Bill Maher’s latest Real Time panel turned into an unexpectedly blunt political autopsy on Pete Buttigieg’s standing with one key Democratic constituency: Black voters. The numbers Maher cited were stark—while the former transportation secretary enjoys roughly 16% support among Democratic primary voters overall, his support among Black voters, according to the data Maher had, was zero.
“You don’t usually see zero,” Maher deadpanned. “Zero’s low.”
Bill Maher stuns Stephen A. Smith after explaining why Pete Buttigieg would get 0% of the black votepic.twitter.com/jR2VfXel4e
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) August 9, 2025
The conversation quickly shifted to figuring out why. Dr. Phil McGraw tried to lighten the moment, joking that Buttigieg was “under-indexing a little bit” with Black voters. But ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith cut straight to the point: “He doesn’t move us.”
Smith explained that while he respects Buttigieg’s intelligence and credentials, political success—especially in connecting with voters—requires more than résumé bullet points. “You gotta be able to move us, bro.
He doesn’t move us,” Smith repeated, drawing laughs from the audience. When Maher pressed him to speculate further, Smith refused to elaborate, but the message was clear: Buttigieg isn’t resonating emotionally or culturally with that demographic.
🚨NEW: Charlamagne and Andrew Schulz say Dems got NOBODY for 2028🚨
SCHULZ: "They don’t even have one person to be president."
CHARLAMAGNE: "Not one! ... I saw Bill Maher say that the Democratic ticket, I don’t know if he was being funny ... John Fetterman and Pete Buttigieg.… pic.twitter.com/ofXLFAg9bH
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) March 9, 2025
This isn’t the first time prominent voices have pointed out the gap. Radio personality Charlamagne tha God made a similar observation earlier this year, lamenting that the Democratic Party had “no viable prospects” heading into 2028. When the idea of a Fetterman–Buttigieg ticket was floated, he dismissed it outright: “That ain’t gon’ do it, bruh.”
For Buttigieg, who once entered the 2020 primary as a rising star with glowing media coverage, the exchange on Maher’s shows just how political momentum isn’t built in think tanks or cable news hits—it’s forged in the ability to energize diverse voter coalitions. And if the polling—and the blunt assessments from figures like Stephen A. Smith—are to be believed, that’s a hill he still hasn’t begun to climb.
