Bill Maher issued a response after a joke he made in which he jokingly compared former One Direction singer Zayn Malik to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 21-year-old found guilty earlier this week in connection with the bombing attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013.
Real Time With Bill Maher host used the April 10 episode of his HBO show to weigh in on the controversy which stems from the joke where he pretended to be upset by Malik’s departure and then compared Malik’s likeness to Tsarnaev via their photos placed side-by-side during the web-exclusive segment posted on Mar. 30.
“Two weeks ago I did a ‘New Rule’ on our Internet ‘Overtime’ segment about someone named Zayn Malik, who I’d never heard of until that day,” he joked this week. “Well, the P.C. police as usual read way more into that joke than was actually there.”
From there, Maher introduced the segment titled “Explaining Jokes to Idiots.” During it, he did a play-by-play of the joke in question.
You can watch Maher’s response below.