Bill Maher said on Friday that he agrees with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s new campaign slogan, "Jeb Can Fix It" -- but not for a reason the GOP contender will like.
"His new slogan is 'Jeb Can Fix It,'" Maher said during his opening monologue on HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher." "Well, if you don’t think Jeb can fix things, remember the election in Florida in 2000? He can fix things."
Maher was referring to that year's presidential election, which George W. Bush won thanks to a razor-thin margin of victory in Florida over then-Vice President Al Gore. The win came after a controversial vote recount that lasted weeks.
Many Democrats maintain that the outcome in the state was the result of foul play by Florida’s government, which was at the time under the leadership of Jeb, George W. Bush’s brother.
The governor, among other things, purged 58,000 people from the voting rolls -- a disproportionate number of whom were African-American -- to purportedly root out ex-felons. Florida was one of eight states that barred ex-felons from voting at the time. But as Ari Berman reported in The Nation, the list of purged voters was riddled with errors, which led to the wrongful disenfranchisement of 12,000 Floridians.
The "Jeb Can Fix It" slogan is part of a Bush campaign reboot, and has been the subject of widespread mockery since its introduction last week. A search for #JebCanFixIt on Twitter turns up mostly taunting quips from Bush's critics.
Even the conservative National Review got in on the act.
The Bush campaign neglected to register the domain name jebcanfixit.com. Instead, Jimmy Flannigan, who ran for Austin, Texas, city council in 2014 using the slogan "Flannigan Can Fix It," bought it to poke fun at Bush.
In his monologue, Maher also used news about positive job growth in October to whack the candidate.
"Now, this doesn’t mean everyone is working," he said. "But if you are a college-educated white man and you still can’t get hired, your name is Jeb Bush."
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