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Comedian Bill Maher is taking aim at Sen. Rand Paul for what the host says betrays Paul’s own brand.
During Friday’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher accused Paul, R-Ky., of breaking with his libertarian views by releasing Fauci’s pandemic-era diary and threatening to hold him in contempt of Congress. Meanwhile, a public relations expert told Fox News Digital that Paul should focus on why the diary matters rather than how he obtained it.
“Stop threatening to put everyone in jail who you just don’t like,” Maher said more broadly about politics.
“Rand, babe, your entire brand is ‘Senator Right to Privacy,’” he added. “You’re the libertarian guy, the Fourth Amendment guy. It’s your family legacy.”
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Maher’s comments come on the heels of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is led by Paul, voting 8-5 to refer Fauci for contempt after he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Senate hearing regarding his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic last week.
Fauci, who received a preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden last year, exercised his right against self-incrimination a total of 111 times during the hearing while being questioned over his leadership as the White House chief medical adviser during the pandemic.
In the days before the hearing, Paul released more than 1000 pages of Fauci’s private “COVID diaries” — medical notes and personal reflections Fauci wrote and stored on his government computer.
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The move was blasted by Maher, who argued Paul’s decision to publish the documents directly contradicted his longtime political platform of personal privacy and limited government intrusion.
“Your entire political career has been about warning us about government overreach,” Maher said, speaking directly to Paul. “You printing someone’s diary? It’s like [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] wearing a gown that says, ‘Tax the poor.’”
Fauci’s diaries were located and stored on government servers.
Jason Mudd, CEO of Axia Public Relations, told Fox News Digital that the criticism surrounding Paul’s release of Fauci’s private diary is unfounded, while adding he would advise Paul to change approach to explaining why the document is important.
“If Sen. Paul were my client, I’d tell him to stop defending how he got the diary and start defending why it matters,” Mudd said. “A public official’s notes on a government computer aren’t a private citizen’s journal, and that distinction should have been his first sentence, not his fifth.”
Maher’s comments come after he previously made headlines by suggesting that his “vote is in play” after voicing his discontent with the socialist direction the Democratic party is heading.
“Politically, Bill Maher carries resonance with a fairly non-tribal group of viewers. While that means he can often piss off both sides, it also means he can be seen as above the partisan back-and-forth, without a specific left or right agenda,” media expert Kaivan Shroff told Fox News Digital.
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Shroff added that Maher’s words carry more weight when he criticizes both sides of the political spectrum because of his willingness to call out his own party.
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“Maher can spend one week arguing that Democrats have lost the plot and the next saying Republicans have gone too far,” Shroff said. “That gives moments like this outsized significance: when someone who has repeatedly criticized Fauci and the left still looks at what Rand Paul is doing and says it crosses a line, it gives permission to viewers who aren’t particularly sympathetic to Fauci to reach the same conclusion.”
“In a polarized media environment, the messenger can matter as much as the message,” Shroff added.
Fox News Digital reached out to Senator Paul and Dr. Fauci for comment.
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