Bill Maher questions media avoiding Doug Emhoff controversies: 'Wouldn't that make it look worse?'

"Real Time" host Bill Maher questioned whether it was wise for the liberal media to continue avoiding the growing controversies surrounding Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

"There's a lot of scuttlebutt in the news this week about Doug," Maher said in a panel discussion on Friday's "Overtime" online segment of his HBO show. "If people don't know what's going on, the Daily Mail is reporting that three women [Emhoff's ex-girlfriend] talked to contemporaneously, which has been the standard very often in these cases, that she said back in, I think, 2011 or something, they were at the Cannes Film Festival. He slapped her. He thought she was flirting with the valet."

"He knocked up the nanny, right? That's confirmed," conservative radio host Buck Sexton chimed in.

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"That's confirmed. He definitely knocked up the nanny," Maher responded with a chuckle. "What I'm saying is, if this becomes more credible- and we don't know yet. I mean, a lot of the conservative outlets still aren't reporting it, so I wouldn't go after anybody for not reporting it yet because these things have to be checked out. But if it becomes more credible, certainly on the level of Brett Kavanaugh, which was that kind of thing was reported by everybody pretty quickly. Does the liberal media keep ignoring it?"

"Yes, they will. Absolutely," Sexton answered. 

"Wouldn't that make it look worse?" Maher then asked. 

CNN anchor Laura Coates responded by saying it is "prudent" for the media to be "cautious" about such serious allegations like the ones facing Emhoff "until you have the supporting details," adding that it's "fair" to look into the claims. 

"What I don't think is fair is to, and I'm consistent on this on all accounts, is to tar and feather without more," Coates said. "I think you have to give information to people, and you have to actually do your homework and background. I don't think by not reporting- and again, I'm not familiar with all of the allegations that are involved here, but I think it is appropriate to investigate as it is appropriate to be cautious before you simply put something into the ether that has those substantiations."

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The Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta called the Emhoff controversy "a problem" for Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign that is "going to have to deal with now."

"Regardless of what's confirmed or not confirmed, I think that there is now a little bit of blood in the water. The nanny thing was the first drop. And now there's some more," Alberta said. "And it's not gonna be long now. I can guarantee you that there are investigative teams at The Times and The Post and elsewhere that are looking into it."

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Emhoff, who was heralded by the media as a positive figure of masculinity, has been engulfed in controversy in recent weeks. Emhoff confirmed he had an extramarital affair with the family nanny and got her pregnant, which resulted in the ending of his marriage to his first wife, Kerstin Emhoff.

"During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions," Emhoff said in a statement. "I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side." 

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The Daily Mail then followed with reports laying out damning allegations, including him "forcefully slapping" his then-girlfriend in 2012 as well as him engaging in "inappropriate" and "misogynistic" office behavior during his tenure leading the LA law firm Venable from 2006 to 2017. 

Nearly every media interviewer has avoided the subject entirely while sitting down with Emhoff since the controversies broke, but when MSNBC's Joe Scarborough broadly invoked "tabloid stories" about him, the second gentleman did not deny the allegations. 

"We don’t have time to be pissed off. We don't have time to focus on it. It's all a distraction. It's designed to try to get us off our game," Emhoff told Scarborough last week.

Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.