"Real Time" host Bill Maher offered rare praise to former President Donald Trump as a "politician" for his strong showing among his endorsed candidates in the GOP primaries.
"Eighty-five percent of the people Trump endorsed won: 151 out of 178," Maher said during the panel discussion on Friday night. "Say what you want about Mr. Evil, but boy, what a politician. I mean, that's impressive — in an evil way, but still, impressive."
The HBO star compared Trump's "vow" to take out the 10 GOP lawmakers who voted for his impeachment to a "Tarantino movie," noting he got "eight out of the 10" with four of them quitting while the others were defeated in their primaries.
Maher highlighted how the two pro-impeachment Republicans who survived their primaries did so in open primaries, asking the panel isn't this a "fix" for "much of what ails us" by demanding candidates to appeal to moderate voters.
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Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell suggested it could help while MSNBC contributor Noah Rothman was far more skeptical about its effectiveness to weed out the fringe candidates, noting that one of the pro-impeachment Republicans was defeated in an open primary.
Later on, Maher sounded the alarm on the "election deniers" who won two-thirds of the GOP primaries in battleground states.
"Problem?" Maher asked.
"Yes, absolutely," Rampell responded before pointing to Liz Cheney's primary defeat in Wyoming despite her strong conservative record.
"But do we really think that these people really think that Trump won the election? I don't," Maher said. "I think what they think is, ‘I can’t let these crazy people take over the country. Men can't get pregnant. You can't take over the country.' That's what they think. That's what they think."
He continued: "There's so much of this insanity… going on that they're like, ‘Yeah, I know Donald Trump didn’t win, but you can't take over the country.' That's what's really going on in their head and 'if I have to steal it' — it's a little bit of ‘I have to burn the village to save it,' you know?… I have to destroy democracy to save it, to save America."
"I think that some people are thinking cynically that way, I think there are true believers," Rampbell said.
"There's some… I think most of them live at Mar-a-Lago," Maher quipped.
The power of Trump's endorsement has played a significant role in the GOP primaries with his picks winning in competitive races including Senate candidates like J.D. Vance in Ohio, Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in Arizona.
Trump's candidates in various gubernatorial races also made it over the finish line like Kari Lake in Arizona, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Daniel Cox in Maryland.
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However, one of the biggest defeats among Trump's hand-picked candidates was in the Georgia gubernatorial race where incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp trounced the former president's challenger David Perdue.
Trump has had a longstanding feud against Kemp for certifying President Biden's victory in the Peach State.
Earlier in August, Fox News Digital asked Trump whether he would consider supporting Kemp in the general election against Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.
"Well, we'll be looking at everything," Trump told Fox News Digital.
Kemp suggested he would welcome Trump's endorsement, telling Fox News' Guy Benson, "I want everybody's endorsement going into this Nov. 8 election."
