Bill Maher couldn’t pronounce her name. That didn’t stop him from having a lot to say about her.
In a clip from his Club Random podcast that’s now tearing across social media, the late-night host sits across from comedian Andrew Schulz, drink in hand, and lays it out plainly. “Whatever it is, I don’t like her,” he says of Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman. Then comes the line that, nearly a year later, would take on a new life: “Is she a representative of America or Palestine?”
Schulz doesn’t flinch. He nods along, sips his drink, and the two keep rolling — Maher tossing out the unproven claim that Omar “married her brother” like it’s a throwaway punchline, Schulz riffing on it without missing a beat. The whole exchange lasts barely a minute. It has the energy of two guys at a bar who’ve had one too many and forgot the mic was on.
Except the mic is always on. And nearly a year later, hundreds of thousands of people just hit play.
pic.twitter.com/pDglhLAmLV
💥Bill Maher on Ilhan Omar: “I don’t like her. Is she a representative of America or Palestine? … she married her brother.”— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) February 26, 2026
The week that brought the clip back from the dead
The conversation originally aired in March 2025. It didn’t make much noise at the time. But then Tuesday night happened.
Omar leaned forward in her seat in the House chamber during President Trump’s State of the Union address and shouted “You are a murderer!” and “You’re a liar!” Trump had just referred to Minnesota’s Somali community as “pirates” who had “ransacked” the state. Omar — the only Somali American in Congress, representing the district where federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens during immigration raids last month — wasn’t about to sit quietly through that.
The moment turned her into one of the most talked-about politician in America overnight. And the next morning, Trump made sure she stayed there. He took to Truth Social to say Omar and Rashida Tlaib had “the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people” and should be sent “back from where they came.” Tlaib was born in Detroit. Omar has been an American citizen for over two decades.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, the clip was posted on X by Daily Caller reporter Jason Cohen. It hit 333,000 views fast. But it was Mehdi Hasan who turned it into a conversation nobody could walk away from.
One hypothetical that changed the entire debate
“Difficult to describe how racist Bill Maher is,” Hasan wrote, quote-tweeting the clip. Then he posed a simple thought experiment: “Imagine him saying, about a Jewish congresswoman, ‘Is she a representative of America or Israel?’ Maher would be the first to scream antisemitism.”
Difficult to describe how racist Bill Maher is.
Imagine him saying, about a Jewish congresswoman, ‘Is she a representative of America or Israel?’ Maher would be the first to scream antisemitism. https://t.co/euOXlsmsqj
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 26, 2026
That post blew past 211,000 views in four hours. Twelve thousand likes. Over a thousand retweets. And the reason it spread so fast is because the hypothetical is almost impossible to argue with. Questioning whether an American lawmaker’s true allegiance lies with a foreign country is one of the oldest smears in the book. When it’s aimed at Jewish Americans, there’s a word for it. When Maher aimed it at a Muslim congresswoman from Somalia, he did it between sips of whiskey and moved on to the next topic.
And here’s the part Maher probably hopes you forgot
Back in 2019, Omar caught heat for comments about AIPAC that many called antisemitic. And who came to her defense? Bill Maher. Right there on Real Time, he told his audience he didn’t understand why her Israel criticism had to be seen as antisemitic. “If I criticize Saudi Arabia, that doesn’t mean I’m an Islamophobe,” he said.
He walked it back weeks later, saying after reading more of her tweets that she “might be” antisemitic. But the original instinct was clear — he recognized that questioning someone’s loyalty based on their background was a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
Then he crossed it himself.
A year-old clip in a brand-new spotlight
The clip is from March 2025. Maher meant every word when he said it, and there’s no reason to believe he feels any differently now. Schulz laughed along then and hasn’t said a word about it since.
But context has a way of changing everything. A year ago, Omar was just another congresswoman Maher didn’t like. This week, she’s the woman who leaned forward in her seat on national television and called the president a murderer to his face — then went on CNN the next morning and said she’d do it again.
That’s the version of Ilhan Omar this clip is now sitting next to. And for a lot of people seeing it for the first time, Maher either had a point or didn’t.