On his show tonight, Bill Maher says he's not defending Rush Limbaugh.

"I'm defending living in a country where people don't have to be afraid that they might go out of the bounds for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesmen?... I would rather put up with Rush Limbaugh and live in a country where people do have freedom of speech. And the people who I've heard who say 'You know what, when they put pressure on his sponsors the system is working' — no, it's not. That's the system being manipulated. I lived through that 10 years ago."

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Here's Maher's tweet that people interpreted as defending Limbaugh.

Here's the information about what happened to Maher 10 years ago. His late-night ABC show "Politically Incorrect" was canceled after a controversy over an edgy remark he made one week after the September 11th. ("We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.")

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Maher went on to criticize that "fat fuck" Limbaugh: Right-wingers have made a "false equivalence" between Limbaugh and him. "I am a potty mouth. That's different from a misogynist."