The Senate decided they will be smoke-free. They ordained that all public areas in the Senate are now smoke-free. However, the senators themselves will still be allowed to blow smoke up each other's asses.

Maher uses a then-current policy change—making Senate public spaces “smoke-free”—as a setup for a political insult. The punchline hinges on the idiom “blow smoke up someone’s ass,” meaning to flatter, deceive, or offer insincere praise. By contrasting a literal ban on cigarette smoke with the figurative “smoke” of mutual backslapping, he suggests that institutional reforms can be superficial while the deeper culture of partisan spin, self-congratulation, and dishonest rhetoric persists. The joke also implies hypocrisy: lawmakers regulate public behavior while continuing their own corrosive habits—here, not nicotine but manipulation and empty talk.