\n<\/p>\n
Far-Left Avengers<\/span><\/a> \u2026 assemble!<\/p>\n The Legacy Media is celebrating the return of Strike Force Five. The group, comprised of progressive late-night hosts, originally gathered in 2023 during the protracted Hollywood writers\u2019 strike.<\/p>\n Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Fallon. Stephen Colbert. Seth Meyers. John Oliver. (Jon Stewart hadn\u2019t returned to \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d at that time.)<\/p>\n Except one late-night liberal either lost his invite or never got one in the first place: Bill Maher.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not as if the \u201cReal Time with Bill Maher\u201d host votes differently than that gaggle. Or that Maher doesn\u2019t skewer President Donald Trump on a regular basis.<\/p>\n Boy, does he ever. He still hints that Trump won\u2019t leave office once his second term wraps.<\/p>\n Maher isn\u2019t a cozy fit for the Five comedians despite those similarities. He speaks freely and regularly roasts his own side. And, perhaps most of all, he invites right-leaning guests on his shows for frank talks about everything from culture to politics. Yes, politics.<\/p>\n All of the above makes him a unicorn on the late-night landscape, and a welcome one at that. Maher would be a square peg in a round Strike Force hole.<\/p>\n The progressive Five have become achingly predictable in recent years. The monologues all attack the same subjects \u2013 President Trump, Elon Musk, the right-leaning Supreme Court \u2013 while ignoring the foibles of modern Democrats.<\/p>\n What Rep. Eric Swalwell scandal?<\/p>\n They collectively downplayed or ignored President Joe Biden\u2019s tragic cognitive decline for nearly four years. When Biden short-circuited during that cringeworthy 2024 presidential debate, they finally had to speak a bit of truth to power.<\/p>\n Colbert finally teed off<\/a><\/span> on the 80-something leader a few days after the debate: \u201cBiden debated as well as Abe Lincoln \u2026 if you dug him up right now.\u201d<\/p>\n That came weeks after Colbert headlined a Biden fundraiser and didn\u2019t alert his viewers that the president wasn\u2019t intellectually up to the gig after seeing him up close.<\/p>\n Nor did Kimmel, who was on hand the night President Biden froze at the end of a fundraiser. Former President Barack Obama had to gently guide him offstage.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n In a way, Maher is a more pragmatic Democrat than his peers. He\u2019s spent the last few years warning his party about its extreme points of view, from a reliance on Identity Politics to woke overreach.<\/p>\n He\u2019s argued on more than one occasion that a party that insists trans women can fairly compete against women may be doomed at the ballot box. He made the argument again during a recent sit-down<\/span><\/a> with progressive comic David Cross about Imane Khelif, the male boxer who won a gold medal against female competitors:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n I mean, we saw in the Olympics \u2026 a man, now fighting as a woman boxer just beat the dog s*** out of a woman, the other boxer \u2026 I\u2019m just saying there\u2019s stuff inside the bubble that could be bad.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The \u201cloony Left,\u201d Maher argued, continues to \u201cdie on the hills that are unnecessary to die on,\u201d Maher said. That isn\u2019t just a punchline. It\u2019s a message directed straight at party leaders. Keep it up, and get ready for President JD Vance (or Marco Rubio).<\/p>\n Maher\u2019s mission couldn\u2019t be more obvious. He\u2019s trying to save his party from itself, and he\u2019s dropping smart bomb jokes to nudge that message along.<\/p>\n Strike Force Five members do just the opposite. They ignore their party\u2019s failings and pretend there\u2019s nothing beyond the pale about them to mock. That will ultimately hurt Democrats, who can\u2019t sharpen their rhetorical skills while being coddled by their late-night defenders.<\/p>\n There\u2019s another, more personal reason why Maher would never crack the Five. He\u2019s no fan of their approach to their craft. Last year, he said his late-night peers parrot what\u2019s uttered on MSNBC:<\/span><\/a> \u201c\u2026everybody makes their decisions based on the politics of the art and not the art itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Maher may not be Strike-worthy, but that \u201cAvengers\u201d media label<\/span><\/a> is laughable on three fronts.<\/p>\n One, there\u2019s nothing special about this collection of thinly disguised activists. After all, the current late-night TV landscape appears to be in a death spiral, according to both Kimmel<\/span><\/a> and former late-night superstar David Letterman. The latter comic gives the format another year, at best.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Revenue is way down<\/a><\/span>. So are the ratings, by and large<\/span><\/a>. ABC did re-sign Kimmel late last year \u2026 for a measly one-year extension<\/span><\/a>. And if Colbert got the ax from CBS for reportedly losing the company $40 million a year, how much is Kimmel costing ABC, given the similar format and ratings that consistently follow Colbert\u2019s lead?<\/p>\n Two, they all share essentially the same \u201csuperpowers,\u201d the ability to hit one side and ignore the other. The MCU gang brings wildly different skill sets together for the greater good, be it super strength, the power of flight, or the ability to shrink to the size of an ant.<\/p>\n And three, by ignoring bad actors on the Left and pushing false narratives elsewhere, this group is the furthest thing from \u201cEarth\u2019s Mightiest Heroes.\u201d They\u2019re hurting the country.<\/p>\n Maher, at 70, is the oldest of the late-night bunch, but his late-night future still may be the most secure. He continues to attract both right-leaning guests and fans for his HBO showcase and \u201cClub Random\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n Kimmel may have famously wished \u201cnot good riddance, but riddance\u201d to conservatives, but Maher says, \u201cbring \u2018em on.\u201d<\/p>\n That means Maher isn\u2019t automatically alienating half the country. That\u2019s smart. It\u2019s also his best survival tactic in an increasingly competitive market.<\/p>\n That\u2019s his undeniable superpower.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <\/i>HollywoodInToto.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News\u2019 Big Hollywood.\u00a0He\u2019s also the host of <\/i>The Hollywood in Toto Podcast<\/i><\/span><\/a>. Follow him at <\/i>@HollywoodInToto<\/i><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n