Al Roker responds to Bill Maher's fat-shaming comments: 'He doesn't know what he's talking about'

Updated

Al Roker was upset to hear Bill Maher’s take on fat-shaming.

“As somebody who has struggled with his weight all of my adult life and my childhood, and who had been bullied and fat-shamed if you will, even though we didn’t have that term then, it scars people,'“ Roker said Monday on the third hour of NBC’s “Today.”

Maher said earlier this month on an episode of his HBO show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” that people who are overweight should be made to feel some shame.

“We have gone to this weird place where fat is good,” Maher said. “It’s pointing out that fat is unhealthy, that’s what’s bad. Fat shaming doesn’t need to end. It needs to make a comeback. Some amount of shame is good.”

Roker recalled being bullied in his teen years for his size. He took issue with Maher’s premise: that overweight people don’t know they’re overweight and that they’ll lose weight when they’re shamed.

“Bill Maher needs to shut the front door. He doesn’t know what he's talking about, and it’s not gonna help anybody,” said Roker, who lost more than 100 pounds after undergoing gastric bypass surgery in 2003.

Still, Roker gained some weight back, and he continued to struggle with it, he wrote in his 2013 memoir, Never Goin’ Back: Winning the Weight Loss Battle for Good.

Roker revealed in March that he had lost more weight on the popular ketogenic diet.

Another TV host, James Corden of CBS’ “The Late Late Show,” also slammed Maher’s words as simple bullying.

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