Jayme Deerwester

USA TODAY

Don't look now, Ann Coulter, but you've just been usurped as Bill Maher's go-to conservative provocateur guest.

Milo Yiannopoulos made his debut on HBO's Real Time Friday night, appearing at the top of the show in a solo interview and returning later to spar with the host and his three-member guest panel in an online-only "Overtime" segment. (That panel, we should add, was missing frequent guest Jeremy Scahill, who pulled out after learning the Breitbart editor would also be on the show that night, writing, "Whatever one might say about Bill, he always allows guests to challenge or disagree with him. But Milo Yiannopoulous is many bridges too far.")

Maher defended the invitation saying he thought Yiannopoulos was "colossally wrong" on a number of issues. "But if I banned everyone from my show who I thought was colossally wrong, I would be talking to myself."

However, the two do agree on a couple of key issues: the importance of free speech and comedy and their views on Islam. And they've both been banned at Berkeley. ("They just disinvited you," Yiannopolous pointed out. "I had riots.")

They also agreed that "everyone is capable of (expletive) stupid thinking."

"It's a characteristic of the modern left," Yiannopoulos opined, "requiring this absolute consistency. But they're forgetting that people are messy and complicated."

It kind of went downhill from there, though, especially when he joined the rest of the panel: Comedian Larry Wilmore, terrorism expert Malcolm Nance and former Republican Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia.

Yiannpoulous did manage to elicit "Go (expletive) yourself" from two of the three panelists during the 11-minute "Overtime" segment. (Guess which one abstained.)

Here's a roundup of the topics they covered and some of the evening's more memorable quotes.

You remind me of someone ...

"You look like Bruno," Maher said upon meeting the openly gay Yiannapolous, who accessorized his black bomber jacket and camouflage pants with pearls.

Later, after getting a full serving of Milo, he updated his analogy: "You remind me of a young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens," Maher said, comparing him to the late Vanity Fair writer.

Yiannapoulos on why he doesn't hire gay people

"You can't trust them to show up to work on time," he said. "Too much sex, too many drugs, always have excuses. They're not as bad as women, but no, I don't hire gays."

When the audience booed, he pointed at them and said, "You're very easily triggered. It's pathetic."

On mean humor

"I consider myself a virtuous troll," Yiannopoulos said of his sense of humor. "Policing humor for racism and sexism is utterly wrong-headed. That's how we build bridges, not how we break them. When you make jokes, that's how you connect with somebody."

On Leslie Jones

"The one area where I'm a little concerned," Maher cautioned, "is when you go after people individually. If it's in the cause of a greater truth, if people are hurt as collateral damage, I'll go there. But I didn't understand the Ghostbusters thing."

"I wrote a bad review of a movie," Yiannopoulos said. "Am I not entitled to do that? I said she looked like a dude. She does. I said that she was barely literate, which she is. And I simply don't accept that an A-list Hollywood celebrity is sitting at home crying over mean words on the internet."

Ixnay on the Enala UnamDay

"Your side has gone insane," he told Maher, whom he describes as the "only good" liberal. "The Democrats are the party of Lena Dunham. These people are mental. The more Americans see of Lena Dunham, the fewer votes the Democrats will ever get."

Recognizing where his bread is buttered, Maher stopped him right there. "Let's not pick on fellow HBO stars."

So Yiannopoulos went after Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman instead, both of whom Maher said he finds funny.

"These people used to be funny before they contracted feminism," Yiannopoulos noted.

On the alt-right

"Are you the real, true face of the alt-right?" Nance asked Yiannopoulos. "Because I thought there were Nazis in there. How did they take you on board?"

"This was one of the enduring mysteries of American media," the Brit acknowledged. "How can this movement be an anti-Semitic, white supremacist, hateful, bigoted, racist, homophobic movement and gay dude never shuts up about his black boyfriend is the head of it? Something's not quite right."

"Some of them are your fans," Maher said, a point Yiannopoulos took issue with. "They hate me. This is what the media doesn't report. (White supremacist website) The Daily Stormer hates me. They declared holy war against me. The worst people on the very far left and the very far right all hate me."

Wilmore interjected, "I think you're leaving out a lot of people."

"I'm the perfect example of how a human can bring people together," Yiannopoulos laughed.

Hillary vs. Donald

"(Hillary) pandered to gays while taking money from Saudi Arabia," Yiannopoulos declared. "I'll take Russian spies over Saudis any day."

"Are you American?" asked Nance. When Yiannopoulos said he was not, that prompted a "(expletive) off" from Nance.

On transgender people

"I don't have a problem with it," Yiannopoulos said, "but I think that women and girls should be protected from men who are confused about their sexual identities in their bathrooms."

"That's not unreasonable," Maher said.

Larry Wilmore wasn't having it, though: "I just think it's sad because it's the same argument used against gay people, treating them like aliens who just wanted to (expletive) everything that moved and that's why we should avoid them at all costs. There's a difference without a distinction ... It's like when people tried to compare gays and blacks. They're not the same thing. We share an invisibility. People didn't see us in society and gay people hid out from society. But there were a lot of the same issues that you have to deal with when you're marginalized."

"Well (transgender people) are disproportionately involved in those sorts of sex crimes," Yiannopoulos interjected. calling it a "psychiatric disorder" and saying "most gays have a very long road to coming to terms with their sexuality."

"Do you always have to fight with everybody?" Maher asked him.

"No, but you always invite such awful people on your show," Yiannopoulos protested. "You need to start inviting higher IQ guests."

And that promoted "Go (expletive) yourself" No. 1. from Wilmore (He threw in No. 2 for Yiannopoulos' declaration that Leslie Jones was "illiterate.")

Speaking of Wilmore ...

The comedian, who hosted last year's White House Correspondents Dinner, stressed that whoever is offered the job this year should not turn it down: "To go along with the free speech thing, what an opportunity. You have Donald Trump, the president, there. Donald Jung-Eng! You have the opportunity to stand right next to him and do comedy? You're going to give that up?!?"