Look, I can't stand Bill Maher, either. The Real Time host is frequently inconsistent and right-wingish (he's a libertarian, so it almost goes without saying, and his ongoing covid insanity is enough to disqualify him), BUT even a blind squirrel finds an occasional nut. His most recent episode presented a plausible scenario that leads us back to Trump. He predicts Trump will run for president in 2024, get the Republican nomination and announce that he won, no matter what. Via TheWrap:
“He’s like a shark that’s not gone, just gone out to sea,” Maher warned of Trump and his ambitions to return to the Oval Office, which the HBO host called “the slow coup.”
“But actually he’s been eating people this whole time,” Maher went on, continuing the shark analogy. “And by eating people, he’s been methodically purging the Republican party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesn’t agree he’s the rightful leader of the 7 Kingdoms.”
Maher then laid out the rest of the scenario: Republicans will regain the House in the 2022 midterm elections, swing states with Democratic governors in 2020 will be replaced by GOP ones in 2022, and in 2023 Trump will announce his bid for re-election on a platform that sows division and even violence.
He said the Democratic nominee wouldn't matter, because whoever it was would be framed by the GOP as “the leader of the army of Satan.”
He predicted it would end with a half-million armed Trump voters storming the Capitol.
“I hope I scared the sh*t out of you,” Maher said.
I think he did.
Mehdi Hasan said on Twitter, "I would never normally say this - & I may have to go take a shower now - but I agree with almost every word of this from Bill Maher, about the 'slow-moving coup' & what could be coming in 2022 & 2024, & I wish more actual journalists would say what a late-night comedian's saying."
