Bill Maher warns Democrats 'will lose every election' if they don't change their stance on trans issues

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Bill Maher recently clashed with former Barack Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett.

Appearing on the 'Pod Save America' podcast, the 'Real Time' host took on one of the most controversial topics in US politics today—transgender rights, particularly gender-affirming care for minors.

Maher warned that pushing gender-affirming care for children — especially without parental consent — is going to be an unrecoverable misstep for the left.

Bill Maher and Jon Lovett's heated back-and-forth

Bill Maher wasted no time calling out what he sees as a major miscalculation by Democrats—particularly in states like California, where some schools have supported the idea that parents don’t necessarily have to be informed if their child is exploring a gender transition.

"The Democratic position in [California] has been that the school has the right to hide it from the parents," Maher said. "That is not something that’s going to go well with the average voter."

"And the fact that you think, or a lot of people on the left think, that even if you just have this debate, it makes you a bigot, you just have to roll over…that was their position. If you even question this, you're some sort of a bigot," the 69-year-old continued. "And this is new science. And it has to do with children. And it's not going to look good in the future, that position."

Lovett pushed back hard. "But they're also really important surgeries that people get for their heart. And they go wrong and somebody dies and nobody says, we must stop the cardiologists. No one says we must stop the surgeons," he reasoned.

"That’s your analogy?" Maher interrupted.

"We don't get rid of the specific surgery," Lovett continued. "We don't throw out a whole field of medicine. We say, let's make sure we're doing it in a way that's healthy. The science, the research, alright, makes clear that, yes, there are exceptions." 

"Yes, there are people practicing it in ways that maybe go too far, but for the most part, study after study shows that gender-affirming care saves a lot of lives," Lovett argued. 

But Maher brought up a bombshell report from last year revealing that a study on the effects of puberty blockers on children’s mental health had been kept unpublished because researchers feared it would be "weaponized" by critics.

"So in other words, it came out not the way you wanted the study to come out," Maher said. "Not what you said, that ‘Oh, all the studies show that.’ No, it is a mixed bag."

Bill Maher warns Democrats will lose every election if they don't prioritize parental rights

At this point, the debate escalated. Jon Lovett argued that while parental rights are important, there are cases where parents should be left out of the equation.

"Look, we all believe that parents should have the decisions over their children, but we also recognize that some parents do such a bad f***ing job that the kids are in danger," he insisted.

"That happens outside of trans issues. That happens all the time. It's terrible. Some parents are f***ing terrible, but somehow the fact that there are terrible parents in the world gets erased on these questions. Do I think that schools should, but as a baseline, be keeping a secret from parents? Of f***ing course not. No one thinks that. No one thinks that," the former speechwriter added.

"Apparently that's not true," Maher shot back. "People do think that. And there is no perfect answer to this. It's as many knotty questions, the least bad answer—"

"The least bad answer is to not have the government decide from above is just to leave it up to people and parents, then the kids and the doctors. Right? You want the government to ban gender-affirming care for kids?" Lovett fired back.

But Maher had the last word—and it was a warning to Democrats. "You want to lose every election? Just keep coming down on the side of parents coming in second in a ‘who gets to decide what goes on with your kid’ contest," he concluded.