Maher offers nuanced portrait of Trump after private meeting
Bill Maher’s full ‘book report’ on his meeting with Trump at the White House:
“As you know, 12 days ago I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock. Because we share a belief: That there’s gotta be something better than hurling insults from… pic.twitter.com/GPZW94KhnD— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) April 12, 2025
Bill Maher’s full ‘book report’ on his meeting with Trump at the White House:
“As you know, 12 days ago I had dinner with President Trump—a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock, because we share a belief: there’s gotta be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away.
Okay, so meet up in person. Maybe it’ll be different. Spoiler alert: it was.
The guy I met is not the person who, the night before the dinner, shit-tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how we thought this dinner was a bad idea, and what a deranged asshole I was. I read it and thought, “Oh, what a lovely way to welcome someone to your house.”
But when I got there, that guy wasn’t living there.
Now, does Trump want respect? Of course—who doesn’t?
Just for starters: he laughs. I’ve never seen him laugh in public, but he does—including at himself. And it’s not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it.
Look, I get it. It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian—it matters who he is on the world stage. I’m just taking it as a positive that this person exists, because everything I’ve ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent.
I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected—people who don’t look you in the eye, people who don’t really listen because they just want to get to their next thing, people whose response to things you say just doesn’t track, like… what? None of that with him. And he mostly steered the conversation to, “What do you think about this?” I know your mind is blown—so is mine.
There were so many moments when I hit him with a joke or contradicted something—and no problem.
I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. 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.
A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there—which, I know, is fucked up. It’s just… not as fucked up as I thought it was.
Trump was gracious and measured. Why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know—and I can’t answer.”
Sadly, Bill may have lost a lot of fans from this, but he gained a lot of respect too.