why though

Bill Maher Blames Trump’s Election On, You Guessed It, the Work of Late Comic Book Legend Stan Lee

Bill Maher. Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for PETA

Today in Arguments That Probably Could Have Waited A Week, Bill Maher is coming hard for the real reason Donald Trump got elected in 2016: comic book creator Stan Lee, who passed away on Monday. While most people would have put a pin in their political Stan Lee op-eds for a hot second, Maher is of the belief that the success of Lee’s Marvel Comics legacy has effectively hindered the minds of the American voters and, as a result of that impediment, resulted in a Trump presidency. And right at the beginning of the weekend, no less!

“The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning,” the Real Time host wrote on the show’s blog. “Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess.”

“But then twenty years or so ago, something happened — adults decided they didn’t have to give up kid stuff,” he explains. “And so they pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature. And because America has over 4,500 colleges — which means we need more professors than we have smart people — some dumb people got to be professors by writing theses with titles like Otherness and Heterodoxy in the Silver Surfer.”

Now, how, exactly, it’s Stan Lee’s fault that people liked his comic books so much, their brains stopped developing (honestly, a super power in its own right) is unclear. But, and you probably saw this one coming, there is one inevitable conclusion of our grand national stunting, says Maher: “I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important.”

Bill Maher Blames Trump’s Election on the Legacy of Stan Lee