What did Bill Maher say about September 11 attack? HBO host responds to question about 2001 controversial comments

Comedian and political commentator Bill Maher responds to his nearly twenty-four-year-old comments from 2001 about the tragedy that struck New York City on September 11. On an episode of his podcast Club Random with Bill Maher, released on April 14, guest Winston Marshall of Mumford & Sons asked Maher about his comments that stirred controversy back in 2001.

At the time, Maher, who hosted Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher on ABC, appeared on a September 17, 2001, episode of the show and said,

"We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly…Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, [it’s] not cowardly.”

As per Newsweek, Maher was responding to the then-president, George W. Bush’s comments calling the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, “cowards”.

In the wake of Maher’s comments, his show, Politically Incorrect, lost its sponsors and ultimately went off the air.

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Bill Maher recounts the fallout from his 2001 comments

On Club Random, Marshall asked Maher about his “cancellation” in 2001. Maher responded and addressed his comments, saying

“I was saying they're terrorists, but they're not cowards.”

Marshall attempted to clarify whether Maher had meant his comments as a joke or a “gag”. Maher said,

“No, not at all. It's not a gag today. They stayed with the suicide mission, they're not cowards. Okay, America did not want to hear that.”

When asked how the “cancellation” affected him. Maher responded, saying,

“When the bright hot hot light turns on you it's it's not a good feeling.”

While recounting the consequences of his comments, Maher said,

“You know, first there was that period where we were trying to, you know, get out of it, basically. I remember I had to talk to the first, oh, please don't sue me for this. Or if there's something suable here, just take it out. I don't have the energy.”

The podcast host described his conversations with the show’s sponsors and said,

“But I remember talking to the head guy at FedEx. He was like one of our big sponsors. And they were going to pull out. And we got on the phone, and I've never met him in person, although he did lie to my face over the phone. And I think he's ex-military. And, you know, I have no animosity toward this. I can't remember his name. But he did tell me on that phone call where I was like, ‘please don't pull out.’ Like, hey, ‘I understand exactly what you were saying."

Continuing, Maher said,

“They produced articles from other people and other thinkers who had basically said the same thing. Just, you know, there's not a moral dimension to being brave. You can be brave in the cause of something evil.”

Talking about his show losing sponsors, Maher added,

“Anyway, but that didn't work…And then there was no sponsors. But that period, so we went off the air. We were on for another nine months after this happened. We didn't go off the air till the end of June of the next year...I never was mad at being canceled. I was only mad that they did put out the lie at one point that we lost our audience. We didn't.”

This was not the first time that Bill Maher was addressing his controversial comments about 9/11. In 2024, Maher appeared on CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace when Chris Wallace played a clip from the Politically Incorrect September 17, 2001 episode.

As per the New York Post, Maher told Wallace,

“That wasn’t about the military. [It was about] [w]e as a society.”

At the time, Maher appeared frustrated that his comments were still relevant such long after he had made them. He said,

“First of all, this is so old. Really? That’s of interest still?”

Per the New York Post, when Wallace insisted that the incident was a notable event in Maher’s media career, the latter stood by his comments and said he was:

“telling the truth as I saw it.”

Maher also told Wallace that while Politically Incorrect was ultimately taken off the air, he did not mind it as he approves of the direction his career took after the show. Bill Maher went on to work with HBO and began hosting the show, Real Time with Bill Maher, from 2003 onwards.