Christine O'Donnell
On September 17, 2010, Maher aired a clip of Delaware Republican Senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell from the October 29, 1999 episode of his old show Politically Incorrect, where she discussed that she had "dabbled in witchcraft." This was perhaps the most notable of numerous controversial statements by O'Donnell that made her the most covered candidate in the 2010 mid-term election cycle. O'Donnell went on to film a rebuttal commercial claiming "I'm not a witch, I'm you." This ad inspired many video parodies and O'Donnell later said that the ad backfired and focused attention on her decade-old statement. O'Donnell lost to her Democratic challenger, Chris Coons, in the general election. On the September 7, 2012 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, O'Donnell appeared on the show for the first time and resolved the issue with Maher, who apologized for the amount of publicity that the clip got. Maher said that he would not have aired the clip if he knew that it would have taken away from the message of her campaign.
Read more about this topic: Real Time With Bill Maher