President Trump invited Bill Maher to the White House for dinner a couple of weeks ago via Kid Rock. I’m not a fan of Maher but he has millions of viewers and there’s obviously a reason President Trump invited him. You’ll see why I am telling you this at the end.
Maher promised to report back on the dinner - here’s a transcript of what he said:
MAHER: “For what I know you’ve all been waiting for, I’d like to give you my book report on my visit to 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 got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away.
MAHER: And let me first say that to all the people who treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you are ridiculous. Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I have no power. I'm a comedian and he's the most powerful leader in the world. I'm not the leader of anything, except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there's got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.
MAHER: OK, so meet up in person, maybe it'll be different. Spoiler alert, it was.
First good sign, before I left for the capital, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets that the president said about me. Things like: stupid, dummy, low-life dummy, sleazebag, sick, sad, stone-cold crazy, really a dumb guy, fired like a dog, his show is dead. I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it, which he did.
MAHER: Which he did, with good humor, and I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. Oh my god, Bill, are you gonna say something nice about him? What I'm gonna do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it. And if that's not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don't give a (expletive).
So no, I didn't go MAGA. And to the president's credit, there was no pressure to. After we left the Oval Office, he showed me the little room off the office, you know, the one where Clinton used to you know, the “blow job” room, OK?
Well, not anymore. That's where they keep the merch now.
And he gave me a bunch of hats, but he didn’t ask me to take a picture in one, which I appreciated. The guy I met is not the person who, the night before the dinner, tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea and what a deranged liberal 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? My friend said to me, what are you going to wear to the White House? I said, I don't know, but I'm not going to dress like Zelenskyy, I'll tell you that.
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. And I thank you for them.
[PS: Maher isn’t being truthful here. He’s met Trump before, like this time, 20 years ago, in 2004, and Trump was laughing out loud in public.]
MAHER: In the Oval Office he was showing me the portraits of presidents and he pointed to Reagan and said in all seriousness, ‘You know the best thing about him? His hair.’ I said, ‘Well, there was also that whole bringing down Communism thing.’
I was waiting for the button next to the Diet Coke button to get pushed and I go through the trap door. But no, he laughed; he got it.
I said to him at one point, ‘Mr. President, you know, the dog. That's unusual in the White House.’ He said, ‘Well, a lot of the presidents, they had a dog for political reasons.’ I said, ‘No, people love dogs! That's what that is.’ Trump said, ‘Oh yeah, OK, that’s true.’
At one point we were walking through his amazing — it is an amazing tour of the whole house. And I don't remember exactly what we were talking about but it must have been something with the 2020 election because I know he used the word ‘lost’, and I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow, I never thought I'd hear you say that.’ He didn't get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public.
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, at least on this night with this guy.
MAHER: Bob — Kid Rock — told me the night before, he said, ‘If you want to get a word in edgewise, you're going to have to cut him off, (or) he'll just go on.’ Not at all.
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 really don't 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 conversations: ‘So 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. At dinner, he was asking me about the nuclear situation in Iran in a very genuine, ‘Hey, I think you're a smart guy. I want your opinion’ sort of way.
And I said, ‘Well, obviously you're privy to things about it (that) I'm not, but for what it's worth, I thought the Obama deal was worth letting play out because we made Iran destroy 98% of the uranium, and they were 15 years away from a bomb.’ And then I said to him, ‘Well, we got rid of that. You got rid of that.’ He didn't get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic. He took it in.
I told him I thought parts of his plan for Gaza were wacky but that I had supported him in the idea that Gaza could be Dubai instead of hell. I told him he was wrong when he tweeted the night before that I was critical of all things Trump. Not true — check the tapes.
Moving Israel's embassy to Jerusalem? Loved it. The border did need to be controlled. I'm glad the cops are getting their morale back. DEI had gone too far. Biological men shouldn't be playing women's sports. Europe should pay for their defense. And of course, it makes sense that Arab countries should take in Arab refugees, like the million Syrians who wound up in Germany when Saudi Arabia took none.
MAHER: He said to me, ‘You're right, they took none.’ I said, ‘Well you should remind your boyfriend in Saudi Arabia that the next time you see him.’ He laughed.
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. Make of it what you will. Me? I feel it's emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days. He was even OK when I checked him on the orangutan lawsuit. He was. I know.
He said to Dana White, you know, ‘Bill said my father was an orangutan, and I said, I really love my father.’ And I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, I did that because I didn't like what you were doing regarding Obama's birth origins. I thought that was low.’ Again, no anger, just a little smile, as if to say, yeah, I get it.
The most surreal part of the whole night was when I got home. I flew back right after the dinner, and I'm in bed watching ’60 Minutes’ from the night before. And there's Trump in one of their stories, standing at a podium in a room that looked to me like one of the rooms and places we'd just been in. And he's ranting, ‘Disgusting, you're a terrible person.’ And I'm like, who's that guy? What happened to Glinda the Good Witch? And why can't we get the guy I met to be the public guy?
And I'm not saying it's our responsibility to do that. It's not. I'm just reporting exactly what I saw over two and a half hours. I went into the mine, and that's what's down there.
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 effed up. It's just not as effed up as I thought it was. And I have no illusions now that I'm back to work at my job that he might start a new list.
