“Real Time” host Bill Maher struggled over whether former President Trump should go to jail following this week’s guilty verdict.
“Here’s the key question: is he going to jail? Will this judge dare do that? And should he?” Maher asked during a panel discussion Friday night.
“I mean, I’ve heard some people say if his name wasn’t Donald Trump, he would definitely get jail time. But sending a former American president to jail, I don’t know if that’s something- I’m asking,” Maher continued.
Former Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., responded by predicting Trump won’t go to jail based on Manhattan’s sentencing history of similar crimes.
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod expressed reluctance about sending the presumptive Republican nominee to prison.
“Listen, a lot of people in my tribe don’t like it when I say this, but yeah, I think there is something about jailing a former president, especially on something like this,” Axelrod told Maher. “That is, to me, worrisome for our country. And I would really be shocked if this judge gave him a prison sentence for this.”
‘I mean, MAGA nation will go nuts,” Maher said. “I don’t know if that’s a reason to or not to do something, but they will.”
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The HBO star later fretted that a “civil war” could erupt if Trump was sent to jail, specifically a “race war,” accusing his supporters of being outraged by a Black district attorney and a Hispanic judge who made it happen.
“A civil war in this country, I’m sorry to say, becomes a race war,” Maher said. “That’s the sad truth about this country. And if they put him in jail, I mean, the first thing his supporters are gonna say is, ‘Oh, that’s what it is.’ A Black district attorney. You know, all these people who are the district attorneys, they’re black. The judge was not White. This is what it is.”
On Thursday, Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts against him in the New York trial surrounding falsifying business records. His legal team vows to challenge the verdict.
Trump’s defenders have blasted the guilty verdict, accusing Democrats of using lawfare to try to defeat him in the upcoming November presidential election.
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