Bill Maher took aim at Republican lawmakers after dire reports emerged of conditions aboard a U.S. warship.
Sailors have said that say life on the USS Abraham Lincoln has grown unbearable after more than eight months at sea in the Middle East.
Concerns have been raised about a lack of food, water contamination and the deteriorating mental health of staff on board.
Speaking on the latest episode of his talk show Real Time, Maher said: “I’ve used this phrase before, but Republicans, they have this patriotic immunity.”
He continued: “They can do things that are so unpatriotic and they don’t seem to pay a price for it the way a Democrat would. When I hear about troops being on a ship where the toilets aren’t working and there’s not enough food and they’re so morose about this that at least one of them jumped off the ship… it just makes my blood boil.”
Maher first used the phrase “patriotic immunity” almost a decade ago, when he suggested in 2017 that Republican politicians can “get away with pretty much anything when it comes to selling out, cursing out or compromising your own country” simply because they profess to be more patriotic than their opponents.
During this week’s Real Time episode, pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson suggested that issues on the USS Abraham Lincoln stem from service members not feeling like there is “any kind of mission that’s worth fighting.”
The ship has been deployed to the Middle East to support President Donald Trump’s war with Iran.
However Maher pushed back at this idea, saying: “I disagree with that. There was a mission worth fighting. We f***ed it up how we did it.”
He went on: “Iran having a nuclear weapon, Iran being the actor in the Middle East that has f***ed everything up in that region for the last 50 years, changing that dynamic was not an unreasonable thing to try. They did it at the wrong time. They f***ed it up. They should have done it when the people were in the streets. They didn’t and now we’re here where we are.”
The U.S. military is understood to be preparing to replace the Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployed, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth played down concerns during a trip to Panama on Thursday, saying they were “completely misrepresented.”
”We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody,” he said.
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