Bill's entire stage persona has been that of an everyman. While his material is diverse, it's mostly observational comedy, and he regularly criticized the rich along with celebrities that perform for morally dubious people.

Some months ago, the Saudi Government hosted a comedy festival, and flew out pretty much all the big names, Bill included.

So the man who partially built his career on being observant, relatable and joking about celebrities who perform for dictators, went and performed for a defacto dictatorship.

After receiving massive backlash, he first tried to wash it on various interviews as some sort of "for the Saudi people, not the Saudi government" bs, which nobody bought, so he pivoted to antagonizing his critics (his own audience) like he does to hecklers.

He is the only comedian whose work I cared about that went, and I held him in very high regard, but nobody should separate the art from the artist while the artist is still alive. He likely doesn't need the money, so it's safe to say it was motivated by greed, he contributed to the culture washing of a regime that murders people on the regular, including chopping up journalists in their own embassies.

In spite of him being very outspoken about beliefs like in the post, he got paid to do a comedy festival openly put on by the Saudi government to try and launder their image.

This is exactly how I imagine New York.