Comedian and Real Time HBO host Bill Maher defended his earlier comments that Covid-19 was likely the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China in light of a new Department of Energy report supporting the theory.
“I feel like the people who were the dissenters are looking pretty good. I was one of them,” Maher said during a discussion that aired Friday. “I remember getting a lot of s*** from a lot of places.”
One of the panelists, the British comedian, actor, and political commentator, Russell Brand, lent his support to Maher saying: “I think dissent is a great duty across all topics.”
Bill Maher on the pandemic "I feel like the people who were the dissenters are looking pretty good."
Russell Brand: "I think dissent is a great duty around all topics." pic.twitter.com/NUQgGIQ1Yw
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) March 4, 2023
“Partisanship,” Brand added, “ultimately leads us into cul de sacs culturally.”
MSNBC commentator John Heilemann noted that while he believed the lab-leak theory remained a credible possibility, former president Donald Trump deserved the lion’s share of the blame for “politicizing” the matter.
“If you go back to that time, why do people seize on the notion that they’ll reject the lab-leak theory? Because like everything else in COVID, Donald Trump politicized it from day one,” Heilemann argued. “His thing in that first two weeks was ‘kung flu.’ And it was not just that it started in a lab, but then that the Chinese had released it on the world, that it was a bioweapon. This wasn’t a leak.”
However, Maher challenged this view.
“So everybody else has to take his bait like that and double down on stupid?” Maher pushed back.”
When Maher first publicly considered the lab-leak theory in January 2021, media commentators blasted him as a conspiracy theorist in league with Trump’s former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
“The ‘Real Time’ host welcomed a pair of podcast hosts to push the evidence-free conspiracy theory—originated by Steve Bannon—that COVID-19 is man-made and escaped from a lab,” the Daily Beast framed it at the time.
However, Maher’s comments on the heels of an announcement by the U.S. Department of Energy earlier this week that the coronavirus likely leaked out of a virology research lab in China, has seemingly vindicated the comedian’s earlier thoughts.
Maher’s statements follow fellow comedian Jon Stewart’s response to the news after he was condemned for similar comments made on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert arguing that the lab leak theory was a leading culprit.
Asked by host Stephen Colbert whether was “a chance” that Covid-19 leaked out of a lab, Stewart launched into a monologue.
“A chance? Oh my god! There’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do. Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab. The disease is the same name as the lab!”
Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened?’” Stewart joked. “Like, ‘Oh I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean?’ Or it’s the f***ing chocolate factory.”
Today @JonStewart talks to some of our staff about the news that the COVID-19 virus may, in fact, have leaked from a lab in China and what it reveals about the problem with the media narrative machine. Full episode drops Wednesday on @ApplePodcasts pic.twitter.com/tsaLUYzIRl
— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) February 27, 2023
Stewart encountered similar fierce pushback with many arguing the comedian was a racist and a conspiracy theorist.
“The larger problem with all of this is the inability to discuss things that are within the realm of possibility without falling into absolutes and litmus-testing each other for our political allegiances as it arose from that,” the comedian said on The Problem with Jon Stewart this Tuesday.