- Bill Maher had dinner with Trump despite criticising his policies
- A satirical piece from David compared this to meeting Hitler
- Maher suggested this was insulting to the victims of the Holocaust
Bill Maher has had his say on Larry David’s satirical New Yorker piece comparing his dinner with Trump to meeting Hitler.
Maher has long been skeptical of Trump both on and off his popular political TV show. In response, the President has also fired shots back at Maher over the years. Aside from this, David and Maher are friends.
However, things changed when he went to dinner with the President and a group of some of his high-profile supporters, among them their mutual friend Kid Rock. . On an episode of his talkshow Real Time, Maher said Trump was “gracious” and “much more self-aware than he lets on”.
“Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was – I swear to God – absent, at least on this night with this guy,” he added.
What did David’s article say?
In response, David criticised Maher through a satirical piece, ‘My Dinner With Adolf’, in the New York Times. David depicted critic of Hitler who accepts a dinner invitation from the Führer and eventually concludes “we’re not that different, after all”.
In a note added by the Deputy Opinion Editor of The New Yorker, Patrick Healy, reiterated that David was not comparing Trump to Hitler. Instead, he was “arguing that during a single dinner or a private meeting, anyone can be human, and it means nothing in the end about what that person is capable of.”
Read more: Larry David mocks Bill Maher Trump visit
David wrote in his spoof essay, “I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship.
“But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side.”
What’s Maher made of this?
During an appearance on Piers Morgan’s talkshow Uncensored, Maher responded to the article.
“First of all, it’s kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews … It’s an argument you kind of lost just to start it,” he began. “Look, maybe it’s not completely logically fair, but Hitler has really kind of got to stay in his own place. He is the GOAT of evil.”
He added that the piece “wasn’t my favourite moment of our friendship” and that he didn’t know the piece would be published till his publicist notified him.
“Nobody has been harder, and more prescient, I must say, about Donald Trump than me. I don’t need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is. Just the fact that I met him in person didn’t change that. The fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either.”
Maher told Morgan he didn’t want to “make this constantly personal with me and Larry”, saying: “We might be friends again.”
“I can take a shot and I can also take it when people disagree with me. That’s not exactly the way I would’ve done it.
“Again, the irony: let’s go back to what my original thing was. There’s got to be a better way than hurling insults and not talking to people. If I can talk to Trump, I can talk to Larry David too.”
