Comedian and political commentator Bill Maher took aim at Donald Trump supporters who credit God with saving the president during the July 2024 assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
On Sunday’s episode of the Club Random podcast, Maher questioned his guest, actor Esai Morales, on why God would spare Trump, but not Corey Comperatore, a Trump supporter and former firefighter who was killed in the incident.
“I’m religious, but I’m not religious. You know what I mean?” Morales said. “And people go, oh, I’m spiritual as a fad, but I just know something, somebody out there in here all around loves me enough that has not allowed me to destroy myself.”
“But what do you say to the person who gets eaten, that why didn’t the God love him?” Maher asked. “ You know what I mean? What about all the people who have the s****y outcome?”
“A very good point,” Morales admitted.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired an AR-15 rifle at Trump from a rooftop during the Butler rally on July 13. He injured Trump’s ear and killed Comperatore while also wounding two others. Crooks was shot and killed by a member of the Secret Service Counter Sniper Team shortly after the attack.
On the podcast, Maher dismissed claims that the Trump assassination attempt was staged. Morales admitted he briefly wondered if it might have been staged because Trump fell and then quickly got back up.
“Yeah, but OK, a bullet did go,” Maher said. “That’s my point. It couldn’t have been staged. And, you know, people say, ‘God saved Trump.’ Where was the God for the other guy?”
This isn’t the first time Maher shared his opinions on Trump’s assassination attempt. A few hours after the shooting, Maher posted a video from a Minnesota stage, stating he would not make jokes about the incident.
“I unequivocally denounce [the shooting], I don’t care what you think about that. Not funny,” he said at the time, “I’m sure that there will be jokes that people will make because they hate him so much that they wished it went he other way. Not for me.”
Maher went on to call Trump “the luckiest motherf***er that has ever walked the face of the Earth,” and wrongly assumed the then-unidentified shooter was a liberal before any motive was confirmed.
“Whoever did this, the shooter has done so much damage to the left,” Maher said. “[The left] has lost a lot moral high ground in the ‘you’re the violent people’ and the ‘liberals don’t shoot people, liberals don’t solve it that way.’”
Before the shooting, Crooks had searched for information on Trump, Joe Biden, and other public figures, as well as gun-related websites. His parents had reported him missing hours before the rally. Investigations revealed bomb-making materials in his vehicle and home, and a remote detonator was found on his body.
But a month after the shooting, Maher found the humor in the assassination attempt, calling it “one of my favorite days from 2024.”
“It’d be different if he [Trump] got killed. No tragedy happened — well, for one guy,” Maher said about Comperatore on Matt Friend’s podcast Friend In High Places.
“A guy shoots at Trump, the guy behind him gets shot and killed — that’s so Trump,” Maher continued. “It’s just so, it’s just so on brand to have the other guy …. he never goes to jail. He never loses money in bankruptcy. It’s always somebody else holding the bullet or the bag.”
