What Democratic congressmen do to their women staffers, Republican congressmen do to the country.

Maher’s line is a deliberately provocative piece of political satire built on parallelism: he contrasts alleged misconduct by Democratic members of Congress toward female staffers with what he portrays as Republicans’ harmful treatment of the nation itself. The joke depends on an analogy between personal violation/abuse and institutional or policy damage, implying that while Democrats may be implicated in individual scandals, Republicans’ actions (in Maher’s view) have broader, systemic consequences. The phrasing also functions as a partisan inversion: it concedes a negative stereotype about one side only to claim the other side commits a larger offense. As with much of Maher’s comedy, the intent is less evidentiary than rhetorical—sharpening moral outrage through exaggeration and contrast.