Bill Maher’s ‘Pedophiles in Hollywood’ Remarks Go Viral

Comedian Bill Maher’s “Kid ‘N Prey” segment on Friday went viral on social media after he criticized the child entertainment industry.

On Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher reacted to the recently released documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which exposed the sexual abuse and hostile work environment that child actors faced at the hands of adults at Nickelodeon.

The comedian posted the segment from his show on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday night with the caption, “It turns out for pedophiles in Hollywood, ‘It’s A Small World After All.'” It has amassed 28.3 million views as of Saturday afternoon.

Maher said he was “grossed out” by the revelations in the documentary, adding that “it didn’t just expose a dangerous workplace. It also exposed hypocrisy.”

He said that when Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “was saying the exact same thing about kids and creepy stuff at Disney—that liberals now find intolerable at Nickelodeon—he was dismissed as a hick and a bigot, but why would a kid’s content factory like Disney be all that different than the one at Nickelodeon?”

During a legal feud with Disney that started when the company’s then-CEO Bob Chapek publicly opposed a controversial bill that restricts certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida schools known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, DeSantis accused Disney of adding a lot of “sexuality into the programming for young kids,” which the company denied. The legal dispute was settled in March.

Maher referenced a 2014 CNN article that reported that at least 35 Disney employees were arrested on sex crimes involving children since 2006, according to court records and other documentation.

The comedian also mentioned Disney child stars Alyson Stoner, who said in a 2021 People magazine op-ed that she “narrowly survived the toddler-to-trainwreck pipeline,” and Cole Sprouse, who told The New York Times in 2022 that the young actresses on the Disney Channel were “heavily sexualized.”

“DeSantis wasn’t wrong, but we’re so tribal now the left will overlook child f***ing, if the guy from the wrong party calls it out,” Maher said on his show.

Newsweek reached out to Disney via email for comment.

Maher then went into a broader discussion about social issues in America, specifically about gender identity.

“Wokeness is not an extension of liberalism anymore. It’s more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite,” the comedian said. “At a certain point, inclusion becomes promotion. And contrary to current progressive dogma, children aren’t miniature adults wise beyond their years, their morons.”

He continued: “They’re gullible morons who will believe anything and just want to please grownups and they don’t have any frame of reference. So, they normalize whatever’s happening. That’s why endlessly talking about gender to six-year-olds isn’t just inappropriate—it’s what the law would call entrapment.”

Newsweek also reached out to Maher’s publicist via email for comment.

Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, among other companies, replied to Maher’s post, writing, “Wow, Bill Maher hits the bullseye.”

“One of the most powerful monologues we’ve seen. Watch as liberal media & progressives come after Bill Maher for daring to say this out loud,” Riley Gaines, a former competitive swimmer who has been an outspoken critic of trans women in women’s sports, wrote.

X user Liz Churchill, a self-described conspiracy theorist with 416,100 followers, wrote: “I never thought I’d hear Bill Maher state that Hollywood is full of Pedophiles. Did Bill Maher become a Conspiracy Theorist?”

“Remember when we kept telling you Hollywood & Disney was filled with Satanic child molesting elites. Well we were right (again). Here’s Bill Maher with 8minutes worth of receipts,” an X user with 294,100 followers who goes by Concerned Citizen wrote.

Nickelodeon addressed the allegations from Quiet on Set in a previous statement to Newsweek.

“Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon as a matter of policy investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct.

“Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crew, but of all children, and we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”