Bill Maher weighed in Tuesday on the swift downfall of Milo Yiannopoulos days after the controversial pundit had appeared on his HBO show, " Real Time," last week.
"By the end of the weekend, by dinnertime Monday, (Yiannopoulos is) dropped as a speaker at CPAC. Then he's dropped by Breitbart, and his book deal falls through," Maher told the New York Times.
"As I say, sunlight is the best disinfectant," added Maher. "You're welcome."
Maher's philosophy on exposure runs counter to the tack many late-night hosts took during the 2016 election. Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert faced criticism for their kid-glove treatment of Donald Trump during interviews, opting not to push the then-candidate on difficult issues.
When he appeared on "Real Time," Yiannopoulos was still a senior editor at Breitbart News, a self-styled provocateur who had been accused of espousing misogynistic, racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric while touting the protections of the 1st Amendment.
While his televised time with Maher was fairly anodyne _ to the dismay of viewers who thought Maher should have challenged his guest _ Yiannopoulos quickly fell from grace when a viral video surfaced revealing the pundit seeming to defend pedophilia.
Yiannopoulos denounced pedophilia on Tuesday, claiming the video was taken out of context, but in the meantime lost a speaking invitation at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a six-figure book deal with Simon & Schuster and resigned from his position at Breitbart .
Maher, however, wasn't joyous at the turn of events.
"I wasn't trying to get him removed from society," Maher said, nothing that some had tried to do exactly that to him many times over the years. "It just rubs me the wrong way when somebody says, 'I don't like what this person is saying _ he should go away.'"
