Bill Maher lashes out at Chris Wallace for questioning him over shock terrorism allegation that led to his show being canceled

By Isabelle Stanley for Dailymail.Com

15:26 03 June 2024, updated 18:04 03 June 2024

• Chris Wallace interviewed Maher for this week’s edition of his show
• He played a clip from 2001 in which Maher made controversial comments about 9/11.

CNN anchor Chris Wallace questioned comedian Bill Maher in a tense confrontation over comments he made days after 9/11 in which he said terrorists were ‘not cowards’ .

Wallace interviewed Maher for this week’s edition of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, discussing his politics, his career and his new book.

Citing “the biggest controversy of your career” – which resulted in the cancellation of Maher’s show Politically Incorrect – Wallace played a 2001 clip of the comic commenting on terrorist attacks.

Maher was visibly annoyed to see the clip replayed and lashed out at Wallace: “It’s so old. Really? Is it still interesting?

But Wallace didn’t back down and asked, “Were you just trying to go against the grain?”

Discussing Maher’s long career, Wallace brought up his former show, Politically Incorrect, which Maher launched in 1993.

Wallace said: “Years later, the biggest controversy of your career, where, a few days after 9/11, you made some sort of comparison between the U.S. military and the Al-Qaeda hijackers. Qaeda.”

Maher, frustrated, interrupted to say “not the U.S. military.”

Wallace then began playing the clip, filmed days after 9/11, in which a young Maher gestures to himself and says, “We were cowards, launching missiles 2,000 miles away.” Is loose.

“Stay on the plane when it hits the building, say what you want, no cowardice.”

Once the clip ended, Maher tersely stated that it wasn’t about the military, I said us. We, as a society.

He then said: “First of all, it’s so old. Really? Is it still interesting?

Wallace replied, “Well, yes. I mean, we’re talking about your career. We are talking about 20 years. Let me just ask you this question and then we’ll move on.

“Looking back, were you just trying to go against the grain?

Maher replied: “Of course not, I agreed with someone who said that. You skipped this part. Someone said that the people who completed the mission may have been evil, but they weren’t cowards, which I don’t think is even controversial. Stick to the suicide mission – uh, not cowardly.

Wallace then asked if Maher regretted saying it, to which Wallace responded that he regretted saying it “that night.”

He added: “It probably was, it was six days after 9/11 and the country wasn’t ready to hear the truth.

“I mean,” George Bush said, “the cowards, uh, the terrorists win, unless we go back to what we were doing.”

“So I went back to doing what I was doing, which was telling the truth as I saw it. We have never lost an audience. We never lost the audience. What we lost were the sponsors.

A few months after the controversial comments, Maher’s show was canceled.

Speaking to Wallace, he said: “They definitely canceled us. And I’m glad they did, because I ended up in a much better place.