Rick Santorum and Bill Maher don’t agree on much. But the two managed to find some common ground during a surprisingly chummy interview Friday night on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.”
The Republican presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania senator, among the most socially conservative in the crowded GOP field, laughed and joked with the famously irreverent Maher, who abhors religion, even as the TV host dropped a few curse words and outright dismissed some of the White House hopeful’s arguments.
On climate change, Santorum and Maher came nowhere close to an agreement, with both citing conflicting studies on the impact of carbon emissions. Maher appeared to point toward the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, stating with 95% certainty that humans were the main cause of the current global warming. Santorum, meanwhile, cited a survey of 1,800 scientists that found 57% believed other factors were more important than man-made CO2.
“Rick, I don’t know what ass you’re pulling that out of,” Maher said.
Yet amazingly on contraception, the two seemed to find harmony. Santorum sighed when Maher brought up a 2011 interview in which the former senator said contraception was “not okay” -- a position Maher said “crossed the line.” In hindsight, however, Santorum said he wished he had not given that interview.
“Never once did I say we should ban contraception or stop contraception,” Santorum said. “There’s a lot of things that are immoral, like for example Ashley Madison, that shouldn’t be illegal.”
“But you think premarital sex is immoral,” Maher pushed back.
“I do,” Santorum conceded, “but I don’t think it should be illegal.”
“Then we’re good,” Maher said to applause. “Then that’s in the past.”