Natasha Leggero, Carol Leifer join Bill Maher for New Year’s show

Bill Maher is angry.

OK, with Donald Trump in the White House, it’s no shock that the longtime liberal who has hosted HBO’s “Real Time” for 16 seasons would be a tad mad. But on a recent phone call, Maher had almost as much vitriol for … Democrats?

It seems Maher is not pleased with who is being targeted by some on his “side.”

“Nobody is pure enough for liberals,” Maher exclaimed, “and they wind up decimating their own ranks. Really? The enemy is Al Franken, Elizabeth Warren and Kevin Hart? These are the people that you wanna go after when Donald Trump sits in the White House?”

Earlier that day Maher, who will perform his stand-up comedy in the islands next week for the eighth straight year, noticed news reports of Sen. Warren being criticized by fellow Democrats for releasing a DNA test that backed up her claims of having Native American ancestry, and of Hart, who has criticized Trump, being forced out of a gig hosting the Oscars because of anti-gay tweets from nearly a decade ago. This time last year Democrats led the charge calling for Franken’s resignation amid sexual misconduct allegations against the eight-year senator from Minnesota.

“This is the disease that is killing the left, and this is a theme that I have pounded on for quite a while now,” Maher continued, “and that’s why in many ways I am a man without a team, because I am a liberal, I am a real liberal.”

Maher also points to the reluctance by some Democrats to back longtime congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who after some negotiation is set to ascend back to her role as speaker next month when the Democrats regain control of the House.

“The demonization of Nancy Pelosi has always come from the right,” Maher said, “and when liberals jump on the bandwagon, they’re basically doing the job of the conservatives for them. … Nancy Pelosi is the person who got Obama­care passed. Obamacare is why all these Democrats just won an election!”

PART OF what helps get Maher through each year is knowing a trip to Hawaii awaits him, and for the first time in his four years bringing guests to Hawaii, Maher has two female comedians — Natasha Leggero and Carol Leifer — joining him. Before this year, Margaret Cho had been the only woman among the six performers Maher has brought.

Maher joked that it was his way of fitting in with the #MeToo movement, before pointing to the fact that, ultimately, Leggero and Leifer are two comics whose talent he respects greatly.

Maher and Leifer came up together on the New York comedy scene 40 years ago. They both started as stand-ups and have remained friends as they’ve found success taking different paths. While Maher has hosted his own shows for the past 25 years, Leifer has made her biggest mark off camera.

Leifer has written for “Saturday Night Live” and eight Oscars broadcasts, and was a co-creator on the groundbreaking sitcom “The Ellen Show.” But her most-beloved work might have been for “Seinfeld,” perhaps TV’s biggest sitcom of all time. She was on staff for three seasons as a writer and story editor.

Among the notable episodes Leifer wrote were “The Hamptons” (with its memorable use of the word “shrinkage”), “The Lip Reader” (which sees George asking Jerry’s deaf girlfriend for help using her special skill referenced in the title) and “The Understudy” (a send-up of the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding figure-skating drama). But her favorite is ‘The Rye,’ in which Jerry mugs an old lady for her loaf of marble rye to help out George.

“It got so much play over the years,” Leifer said in a recent phone conversation, “What’s really fun to reminisce about is when ‘Seinfeld’ was on, those really were the days of watercooler shows, which don’t exist anymore because there are so many different platforms. You could write an episode and it would be seen by millions of people and it would really be the talk of the next day.”

In one “Seinfeld” episode, Jerry and George are writing the pilot for “Jerry,” the sitcom within the sitcom, and have trouble writing for Elaine. “We couldn’t write for a woman. We didn’t know what you would say,” Jerry confesses to Elaine.

But Leifer said that storyline didn’t fully reflect the mindset of its male writers, though much of it was based on the experiences of Seinfeld and co-creator Larry David.

“People sometimes assume, ‘Oh, so you probably wrote Spongeworthy’,” Leifer said, referring to a 1995 episode that revolved around the discontinuation of a birth control device. “That episode was written by Peter Mehlman. I worked with a bunch of very evolved guys, who also ‘got’ women and understood women’s experiences.”

That said, Leifer acknowledged that she did bring story ideas to the writers room that men would never have. In “The Understudy,” Elaine takes George’s father to a nail shop she frequents because she suspects the manicurists are speaking about her in Korean. That was based on something that happened to Leifer.

“What I also respected a lot about Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld is they always had women on staff,” Leifer said. “And this is already now 25 years ago. What was a priority to them 25 years ago is still not standard practice.”

Leifer said she jumped at the chance to join the writing staff for David’s upcoming 10th season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which is being shot now and is scheduled to air in 2019.

“He gave me my first sitcom job and now to be working with him at ‘Curb’ is such a great coming around that it’s really been a thrill,” she said.

LEGGERO IS on a bit of a TV run herself. Having started her career as an actress, her experience has been largely in front of the camera.

Leggero piled up dozens of TV and film credits across a decade before co-creating “Another Period” with Riki Lindhome. After the show’s three-year run on Comedy Central, Leggero has moved on to writing a pilot with Morgan Murphy (“Two Broke Girls”) for CBS that Leggero is set to star in, though she’s hesitant to discuss the details given that it’s early in the process.

Leggero was most recently seen sharing the stage with husband Moshe Kasher in “The Honeymoon Stand Up Special” on Netflix, which dropped this year. She said having a husband who’s also a comic has been “pretty great” because they can tour together, which eliminates the worst part of the profession — leaving your family behind for days at a time.

Not that she didn’t have issues about dating a stand-up.

“My concern when I first started dating Moshe was, ‘Can I talk about you on stage?’” she said. “Right away, Moshe was like, ‘Oh, you can say anything you want about me on stage. I don’t care.’ He’s pretty much stood by that.”

In the couple’s stand-up special, Leggero is very pregnant. She’s since given birth and is enjoying as much as anything how much relatable material motherhood has provided.

“Having a kid and a husband and trying to make it all work, it’s like now all of a sudden there’s so many things for me to talk about and joke about,” she said.

Unlike Leifer and past guests of the Hawaii tour, Leggero has never met Maher, but they’ve expressed mutual admiration.

“He’s pretty much the best at what he does,” Leggero said. “I enjoy watching him. I always leave understanding some political point that I hadn’t quite understood before, which for me is always important. I always wanna be learning and uncovering new things.”