HBO host Bill Maher once appeared to condone a sexual relationship between a 35-year-old female teacher and a 12-year-old male student, according to a new video that surfaced Wednesday.
The relationship resulted in the woman getting pregnant twice before eventually going to jail, the Hill reported.
The video is from 1998 and has gained attention on social media after the HBO host took credit for the fall of Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos over his own comments about pedophilia. Yiannopolous appeared on Maher's show on Friday.
In the video, Maher was referring to the story of a woman named Mary Kay Letourneau, who was impregnated twice by student Vili Fualaau. The relationship began when he was 12.
Maher saw the relationship as them being in love.
"The teacher from Seattle is in jail because she is in love. That's how I view it," Maher said in the video, which took place on March 20, 1998, from his former ABC program "Politically Incorrect."
Letourneau was arrested and served more than seven years in jail for statutory rape. She was released in 2004 and married Fualaau the following year. The couple now has two daughters in their late teens, according to the Hill.
Maher did say that the relationship was unconventional.
"I admit it's unorthodox," Maher added, "She's 35, the boy is 14. He was younger when they started. But she is pregnant again. That was the story this week. This is the second child by this boy. They are keeping the mother in jail because she won't conform to what society feels should be the perfect American family."
Lisa Montgomery Kennedy, a guest on the show, sarcastically replied, "Yeah, that's perfect."
Republican activist Celeste Greig added, "Sickening. Absolutely sickening. The woman is over 20 years older, and she raped this kid."
"Raped?" Maher responded. "Come on. How can a woman rape a man?"
Maher has received criticism from the politcal left for providing Yiannopoulos, known as a right-wing provocateur, with a platform on his popular HBO show.
Yiannopoulos, 32, lost a speaking role at the Conservative Political Action Conference, his job at Breitbart, and a book deal after a video surfaced of him making comments about pedophilia.
In the video he appeared to condone sexual relations with boys as young as 13, which led CPAC to rescind its speaking invitation on Monday.
Maher gave his thoughts on the matter in an interview with the New York Times.
"What I think people saw was an emotionally needy Ann Coulter wannabe, trying to make a buck off of the left's propensity for outrage," he said. "And by the end of the weekend, by dinnertime Monday, he's dropped as a speaker at CPAC. Then he's dropped by Breitbart, and his book deal falls through."
"As I say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. You're welcome," Maher added.
The Yiannopoulos video clip was posted on YouTube in January 2016, but it did not gain any recognition until the conservative blog Reagan Battalion shared it this past Sunday.