Even Bill Maher didn’t see this one coming.
The left keeps finding new ways to alienate ordinary Americans, and now a former network news anchor laid out one of the most telling examples yet.
And when Brian Williams told Maher what some on the left actually think about football, Maher couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
The Moment Maher Got Caught Flat-Footed
Bill Maher had ex-NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on his Club Random podcast recently, and the conversation took a turn that left the veteran comic genuinely stunned.
Williams brought up the NFL as a prime example of how Democrats have lost touch with regular Americans. Specifically, he told Maher that some on the left have turned against professional football, viewing it as a symbol of toxic masculinity.
Maher’s reaction was immediate. “That one I have not heard!” he said. “Who thinks liberals are against the NFL?”
Williams clarified he was channeling the warnings of Democrat strategist James Carville, who said in 2024 that the overall message coming from the Democrat Party had become “too feminine.” Carville’s now-famous breakdown of that message: “Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.”
Williams framed the anti-NFL posture this way: “This is one of Carville’s harangues — they’re anti-NFL because of toxic masculinity, they’re anti-meat because the cows that supply the meat fart all day and that’s giving us methane.”
Maher laughed at the methane bit, but the football piece genuinely threw him. He pushed back on the premise almost immediately, landing squarely on a personal-freedom argument. If NFL players choose to play knowing the physical risks, he said, there’s nothing to complain about.
“I’ve watched these games. These players are happy. This is their happy place when it goes well,” Maher said. “Yes, it breaks your bones. As an adult, you have to have the right to say, ‘I get it, this could f*** me up. Later in life, it will not be as good. I don’t care. That’s my choice.'”
That’s actually a reasonable position. Consenting adults making their own decisions about risk is exactly the kind of thing the left used to claim it cared about.
Thanksgiving, Football, and the Pattern Nobody Can Ignore
The two got onto the NFL topic after agreeing that some Democrats have done real damage to themselves by going after Thanksgiving. They pointed to failed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong as a textbook example.
Hong, a socialist state representative who narrowly lost the Democrat primary for governor of Wisconsin, went viral after an old social media post surfaced in which she called for canceling Thanksgiving, describing the holiday as a celebration of colonialism and “the original superspreader event.” She initially refused to clearly walk back the post, then eventually told Politico that Thanksgiving was actually her favorite holiday.
Maher had already called out Hong’s Thanksgiving flip-flop separately, saying: “I don’t believe you people who renounce things. We know what you said. You mean it, live by it.”
But here’s the thing. Hong’s implosion over Thanksgiving and the left’s hostility toward the NFL aren’t random, disconnected moments. They’re part of the same pattern Carville has been screaming about for years. The Democrat Party has spent years telling working Americans that their food, their sports, their holidays, and their lifestyle choices are morally suspect. And then party leaders act baffled when those same Americans walk away.
A 2023 Ipsos survey found 44% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans identified as NFL fans. The gap is essentially nonexistent. The idea that opposition to football reflects some kind of mainstream Democrat sentiment is, as Maher put it, something he had never seen. And yet the cultural signals coming from the activist left wing of the party have been loud enough that Carville felt compelled to issue a public warning about it.
The conversation between Maher and Williams also touched on the New York Giants, the team both men root for. Williams said the Giants have endured an “elite level” of suffering as fans. Maher pushed back, noting the franchise has won three Super Bowls, including one he attended with his father in 1987.
What This Actually Tells You About Where the Left Is Headed
Carville has been sounding this alarm for a while now. His 2024 comments about the Democrat message being “too feminine” caused a firestorm inside his own party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a shot at him on social media. The progressive base treated his critique as the ramblings of an out-of-touch old man.
But the voters delivered the verdict. Trump won in 2024 in a landslide, carrying working-class men by margins that would have been unthinkable in earlier cycles. The very demographic Carville was worried about losing walked out the door.
And now here’s Bill Maher, a man who has spent decades in left-wing entertainment circles, genuinely surprised to learn that some in his ideological orbit have a problem with professional football. That’s not a small thing. Maher is plugged in. He talks to these people constantly. If the anti-NFL sentiment has grown loud enough that a former NBC anchor is citing it as a defining example of Democrat cultural alienation, it’s not fringe anymore.
The woke left’s instinct is to treat every American pastime as a vehicle for political grievance. Football is violent, so it’s toxic masculinity. Thanksgiving is a colonial holiday. Hamburgers are killing the planet. Beer is probably next. Every pleasure that ordinary working Americans enjoy gets filtered through an ideological lens that finds something to condemn.
And the people doing the condemning are genuinely baffled when the voters they need decide they’ve had enough.
Maher at least has the self-awareness to notice when the left has gone somewhere that regular people won’t follow. That’s more than can be said for the activist base that cheered Hong’s Thanksgiving posts before she crashed out of a race she was heavily favored to win.
But noticing the problem and fixing it are two different things. Carville noticed it in 2024. The party didn’t listen. Hong ran on a platform that included publicly owned grocery stores and called for canceling the country’s most beloved family holiday. She came within a few thousand votes of becoming the Democrat nominee for governor of a major swing state.
The left’s problem isn’t that it hasn’t been warned. It’s that the people doing the warning keep getting dismissed by the very faction driving the voters away. And until that changes, expect more moments like the one on Club Random, where even a lifelong liberal is sitting across from a former network anchor, hearing about his own side’s politics, and saying he never saw that coming.
Sources: Mediaite, “‘I Never Saw That!’ Bill Maher Stunned When Brian Williams Tells Him Leftists Oppose Football”; TV Insider, “Bill Maher Shocked by NFL ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Claim”; Townhall, “Brian Williams Reminded Bill Maher What His Last Guest Said About COVID Vaccines”; Audacy/WWL, “James Carville said Dems have a ‘preachy females’ problem”; Washington Times, “Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor backtracks on hatred of Thanksgiving”; Forbes, “Socialist Francesca Hong Narrowly Loses Wisconsin Gubernatorial Primary After ‘Cancel Thanksgiving’ Controversy”; Washington Times, “Bill Maher mocks Francesca Hong’s Thanksgiving flip-flop”