Bill Maher Said He’d Rather Vote for Sarah Palin Than His Own Party’s Socialist Wing. Only 8 House Democrats Would Say So in Writing.
Bill Maher has spent two decades treating Sarah Palin as a punchline. On the July 31, 2026 episode of Real Time, back from summer hiatus, he used her as the punchline’s opposite — the person he’d pick over his own party’s rising socialist wing.
“Get your head out of your a**, I would vote for Sarah Palin before this s***,” Maher said, closing a nine-minute monologue on the Democratic Socialists of America. “She’s a bimbo, but if you asked her to come up with something she likes about America, she could do it. You betcha.”
- 9 minutes the length of Maher's closing monologue on DSA and the Democratic Party's socialist wing — Twitchy
- 8 of 212 House Democrats willing to put their name on a pledge affirming "we are capitalists, not socialists" — the statistic Maher cited to make his point — Fox News
- 0 public responses from Sarah Palin or the DSA as of publication — Civic Intelligence research
Maher opened by conceding nothing to Donald Trump’s general credibility, then carving out one exception: “Trump has told 1 trillion lies, but when he says the DSA are actually COMMUNISTS, that’s not one of them.” From there he moved to specifics — naming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and House nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier as examples of candidates who’ve talked about “seizing the means of production.”
Bill Maher's audience audibly gasps when he reads what the Democratic Socialists of America are actually saying out loud: MAHER: 'Trump has told 1 trillion lies, but when he says the DSA are actually COMMUNISTS, that's not one of them.'
“It’s so ironic from the people who obsess about colonization,” Maher said. “You know what’s being colonized now? The Democratic Party.”
“Yes, my vote is in play. I'm not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or cheers for the Intifada like it's the World Cup.”
Bill Maher · Real Time with Bill Maher · July 31, 2026
Maher didn’t stop at rhetoric. He cited a specific data point: two House Democrats, Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Adam Gray (D-CA), had circulated a short pledge for colleagues to sign — “We are capitalists, not socialists. We want safety, not lawlessness. We are proud, not ashamed of America.” Out of 212 House Democrats, 8 signed it. “These should not be hard words for a congressional Democrat to sign onto,” Maher said.
That statistic is the load-bearing fact of the whole segment. A comedian’s opinion about DSA is just an opinion; a near-unanimous refusal by House Democrats to sign three uncontroversial sentences about capitalism, lawfulness, and national pride is a number a reader can check.
Sarah Palin has been one of Maher’s favorite targets for nearly two decades — a running bit that long predates this show. Using her as the comparison point, rather than any current Republican, was deliberate: even the punchline, Maher argued, at least loves the country. “She’s a bimbo, but if you asked her to come up with something she likes about America, she could do it. You betcha.”
I'm not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or cheers for the Intifada like it's the World Cup.
The line traveled fast. Conservative clip accounts amplified it within hours, and by Saturday morning it had cleared coverage on Twitchy, Breitbart, Fox News, Mediaite, and regional outlets as far from Hollywood as Alaska — a fitting audience, given the subject.
Twelve days earlier, on July 19, 2026, Maher made a separate but related set of comments in an ABC News interview with Jonathan Karl — saying he wasn’t “living in Communist America” and criticizing what he called “cowardly Democrats.” That was a different broadcast, on a different network, making a related but distinct point. The Sarah Palin line is specific to the July 31 Real Time monologue.
Maher isn’t a pollster, and Real Time isn’t a focus group. But his monologue landed in the same week Democratic strategists have been publicly warning that a socialist-branded wing of the party risks costing it swing seats in 2028 — the same worry Suozzi and Gray’s pledge was written to address, and the same worry that only 8 of their 212 colleagues were willing to put their names on.
Bill Maher spent two decades making Sarah Palin the butt of his jokes. He spent nine minutes on July 31 making her the standard his own party is failing to clear. The joke landed because the receipt was real: two House Democrats wrote three sentences about capitalism and country, and 204 of their colleagues wouldn’t sign their names to them.
