'Let’s encourage Republicans when they do something close to good,' Maher says. Maher credits Rand Paul on drones

Bill Maher is commending Sen. Rand Paul for his filibuster, saying Paul got a national conversation started about why the military is “droning everybody.”

“Let’s encourage Republicans when they do something close to good,” Maher said Friday on his HBO program “Real Time.” “He got us talking about it…. Why are we doing this? Why are we droning everybody?”


Maher seemed split on his own position of drone use, suggesting first that it was perhaps hypocritical of Paul to only take issue with domestic drone use and not drones used overseas but later seeming to understand why presidents use drones.

(WATCH: Rand Paul filibusters CIA nomination)

“Rand Paul’s thing about, ‘I have to have this answer whether Obama can kill Americans on American soil,’ every time somebody – who I’m sure is a very proud Christian – talks about how they can’t do it to Americans, but foreigners? F—- them,” Maher said.

He added: “You know, there’s a real world going on where drones actually kill people every day, but f—- them we don’t care about them because they’re not Americans. That just doesn’t seem like the attitude that Jesus would take.”

But Maher then told panelist Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, that he understands why President Barack Obama and other presidents want to use drones.

“Once you get to be president, they take you into a little room and they tell you about all the bad guys in the world that you and I don’t know about. And that is your chief job – to protect people. I know it’s bad and we do bad things, but it’s a bad world,” Maher said.

Earlier in the week, Paul filibustered for nearly 13-hours in an effort to get the Obama administration to clarify whether it could use drones domestically against Americans, which the White House then clarified it would not.