The panel discussion on Friday's edition of Real Time focused on the impeachment inquiry; with a specific emphasis on the events leading up to it. Host Bill Maher and the panel sent much of the conversation defending the "deep state." Conservative panelist Dennis Prager asked Maher "you think he's a fascist?" Maher responded: "I think he wants to be...the number of things he's done that are exactly what third world fascist leaders...do, like talking about locking people up who are your political opponents, that's not fascist?" Former Time editor Richard Stengel, who made his contempt for the First Amendment perfectly clear in a Washington Post op-ed earlier in the week, also defended the deep state as "people who deeply believe in the state, who take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution." Stengel continued: "they will not betray the public trust, unlike the President of the United States who betrays it every day."