Because I don't have a good feeling and will be critical about a lot of what he's doing: the trade war and disappearing people, ruling by decree, threatening judges, gutting the government with glee. But I also think he now understands I have a job to do, or at least he did on this night because he said to me early on that he'd seen our last episode, which was the Friday before this dinner And he said, ‘I thought maybe you'd be nice, but you'd hit me really hard.’ I did, because I'm not going to pull my punches that presidents get to propose a third term for themselves. He understood that, and without animus. That doesn't mean he's not going try to do it.
At one point I said to him, ‘You're scaring people. Do you really want to be scaring your own citizens so much?’ And I know now you're all saying, and what did he say to that? Honestly, I don't remember. But it wasn't ‘OK, I'll stop.’
So MAGA fans, don't worry, your boy gave me nothing. Just hats. Hats and a very generous amount of time and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend, even though I'm not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner. My favorite part of the whole night was we were standing in the (room off the Oval Office) and he said, ‘You know I've heard from a lot of people who really like that we're having this dinner. Not all, but a lot.’ And I said, ‘Same, a lot of people told me they loved it, but not all.’
And we agreed the people who don't even want us to talk? We don't like you. Don't talk as opposed to what? Writing the same editorial for the millionth time and making 25-hour speeches into the wind. Really, that's what liberals have? He takes the piss out of everybody else, and we can hold ours?
OK, that's my report. You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured, and why he isn't that in other settings, I don't know. And I can't answer, and it's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw, and I wasn't high.
Damn, missed opportunity.
BTW - if you weren’t aware, Laura Loomer filed a $150 million defamation lawsuit against Bill Maher and HBO in September 2024 over comments he made on Maher’s Real Time show where he speculated that Trump was having an affair or in some kind of “arranged relationship to affect the election” and he said that person could be Laura Loomer.
MAHER: “She’s 31, looks like his type. I think it might be Laura Loomer.”
Loomer claimed that Maher’s remarks falsely accused her of an extramarital affair with Trump, despite his use of tentative language like “maybe” and “might.” She argued that the statements were malicious fabrications intended to harm her reputation and influence the 2024 presidential race.
Right after Maher said that on his show, that Trump & Loomer were possibly having an affair, Trump issued this statement:
A federal judge denied Maher’s motion to dismiss in January 2025, ruling that Loomer adequately alleged defamation and malice. The court noted that Maher’s statements could be interpreted as factual claims, not protected opinion, especially given the context of a serious political discussion.
After the motion to dismiss was denied, Trump invited Maher to the White House and issued this statement:
As of April 2025, the case remains active, with Loomer seeking a jury trial and $150 million in damages.
Here is how Loomer responded on X about Maher’s visit to the White House and her lawsuit:
LOOMER: “Last year, after I traveled with President Trump to the 2024 Presidential debate, Maher falsely accused me of sleeping with President Trump, an outrageous lie that spread like wildfire in the press thanks to Bill Maher’s lies. So, I filed a $150 million defamation lawsuit against Maher and HBO. I have never made any inappropriate gestures or comments about Trump and I am a VERY hard working professional woman.
Despite his egregious attacks on President Trump, Maher was shockingly invited to the Trump White House, even though he falsely accused both me and the President of adultery. It’s disgraceful.
The fact that Bill Maher is visiting the White House to meet with President Trump is insane in my opinion. Maher’s invitation to the White House is a massive slap in the face to the MAGA base and people who worked their ass off helping President Trump get elected. Meanwhile, many of President Trump’s own staff will go to great extents from preventing his most loyal supporters from visiting the White House over their own animosity and resentment.
LOOMER: My lawyer and I had tried to settle with Bill Maher and HBO before we were forced to file the complaint for defamation after Bill Maher falsely accused me of having sex with President Trump and committing adultery against Melania Trump. I asked for a public apology, and an invitation to appear on his show on HBO as a way to mitigate the damage he caused me. [What???]
Maher, HBO and their lawyers arrogantly refused. Their lawyer from Davis Wright even threatened me. Now, Bill Maher and HBO have lost their motion to dismiss my lawsuit, and they are in deep trouble. Today, Bill Maher’s lawyers contacted my lawyer and begged for my lawyer and I to agree to keep all of their documents pertaining to this lawsuit CONFIDENTIAL. That shows you how scared they are.”
Here’s what Loomer’s lawyer said:
Milo, whether you like him or not, knows Loomer well and said she has a tendency to spread these things herself to gain the spotlight - it is her pattern. Milo also said that Trump’s inner circle (including Melania) wants Loomer kept away from Trump. The Guardian reported that Loomer said she never officially joined the campaign after Trump’s allies preferred he would keep his distance from her. I have no idea if that’s true but I haven’t seen any pictures like this floating around lately…
SO, what do YOU think? Why did Trump invite Maher to the White House and be so gracious to him? Why is Maher being so nice to Trump? Why is Loomer so angry about Maher going to the White House? Does Trump’s inner circle want to keep Loomer away? Why hasn’t Trump responded directly to Loomer’s lawsuit at all?
What do YOU think is really going on? I have my thoughts but I’m more interested in yours. Reply to this newsletter and send me an email telling me your opinion or provide me with evidence. Thanks.
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