Late night host Bill Maher lambasted President Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme as guests agreed the political ploy has not turned around his struggling poll numbers.
The comedian, 68, said the forgiveness plans are particularly offensive to him amid the rampant anti-Israel protests occupying college campuses across the country because he sees them as “support for Jew-hatred.”
“So the university keeps raising tuition, then the kids take out more loans, and then the government comes along and pays those loans,” he said.
‘So my tax dollars support this hatred of Jews? I do not think so.’
Late night host Bill Maher blasted President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program in a blistering attack, saying he sees it as “supporting Jew-hatred” amid anti-Israel protests on college campuses
Biden’s debt cancellation plan is estimated to cost between $870 billion and $1.2 trillion, but has been condemned as a ‘political play’ that has failed to bear fruit
On his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the comic noted that Biden’s student debt cancellation plan is estimated to cost between $870 billion and $1.2 trillion.
The White House redoubled its efforts this week, announcing Wednesday that it is forgiving $6 billion in debt for borrowers who attended the arts institutions between 2004 and 2017.
That brought total forgiveness so far to $160 billion for 4.6 million borrowers ahead of the November election.
Biden’s push to cancel debt is seen by some analysts as an attempt to stem the tide of his declining poll numbers, especially among young voters, where Donald Trump has taken a surprise lead in several polls.
In November, Trump took his first lead over Biden among young voters in an NBC poll, where he led the incumbent’s 46 percent to 42 percent among voters ages 18 to 34.
Maher and his guests, former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway and Bloomberg National Correspondent Joshua Green, agreed that they don’t have high hopes that the debt forgiveness program will work for Biden.
“You can’t have plumbers and pipefitters paying the student loans of doctors and lawyers,” Conway said. ‘It’s not fair.
“I’m all for the government trying to help people who need it, but he did that as a political play, and everyone knows it.”
The disastrous polling news for President Joe Biden continues to pile up, as a new survey shows that his predecessor, Donald Trump, is even beating him in the polls among voters under 35
Biden’s poll numbers have fallen among young voters, with his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas seen as a major reason. Pictured: Student protesters on the NYU campus on April 23, 2024
Groen noted that the tactic “hasn’t worked.”
“If you look at issues that young people care about, Gaza is about 15th out of 16, and the only thing that ranks lower than Gaza is student loan forgiveness,” he said.
“So it hasn’t worked as a motivator for the youth vote, half of whom are chanting ‘Genocide Joe.’ So it has not only backfired, not only in terms of public policy, but also in terms of politics.”
Referring to a recent CNN poll, Maher said, “Yeah, I mean, Trump wins the youth vote by an 11-point lead, I think, which I think is pretty amazing.”
Green said this may be due to the media focusing much more on anti-Israel protests than on issues that could be damaging to Republicans, such as the trial of Donald Trump in New York.
“A big part of what I think about that is if you turn on your TV today, you see young people protesting, being angry, fighting with the police,” Green said.
“All these stories that could potentially be harmful to Republicans helping Joe Biden have been pushed aside because all the attention is on these protesters and these fights, on their behavior, and on the fact that a lot of people don’t do that” I like it not what they see on television.’
Maher and his guests, former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway and Bloomberg National Correspondent Joshua Green, said they say Biden’s student debt cancellation plan won’t reverse his poor polling.
He noted that Biden was “elected to set aside the chaos and devastation of the Trump years,” with Conway saying Trump’s chaos was “in a tweet… now it’s chaos and crisis everywhere we look.”
“At the border, on our college campuses, by the way, in our halls of Congress, 31 Democrats voted against the resolution on October 18 to condemn Hezbollah and Hamas,” she said.
“And the resolution clearly stated, Bill, that they were concerned about institutions of higher learning that enabled sympathy for Hezbollah and Hamas, which our own government, the Biden administration and the Trump administration have declared terrorist groups.
‘They specifically said that it would hurt Jewish students with all that anti-Semitism, make them uncomfortable, if not worse.
‘That was October 18th! Thirty-one Democrats, including the most famous young people, the Squad that doesn’t do squats, for example, all voted against that resolution.’