Update with video Bill Maher said forget (more or less) Mars. Using a more potent F word, Maher welcomed Earth Day by devoting his New Rules segment to a lambasting of billionaires, news media and Hollywood for presenting Mars as “the party planet right next door.”
Earlier: “Everyone has to shut up about Mars and how cool it would be to live there,” Maher said, pointing to The Martian with Matt Damon, the space dreams of Elon Musk and Richard Branson, and President Donald Trump’s call for a manned mission to the red planet by 2033.
“If we’re going to overhaul a planet,” Maher said about Trump’s $450 billion proposal, “let’s do this one.”
Maher’s anti-Mars stance wasn’t all jokes: He condemned the “stupid fantasy” of a “reasonable planetary back-up” as a “dangerous idea that our culture is already too taken with – that we can keep on trashing Earth.”
Saying that he’ll “put it in terms simple enough for Steve Doocy to understand,” Maher said, “I’m a big fan of Earth-only attractions, like breathing.”
“You want to explore something cold and hard? How about facts – facts that confirm climate change is killing us but completely do-able policies could reverse it.”
“Stop looking for the Goldilocks planet, this is it,” the Real Time host said, ending the segment by swiping from – and at – Donald Trump. “Make Earth great again,” he said.