Bill Maher takes credit for conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos' downfall: 'You're welcome'
Last week, Maher came under fire for booking Yiannopoulos on his HBO political talk show, "Real Time." Frequent "Real Time" guest Jeremy Scahill, journalist and founder of the Intercept, canceled his appearance on the same episode in protest.
"What I think people saw was an emotionally needy Ann Coulter wannabe, trying to make a buck off of the left's propensity for outrage," Maher told the New York Times on Tuesday of his interview with Yiannopoulos.
"And by the end of the weekend, by dinnertime Monday, he's dropped as a speaker at CPAC," he continued. "Then he's dropped by Breitbart, and his book deal falls through. As I say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. You're welcome."
Over the weekend, a 2016 interview with Yiannopoulos resurfaced and sparked new outrage. In it, he made comments appearing to condone sexual relations "between younger boys and older men." The fallout included the journalist being disinvited from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Simon & Schuster's decision to pull out of a planned book deal, and Yiannopoulos' resignation as senior editor from Breitbart News on Tuesday.
Though Maher took credit for Yiannopoulos' fall from grace, he told the Times that he didn't intend on ruining his guest - no matter how much he disagrees with Yiannopoulos' opinions.
"I wasn't trying to get him removed from society," the host said. "I'm somebody who, many times, people have tried to make go away... It just rubs me the wrong way when somebody says, 'I don't like what this person is saying - he should go away.'"
As for critiques that he went too easy on the controversial guest, Maher said, "It's not my job to hold him accountable to everything he's ever said or done. I had eight minutes with him, on the show itself. Sorry I don't have time to go over everything everybody else would want to do. We just had time to, sort of, start a discussion of the broad view of who he is."