Maher blasted cancel culture and multiple headlines over the years that have placed Damon at the center of controversy. Most recently, the actor was criticized for revealing that his daughter taught him not to use the “f-slur for a homosexual.”
“He is always getting pulled over by the woke police for something,” Maher complained on Friday. “He’s got a woke rap sheet as long as your arm.”
Maher explained during his “New Rules” segment that he believes Damon has been treated unfairly in several instances.
“Why is this guy always in the doghouse with the online hall monitors of righteousness? It is a phenomenon that truly fascinates me that every couple of years, Matt Damon, one of the most likable guys in Hollywood, with impeccable liberal credentials, is again flailing around in cancel culture quicksand. It happened again this month when Damon revealed that he used to use a gay slur,” Maher said.
“I won’t say the word, but it’s the one your teenage son greets his friends with when they meet up at Chipotle. It’s not always meant as a slur, but it’s wrong, yes, of course. And Damon owned up, saying that while coming of age in Boston in the ’70s and ’80s, that word was thrown around without any thought put into it. And now he’s put some thought into it! And he’s going to stop using it,” he continued.
Maher also argued that Damon’s acknowledgment of wrongfully using the slur in the past makes him “woke.”
“OK, he was late to the party, to which we could say, ‘Welcome. Glad you could make it,'” Maher said. “Or we could say, ‘You came later than I did. Die.’ There are too many people in this country who are motivated not by what they really believe but by what will get Twitter to react to them with likes and retweets. That’s called bad faith.”