Bill Maher urges Americans to unconditionally support free speech, avoid becoming like Britain

"Last week, the Irish sitcom writer Graham Linehan, who's won an Emmy and five BAFTA awards, got off a plane at Heathrow and got arrested by five British police officers, not because he was selling drones to the Houthis, just because he's a crank who spends way too much time online ranting about gender ideology," he railed.

Maher continued, noting that there are plenty of "non-crazy people, liberal people" who feel that the left has gone "a little mad" with transgender issues, including author J.K. Rowling and comedian Dave Chappelle.

"Some have expressed that opinion with literary sophistication, like J. K. Rowling. Some by getting big laughs, like Dave Chappelle. And some are downright ugly about it, like Lineham," he said. "But ugly is the price of a freedom so great as speech."

Continuing his point on standing up for free speech, even offensive speech, he brought up the arrest of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil over his pro-Palestinian activism on campus.

Maher argued that while he found Khalil's anti-Israel op-ed published in the school's newspaper offensive, he would still "go to the mat for that person to be able to print it."

Fox News' Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.