Killer Mike Gets Into Heated Debate With Bill Maher About How 'America Really Owes Haiti'

Killer Mike and Bill Maher had a lengthy back-and-forth about the history of Haiti during a recent Real Time conversation, with the Run the Jewels member urging the comedian and commentator to consider that more could be done to help. The moment came about amid a larger conversation about the failings of the U.S. education system and their impact. As Mike argued, he believes “there is a goal in public schools to make sure Americans are dumb,” more specifically “the average working-class American.” This led to a plea from Mike for Schoolhouse Rock to be brought back, and eventually, a mention of post-Gaddafi Libya. “We killed Gaddafi,” Mike said. “We knocked him off the street.” Later, the four-time Grammy winner elaborated on his point, saying that he sees Gaddafi as “not as bad as they said” while emphasizing that he doesn’t see any American leader as “a good guy” either. “[Barack Obama] and Hillary Clinton disturbed a country called Libya in which you used to have a free house, free education, and now it’s not free anymore,” Mike said. “And people who look like me aren’t free. Maher interjected, saying this period was marred by “a very repressive dictatorship,” which Mike—joined in the conversation by ABC News' Donna Brazile—responded to by arguing that we’re living under one in the U.S. at the moment. After pushback from Maher focused on the host’s argument that Mike was saying that present-day U.S. was “the same” as Libya, which Mike denied, the two’s back-and-forth continued. “When the emails came out, the emails said essentially we were doing it for the French,” the Michael artist said at one point. “Like, how long do the French get to fucking live off Haiti, Libya, West Africa?” Later, Michael said Haiti “has been punished since 1806,” citing the country as an example of what can happen to “anyone who threatens colonies or the colonists.” Again, Maher pushed back. “The people who have been repressing the people in Haiti for a very long time are not French,” he said, prompting a “Shitting me?” reaction from Mike. “They’re Haitians that are put into place,” Mike, recently seen alongside Ethan Hawke in FX’s The Lowdown, further argued. “Let’s not act like we don’t put dictators into place.” From there, Mike argued “there’s a payment to be made” by colonizers. “So we took Libya. What have we done to help their country become democratic and get back in a better state?” he asked. “What have we done to help Haiti do it? Haiti is the reason we got Louisiana and west of that. America really owes Haiti.” Maher disagreed, arguing that “you’ve gotta move forward” instead. “I’m not saying I don’t wanna move forward, I’m just saying put something in my pocket before you sock it,” Mike said, reiterating his point. “Let me have something for my move forward. We do it for other nations.” In April, French President Emmanuel Macron conceded that France had “subjected the people of Haiti to a heavy financial indemnity” with its imposing of a significant debt in tandem with the country’s independence 200 years earlier. “This decision placed a price on the freedom of a young nation, which was thus confronted with the unjust force of history from its very inception,” Macron said at the time. The total amount of the debt in terms of modern dollars has been estimated in the past at around $560 million, though the actual economic impact, per experts, is substantially higher. Earlier this year, more than 60 rights groups signed a letter in support of reparations in Haiti, arguing that the original debt was a “ransom” that caused a “cycle of foreign aid dependence and entrenched debt that persists to this day.

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