Real Time host Bill Maher closed his season premiere on Friday with a scathing takedown of incumbent Rep. John Kline (R-MN), calling on his viewers to help vote him out of office in November.
"More than anyone else we could find, he embodies the easily-swayed whores and sellouts who keep this town running," he told his Washington, D.C. audience.
Maher said that, besides voting against the Affordable Care Act -- 54 times -- as well as stem-cell research, marriage equality and raising the minimum wage, Kline also supported last year's federal government shutdown and was "bought and paid for" by for-profit colleges.
"As the powerful chairman of the Education Committee, Kline has done more to keep twentysomethings in their parents' basements than anyone else alive," Maher argued, adding that 88 percent of students at the University of Phoenix, Kline's biggest supporter, do not graduate.
"That's a worse rate than Celebrity Rehab," he said.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Kline, who is running for re-election in his state's 2nd congressional district, has received $28,000 in campaign contributions from Apollo Education Group, the university's parent company.
Maher said that unlike someone like Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) -- who Maher predicted would one day be "arrested naked masturbating in the street" -- Kline is a "silent threat" voters do not see coming. He also predicted that Kline would dismiss his remarks since he's part of the "Hollywood elite," but that voters should realize the issue is not about him.
"It's about how Americans have had crummy, corrupt representation for so long they've just accepted these people hanging around," he argued. "Except they don't have to. They're your representatives, not your relatives."
Kline is up against Democratic Party candidate Mike Obermueller and a former Democrat, Paula Overby, now representing the Independence Party. Overby is looking to become the state's first trans woman elected to Congress.
Watch Maher's commentary, as posted online on Friday, below.
