On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated he thinks President Trump is “remaking” the US “into his own, ugly image.” Maher cited as examples the numbers of school shootings and hate crimes and racist public behavior.

Maher began the discussion by asking, “Am I getting too paranoid? Is it really that scary out there, or is it me? Am I having a bad week — or? Because, I tell you, I feel like Trump is winning. I — you know, I feel like he’s remaking this country in his — into his own, ugly image. There have been school shootings before, of course, but we’ve had — this is the 16th this year. That’s the most ever. I read that, November 9th, the day after his election, the most hate crimes recorded that year. You know, he calls immigrants ‘animals.’ I saw…the New York lawyer ranting about [people speaking Spanish] and he says, ‘My next call is to ICE.’ Would someone have even done that five years [ago]?”

Maher later added, “[W]e had shootings before Donald Trump, but I just think if you made a Venn Diagram of Trump and what he’s brought about, and then alt-right types, and then just these, you know, Internet unhappy types that–.”

New York Times Opinion Staff Editor and Writer Bari Weiss, who, earlier in the discussion, criticized Trump for being controlled by the NRA, responded that we don’t want to say that presidents are responsible for mass shootings that happen while they’re in office.

Maher responded that he isn’t arguing that the president is responsible for shootings that take place during their term in office, but Trump is, in the words of columnist Dan Savage earlier in the discussion, a “disinhibitor.” Weiss agreed with this point.

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