He quoted pro boxer boxing star Jake Paul, who wrote on social media after the shooting: “When you try and kill God’s angels and saviors of the world it just makes them bigger.”
That “sounds like something a guy who gets hit in the head for a living would say,” Maher said.
Maher, an outspoken atheist, likened the Republican Party to organized religion and pointed to “images of angels and Jesus protecting Trump” flooding the internet after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Several lawmakers invoked religious rhetoric right after the assassination attempt, which killed one attendee and injured two others. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) praised “the Lord Almighty” after the 20-year-old gunman’s bullet merely grazed Trump. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Fox News that “there were miracles that day.”
Maher reacted to Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) stating that God “doesn’t miss” and purposefully “spared” Trump ― “tell that to John Lennon, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King” ― and called pro-Trump merchandise a form of “demigod worship.”
“Donald Trump, even if you like him, is powerful enough as a past president, a likely future president and, to be perfectly frank, a cult leader,” Maher told his audience. “America doesn’t need a demigod. … It never turns out well.”
“Enough is enough with interpreting every random event as a DM from heaven,” he added.