HOLLYWEED ITS A MOVEMENT

Desperation or Relevance? Marc Maron Takes Aim at Bill Maher’s Cannabis Crusade

By Michael Levin

Bill Maher wants you to believe he’s still shaping the national conversation. The 69-year-old Real Time host has lately been boasting that his chats with Donald Trump yes, those White House dinners helped nudge the former president toward reclassifying cannabis. But not everyone’s impressed.

Marc Maron, Maher’s fellow comic and podcaster, isn’t pulling punches. On Jon Lovitz’s Pod Save America, Maron dismissed Maher’s latest moves as “desperate chasing of relevance,” adding that it makes everything Maher touches feel strained.

The sting was sharper when Maron zeroed in on Maher’s anti-“wokeness” crusade. “It’s just not for me,” he said. “I can’t see past the desperation in what he’s willing to do to stay in the conversation.”

Maher, meanwhile, is leaning hard into the cannabis issue. Since his springtime Trump sit-down, he’s been spinning himself as the guy who saw this coming. “I’ve been telling Democrats for years that Republicans are going to steal pot from you as an issue,” he told viewers on a recent episode. He argues that Trump, master of niche voter blocs, could seize marijuana reform as a winning wedge.

For Maher, Schedule III reclassification or even full descheduling isn’t just policy talk. It’s proof that he’s still at the center of the cultural storm. Critics say otherwise. Maron insists Maher’s tone has always been the problem, and progressives who once flocked to Real Time have been bailing as Maher drifts toward the political middle. Conservatives, meanwhile, have happily filled the gap.

Maher defends himself with a shrug: “The left has gotten goofier,” he told Joe Rogan in 2022. “So, I seem more conservative maybe, but it’s not me who changed.”

Maron, by contrast, is wrapping up a banner year on his own terms. He’ll end his long-running WTF podcast in December, but not before dropping an HBO special (Panicked), landing a Hollywood Reporter cover, and co-starring with Owen Wilson in Apple TV+’s golf comedy Stick.

Two podcasters. Two comedians. Two men in their sixties wrestling with relevance in very different ways. For Maher, it’s about staying inside the political tent even if that means dinner with Trump. For Maron, it’s about calling bullshit when he smells it.