Strike Force Five Minus Maher

Far-Left Avengers … assemble!

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’ strike.

Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Fallon. Stephen Colbert. Seth Meyers. John Oliver. (Jon Stewart hadn’t returned to “The Daily Show” at that time.)

Except one late-night liberal either lost his invite or never got one in the first place: Bill Maher.

It’s not as if the “Real Time with Bill Maher” host votes differently than that gaggle. Or that Maher doesn’t skewer President Donald Trump on a regular basis.

Boy, does he ever. He still hints that Trump won’t leave office once his second term wraps.

Maher isn’t 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.

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.

The progressive Five have become achingly predictable in recent years. The monologues all attack the same subjects – President Trump, Elon Musk, the right-leaning Supreme Court – while ignoring the foibles of modern Democrats.

What Rep. Eric Swalwell scandal?

They collectively downplayed or ignored President Joe Biden’s 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.

Colbert finally teed off on the 80-something leader a few days after the debate: “Biden debated as well as Abe Lincoln … if you dug him up right now.”

That came weeks after Colbert headlined a Biden fundraiser and didn’t alert his viewers that the president wasn’t intellectually up to the gig after seeing him up close.

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.

In a way, Maher is a more pragmatic Democrat than his peers. He’s spent the last few years warning his party about its extreme points of view, from a reliance on Identity Politics to woke overreach.

He’s 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 with progressive comic David Cross about Imane Khelif, the male boxer who won a gold medal against female competitors:

I mean, we saw in the Olympics … a man, now fighting as a woman boxer just beat the dog s*** out of a woman, the other boxer … I’m just saying there’s stuff inside the bubble that could be bad.

The “loony Left,” Maher argued, continues to “die on the hills that are unnecessary to die on,” Maher said. That isn’t just a punchline. It’s a message directed straight at party leaders. Keep it up, and get ready for President JD Vance (or Marco Rubio).

Maher’s mission couldn’t be more obvious. He’s trying to save his party from itself, and he’s dropping smart bomb jokes to nudge that message along.

Strike Force Five members do just the opposite. They ignore their party’s failings and pretend there’s nothing beyond the pale about them to mock. That will ultimately hurt Democrats, who can’t sharpen their rhetorical skills while being coddled by their late-night defenders.

There’s another, more personal reason why Maher would never crack the Five. He’s no fan of their approach to their craft. Last year, he said his late-night peers parrot what’s uttered on MSNBC: “…everybody makes their decisions based on the politics of the art and not the art itself.”

Maher may not be Strike-worthy, but that “Avengers” media label is laughable on three fronts.

One, there’s 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 and former late-night superstar David Letterman. The latter comic gives the format another year, at best.

Revenue is way down. So are the ratings, by and large. ABC did re-sign Kimmel late last year … for a measly one-year extension. 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’s lead?

Two, they all share essentially the same “superpowers,” 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.

And three, by ignoring bad actors on the Left and pushing false narratives elsewhere, this group is the furthest thing from “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” They’re hurting the country.

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 “Club Random” podcast.

Kimmel may have famously wished “not good riddance, but riddance” to conservatives, but Maher says, “bring ‘em on.”

That means Maher isn’t automatically alienating half the country. That’s smart. It’s also his best survival tactic in an increasingly competitive market.

That’s his undeniable superpower.

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Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. He’s also the host of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto.