The comedian said news reports about naval conditions make his \u2018blood boil\u2019<\/p>\n
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Bill Maher took aim at Republican lawmakers after dire reports emerged of conditions aboard a U.S. warship.<\/p>\n
Sailors have said that say life on the USS Abraham Lincoln has grown unbearable after more than eight months at sea in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Concerns have been raised about a lack of food, water contamination and the deteriorating mental health of staff on board.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the latest episode of his talk show Real Time, Maher said: \u201cI\u2019ve used this phrase before, but Republicans, they have this patriotic immunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cThey can do things that are so unpatriotic and they don\u2019t seem to pay a price for it the way a Democrat would. When I hear about troops being on a ship where the toilets aren\u2019t working and there\u2019s not enough food and they\u2019re so morose about this that at least one of them jumped off the ship\u2026 it just makes my blood boil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maher first used the phrase \u201cpatriotic immunity\u201d almost a decade ago, when he suggested in 2017 that Republican politicians can \u201cget away with pretty much anything when it comes to selling out, cursing out or compromising your own country\u201d simply because they profess to be more patriotic than their opponents.<\/p>\n
During this week\u2019s Real Time episode, pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson suggested that issues on the USS Abraham Lincoln stem from service members not feeling like there is \u201cany kind of mission that\u2019s worth fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ship has been deployed to the Middle East to support President Donald Trump\u2019s war with Iran.<\/p>\n
However Maher pushed back at this idea, saying: \u201cI disagree with that. There was a mission worth fighting. We f***ed it up how we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He went on: \u201cIran having a nuclear weapon, Iran being the actor in the Middle East that has f***ed everything up in that region for the last 50 years, changing that dynamic was not an unreasonable thing to try. They did it at the wrong time. They f***ed it up. They should have done it when the people were in the streets. They didn\u2019t and now we\u2019re here where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. military is understood to be preparing to replace the Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployed, according to the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth played down concerns during a trip to Panama on Thursday, saying they were \u201ccompletely misrepresented.\u201d<\/p>\n