Bill Maher concluded the Season 23 finale of Real Time by once again hitting back at Larry David and defending his dinner with president Donald Trump.
While going on a spiel about the pitfalls of ostracizing family members for voting MAGA, the TV personality pivoted to his personal experience. Maher previously shrugged off criticisms of his supper with the GOP leader, which fellow comic David satirized in an April New York Times essay titled “My Dinner with Hitler.” In response, Maher had called the op-ed “insulting,” noting shortly thereafter that “‘Nazi’ is a hard word to use with nuance.”
Maher lamented on the episode: “This is so childish, so purely emotional — the people who got all butt-hurt because I had dinner with him. You know, ’cause he’s Hitler. Except he’s not. So unhelpful and dumb. Trump is the most supportive president Israel and the Jews ever had.” (Though Trump has been a supporter of Israel, he has also wielded antisemitism as a weapon to quell dissent about Gaza, according to a representative survey, and drawn criticism from Jewish groups for using a slur.)
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Maher continued, “Every year, I used to ask Larry David to do Real Time and he’d always say, ‘Bill, I can’t, I’m not smart enough about politics to do your show.’ Yeah, I get that now.”
Continuing with his rant, Maher argued against going “full high school,” likening Democrats’ unwillingness to engage with Trump as akin to banning him from their “lunch table.”
“You are not serious people,” he quipped, quoting Brian Cox’s Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession.
He added, “What exactly is the argument? That by talking to Trump I’ll elevate him? Oh my god, don’t tell me he could become president. Well, I guess [NYC Mayor-elect Zohran] Mamdani is gonna elevate Trump because he went to the White House today, and look who’s getting along now?”
Noting that Trump makes decisions based on personal relationships given that he is a “people guy,” Maher encouraged others to take his approach.
“If anything, we need more people like me having dinner with him. You complain he’s surrounded by ass-kissers but your strategy is to make sure no one but ass-kissers are around him? You are not serious people,” he concluded.
Real Time with Bill Maher will return with a new season Jan. 23.