda asked Maher what exactly he meant by "far left," his example was fairly ridiculous: The NAACP issuing a travel warning for Florida because of Governor Ron DeSantis' hostility toward people of color and LGBTQ+ people. Which is, you know, real.
Anyway, Maher attempted to find common ground with Fonda, remarking on how much they share politically, but she wasn't having any of that. She replied:
"You’re so different than me that it’s hard for me sometimes to even understand what you’re talking about..."
"Your worldview is so totally different than mine. I just don’t see people the same way...I think you’re very cynical.”
On X, many loved the way Fonda handled Maher's rhetoric.
Many of Maher's guests seem to eat up his barely laundered right-wing talking points, but Jane Fonda is absolutely not the one.
Thank you, Jane.
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