Bill Maher: Eastwood 'killed' it

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Bill Maher isn’t among those panning Clint Eastwood’s speech delivery at the Republican National Convention.

On his HBO show on Friday, Maher gave the actor “props” for pretending that President Obama was sitting in an empty chair next to him onstage.

(ALSO on POLITICO: Ann Romney: Eastwood 'unique')

“As a performer, as a stand-up comedian for 30 years who knows how hard it is to get laughs, excuse me, he went up there … without a net, on a tightrope. There was no teleprompter. He did a bit with just an empty chair and killed,” Maher said. “He committed to it, it was consistent and it worked.”

“People have been saying for years: these conventions are too scripted, they’re too slick, they’re too overproduced,” he added. “A guy who went up there who wasn’t slick … and killed with the crowd? I gotta give him props for that.”

(PHOTOS: Eastwood gets political)

Still, the comedian – who gave a million dollars to a pro-Obama Super PAC earlier this year – totally disagreed with what Eastwood said in the speech.

“I knew he was a Republican,” Maher said. “But I thought [he was] kind of an old-school, reasonable Republican. I had no idea he was such a down the line, right-wing a---hole.”

(h/t Mediaite)