Bill Maher And Michael Moores Fiery Debate Leads To Hawaii Trip Bet Won By…

Bill Maher and Michael Moore got in a heated exchange Friday night on HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher and eventually made a pricey on-air bet — the stakes: a trip to Hawaii — over a factual dispute. And, as it turns out, Maher will be footing the bill for Moores upcoming luau.

The conversation started friendly enough with Maher (known for taking people to task for their weight) complimenting the slimmed-down Oscar-winning filmmaker for looking “svelte.” The first topic they tackled was the viability of capitalism vs socialism as far as the best direction for the Democratic Party in the primaries ahead and beyond.

“I dont really agree that we should junk capitalism,” Maher said as an opener.

“The old capitalism is gone and the new capitalism is a cruel and evil system, Bill,” Moore said. “It cant be fixed. Its too late. Weve gone too far. Weve almost virtually destroyed the middle class, the one that you and I grew up in. Thats gone. What is socialism? To me socialism is everybody has a seat at the table and everybody gets a slice of the pie. We have to believe in that if its a democracy.”

Moore praised Maher for being “ahead of the curve for some many years” on issues such as climate change and marijuana legalization but then challenged him by asking “why pull back now” on socialism. Maher, citing the need of the Democrats to win the White House, said “the country isnt there” on the embrace of socialism. Maher chided Moore for “lumping a lot of vague shit together.”

Moore agreed that the stakes are high: “If the election were tonight, Trump would win. You have to respect the evil genius of this guy.” But he said the change is in the air. “We live in a liberal country. The majority of Americans agree with us on minimum wage, mass incarceration, womens rights, pro-choice. They are with us right now. Why not take the moment when we are in power and use it in this election?”

The pair went round and round about the vagaries of generational politics, opinion polls, and health care. The tenor of the exchange ticked up a few degrees, however, over the past, not the future: Maher said the Barack Obama won as “a centrist” and Moore countered that the two-term president ran as a populist. “No he didnt,” Maher said tersely.

Moore recounted the fact that when he went into the voting booth in 2008 that the name on the ballot was Barack Hussian Obama — suggesting that the choice of the including the candidates middlRead More – Source