Bill Maher presses Gov Josh Shapiro on Iran war, asks if 'you would still do nothing?'

15 Mar 2026 By foxnews

Comedian Bill Maher pressed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro Friday over his opposition to U.S. involvement in Iran, challenging the Democrat on what he would do if he were commander in chief and had learned Iran would soon have nuclear weapons.

"Our chief negotiator said they were talking to Iran up until the war started. He said their opening salvo at the negotiations, 'We're a couple of weeks away from having 11 bombs,'" Maher said during the latest installment of "Real Time."

"If you were the president, and you got that information, you would still do nothing?"

Shapiro quickly rejected the notion.

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"No. What I would do and what the president of the United States failed to do was be clear with the American people about what the hell we were doing here," he said.

"Was the plan to go after the nuclear weapons? The weapons, by the way, he said were destroyed … seven months ago. Was the plan to go and do regime change? In which case, who the hell is going to take over? I don't think the son [Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei] is any better than the father. Was the plan to go in there later, but you got forced because Netanyahu forced your hand?

"I think if you don't have clarity about why you're going in, you have no way of knowing how the hell to get out."

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Maher also pushed back on the Pennsylvania Democrat's suggestion that the rationale for the war remains unclear.

"We've lost 13 American soldiers in a war that the American people and, by the way, most of the global community, has no idea why the hell we went there in the first place," Shapiro said.

"I think people have an idea," Maher countered.

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"What was the reason we went in?" Shapiro asked.

"Everything you said - the nukes, regime change and just to reshuffle the deck in the Middle East. Nothing ever really was going to get better until that regime went away," Maher replied, prompting chuckles from the audience.

"But we'll see what happens."

Shapiro noted that he was morally opposed to the Iranian regime's actions that placed Americans in harm's way, stating that he never viewed the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a "good person" and that he is "not shedding a tear" for regime members who were killed.

"[The ayatollah] chanted, for five decades, 'Death to America.' These are people who blew up and killed Americans. These are not good people," he said.

"What I am saying, though, is, if you are the commander in chief, you have a responsibility to the people you send into harm's way, a responsibility to the American people to explain why it is you're doing what you're doing and how the hell you get out of it once the mission is accomplished.

"The president has yet to look the American people in the eye and explain that, and that is a failure of leadership."

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Shapiro's statements but did not immediately hear back.