Bill Maher blasted the Golden Globes as “f–king smug a–holes” for snubbing mega podcaster Joe Rogan in its inaugural best podcast category, saying the nominees were all “super woke stuff.”
Maher made the comments while sitting down with comedians Dana Carvey and David Spade on Monday’s episode of his “Club Random,” where he appeared to criticize former “Saturday Night Live” star Amy Poehler’s podcast, “Good Hang with Amy Poehler,” for landing a nomination while Rogan was left out.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” is the top-ranked podcast on Spotify, ranks ahead of Poehler’s show on the Apple Podcasts charts, and sits third on YouTube Podcasts — while Poehler’s podcast is not ranked in the top 10.
“Did you see that there’s a podcast category at the Globes?” Maher asked. “They only nominated like the super woke stuff.”
“Good Hang with Amy Poehler” went on to win the first-ever 2026 Golden Globes for best podcast, beating out “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard;” Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy;” “The Mel Robbins Podcast;” “SmartLess,” featuring Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Poehler’s ex, Will Arnett; and NPR’s “Up First.”
“I’m sure there were good shows, but it was glaring that Joe Rogan was not nominated,” the 69-year-old political satirist noted. “I mean, it is kind of popular.”
Carvey agreed, hailing Rogan as “absolutely brilliant at what he does.”
“Maybe it just speaks to living in the Bluesky bubble,” Maher said, referencing the liberal-leaning X alternative.
He then urged members of the Golden Globe Foundation and Hollywood elites to “get out of your f–king bubble,” and stop being “f–king smug assholes.”
“I want to be one of you, I am one of you, but you’re just so hard to defend,” Maher said, adding that Los Angeles has become “the epicenter of the problem.”
Maher attended the awards show after being nominated for his HBO stand-up comedy special, “Is Anyone Else Seeing This?,” marking his first awards nod in years.
“I used to get nominated for everything, and then the wokeness came in, and then I was considered conservative, which was ridiculous,” Maher said.
“I was what I call soft canceled.”
Ricky Gervais ultimately won the best stand-up comedy on TV category.
“So this is the first time in a while I’ve been nominated for something, which I think shows a little bit that we are coming out of the wokeness … I take it as a victory that they were not able to ignore how good that special was,” Maher said.
Carvey joked that he’s a Bill Clinton-era liberal from the 1990s, a label he said would now get him branded a “Nazi.”
Spade joked that it’s now considered “far-right,” quipping, “You’re a white supremacist.”
“But you know, it’s not one that the woke can watch and not throw up because I call their s–t out. And the fact that people are laughing shows that it’s funny,” Maher said.
“When you do stupid things, it’s funny. And the left did a lot more stupid things in the last five to 10 years. And I’m a comedian. I go where the gold is. And it’s hitting the side of a barn to make fun of some of this s–t.”
Maher also had previously laughed about virtue-signaling celebrities who wore pins at the Golden Globes referencing the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month.
“We’re just here for show business today,” the comedian, 69, chuckled to a USA Today reporter on the red carpet who asked about celebs using the occasion of the award show to politically grandstand.
“You know, it was a terrible thing that happened, and it shouldn’t have happened, and if they didn’t act like such thugs, it wouldn’t have happened. But I don’t need to wear a pin about it,” he said.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
