Maher: If Democrats Run A Campaign on Concentration Camps And Reparations, It Will Be Hard to Win

HBO 'Real Time' host Bill Maher warned Democrats against running a campaign on woke subjects like reparations and concentration camps, saying it will make it very difficult to beat President Donald Trump. "If you want to run a campaign based on reparations and concentration camps then it's going to be very hard to win the election. I'm not saying you can't do it but it would be very hard to argue that this is helping," Maher said on Friday's show. <blockquote>BILL MAHER: It's always easier and more fun to play the purist. You always get the applause for that. I think the people that do the hard work -- Obama was this guy. He got a lot of shit, 'Oh, you're not living up to.' 'No, I was always a centrist. I never said I was a radical leftist.' But he got things done as much as he could, it's art of the possible. DAN SAVAGE: Sometimes he got things done because he was getting shit from the left. The first 16 months, 2 years of the presidency he didn't do anything on LGBT rights. Slow-walked it, didn't want to move on it, and queer activists got in his face, and he was pissed off and then he moved on it because the left yelled at him. MAHER: He had to save the economy first. Could we have some perspective on things? The economy was going off the cliff. He couldn't on the first day: "Most important thing: gay rights." #### MAHER: There was a headline in the 'L.A. Times' about a week ago that said let's call the detention centers what they are, concentration camps. Then AOC came out and said that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps and even invoked the term 'Never Again.' Now, they're horrible places, I think we all agree it's just beyond the pale that America would do this to people, and concentration camps, maybe they fit that definition technically. But there are certain words that we just associate with something truly at the ultimate end of horrendous. Holocaust just means a big fire, but we don't use the word, hey, let’s go have a holocaust, I'll bring the wieners. No one says that... SAVAGE: Andrea Pitzer, who wrote the history of concentration camps, 'One Long Night,' a mass detention people, often political prisoners or persecuted minority groups without trials. MAHER: No, actually, they do get a trial it just is delayed, we wish it would [not] take longer, but they are there to get a trial and they do often get a trial. Come on. When we think of concentration camps, I don't know what you think, I think of mass graves. I think of experimenting on human people. SAVAGE: The concentration camps came first. It was a step on the road to the death camps. And we need to use the language to describe actually what's happening right now. MAHER: You really think we're on the road to death camps? SAVAGE: We're on the road to fascism. MAHER: Wow and people call me an alarmist.... It is technically accurate but it has a connotation that goes far beyond as so many words do... it's so different than what we think about concentration camps.</blockquote>