Several members of the liberal media are fuming over “Real Time” host Bill Maher’s monologue recapping his dinner with President Donald Trump at the White House.
Maher went viral last Friday in his first show since he and Trump met face-to-face in a meeting coordinated by their mutual friend Kid Rock. Maher called Trump “gracious and measured” and suggested the man in the Oval Office is not the man the rest of the world sees on TV.
“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him,” Maher told his audience. “And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it what you will. Me? I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days.”
While conservatives celebrated Maher’s White House visit, many liberals were irked by his comments.
“Congrats, @billmaher. You got played by Trump. Easy mark. He used you like a fiddle,” Substack writer Wajahat Ali reacted on X.
“BTW don’t overanalyze Maher prostituting himself to Trump,” ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann wrote. “I’ve known Bill since 1978. He was a shameless opportunist with no real principles then and he remains so. This is so he can keep his HBO show.”
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Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall similarly thought Maher’s D.C. visit was purely “self-serving,” linking it to the post-election Mar-a-Lago visit by MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, asking how anyone who views Trump as a “threat to democracy” can go “break bread” with him unless it involved their bottom line.
“When you over-explain, you’re guilty,” Marshall told Fox News Digital. “I guess we’ll find out in a few months if this was a bad decision for him based on ratings and subscriptions.”
The Washington Post was quite forceful against Maher’s trip to the White House. It published a story Monday titled “Trump charmed Bill Maher. The comedian’s fans don’t find it funny.” The report cited Reddit users and comments on social media slamming the HBO host, many of them vowing they’d quit watching his show, as well as an Oakland lawyer who told the Post he lacks “empathy” for those impacted by Trump’s policies like the laid-off federal employees.
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Washington Post columnist León Krauze authored a piece declaring Maher “got played” by Trump, comparing his comments about the president to flattery others have given to Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong over their private interactions.
“By agreeing to meet with Trump, allowing himself to be privately charmed by a charismatic leader and then sharing his softened new take on the president, Bill Maher has made the task of holding Trump accountable that much more difficult,” Krauze concluded.
Washington Post global security analyst Josh Rogin brought his criticism directly to Maher during the “Real Time” panel discussion, telling the host he was a “prop” in Trump’s “PR stunt.”
MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin accused Maher of not realizing Trump was “using him” and suggested Maher fed into the “normalization of Trumpism” with his White House visit.
But not all liberals see the Maher-Trump dinner as a bad thing.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the meeting,” Fox News contributor Richard Fowler told Fox News Digital. “I think if you stay inside the Washington, D.C., beltway, it’s very easy to live inside of a political silo.”
Fowler said while the Democratic “base” may see something wrong with meeting with Trump, they have to face the current reality that “Republicans control all the levers of power” and that expressing their concerns directly to him in an Oval Office conversation is a conversation worth having, even if it ends unsuccessfully.
“It’s a tool in the Democratic Party’s toolkit,” Fowler said.
