Bill Maher Cracks Popeyes Chicken Joke With Black Congressman

Early on in Friday’s Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO, Maher, who has gotten in hot water before for those I’m-cool-enough-to-joke-about-racial-stereotypes moments, might have had another one tonight.

During Real Time‘s one-on-one interview segment at the start of tonight’s show, Maher was interviewing Republican Congressman Will Hurd from Texas. Hurd is black, and has disagreed with President Donald Trump on some serious issues – border security and the Wall, for starters.

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Maher pursued a line of questioning with Hurd about the Texan’s rationale for staying in the party of Trump.

“Because they’re not good at the debt, that was their big thing,” Maher said. “They took over the Congress in 2011 and they raised the debt a trillion dollars a year. They’re not good at national defense. And the president’s a traitor. What is in the Republican Party for you? You were in the CIA!”

True enough, responded Hurd. “I was in the CIA for almost a decade. I was the dude in the back alleys at four o’clock in the morning collecting intelligence on threats to the homeland.”

“That’s where you’d collect ’em, huh?,” Maher said, taken aback. “Well, by the Popeyes Chicken?”

Unlike the time Maher used the phrase “house n-word” (only not so tactfully), tonight’s possible gaffe didn’t seem to stun the audience or even Hurd, at least on the surface, and at least till the tweets start. Perhaps Maher was merely trying to suggest an urban setting for a late night alley spy-meet-spy rendezvous, and we’re all being too sensitive.

But Popeyes Chicken, Bill? Popeyes Chicken?

Check out the remark above and see what you think. It arrives about 4:30 into the conversation.

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