Nearly three weeks after Donald Trump spent part of Valentine’s Day attacking Bill Maher, claiming he wasted his time having dinner with Trump. at present Last year, Maher provided a detailed refutation, complete with clips, of his position with the president, revealing that he had criticized and praised him.
At the end of the “New Rules” segment, Maher said that despite what the president wrote on Truth Social, he “does not suffer from Trump derangement syndrome.” Instead, the comedian says, the president, who continued to post on social media about Maher through Friday amid an ongoing conflict with Iran, is suffering from “Bill Maher disorder syndrome.”
Maher first corrected some facts from Trump’s Truth Social post about the dinner, noting that he did not ask for it, that he was invited by their mutual friend, Kid Rock, on his podcast, and that he “had a drink before dinner and then had two more drinks during it.”
“I had a good time,” he said. “So do you, Don, because we were talking like real human beings, not like this crazy thing you do in public, but I know that’s what you do. You are, if anything, a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. And so I did here, listing your accomplishments and how hurt you feel that people, myself included, don’t recognize them enough. I understand that feeling.”
He went on to explain that shortly after the dinner Trump sent him a text message “complaining that I was still part of the crazy left” and insisting that he should have “won the Nobel Prize for ending wars.”
Maher said he replied, “Yes, and I should have won 20 Emmys.”
“We quarreled for a while, and… [Trump] He finished by saying, “Bill, do you know what?” Don’t change. I don’t know what to do with you if you’re okay. “This is the normal human being I saw the night we broke bread,” Maher said. “And as long as I believe there is a spark of the possibility of getting this man further out, I will not consider dinner a waste of time, even as I see now that we are back to exchanging names and that I have some new ones, like ‘Very Lightweight,’ to add to the list I signed. Thank you. I’ll be with the new one.”
He then went over what he felt Trump should get credit for, showing clips of when he supported those initiatives on his platform.
First, Maher said: “Despite all the hate I received from my side, I never threw [Trump] Under the bus.”
“You don’t make any mention of ideal boundaries,” Maher added. “The border is a victory. You mentioned the mass removal of cold-blooded criminals. This is what got Trump elected. We will take out the gangs.”
He went on to say that he supports Trump’s bombing of the nuclear facility in Iran over the summer and does not “hate” the US military operation that removed Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela earlier this year.
He listed a number of other Trump initiatives he supported, including those related to animal rights, marijuana, the White House chamber, and the “Golden Rocket Dome Shield,” and that Trump “wasn’t wrong” in making NATO members pay their “fair share.”
He added: “About Nick Fuentes’s Jewish-hating faction in the Republican Party, [cutting to a clip of an earlier episode] Trump was the one who said, and I admit this to him, he said: We do not want you.
Maher showed a clip of himself admitting he was wrong when he said he thought by July 4th “the economy would be in dire straits.”
“See, that’s the difference between you and me, Don, is I can admit when I’m wrong and I can be honest,” Maher said as he began sharing some tough love with Trump. “In fact, I’m probably the last person from the crazy left who’s still an honest broker when it comes to you.”
He added: “It’s unfortunate that you can’t take criticism, because in an alternate universe where we could have more honest conversations, I could tell you things that would be very helpful, like, Don, I’ll talk to you. I’ll tell you straight. Some people don’t like you. … I always want the American president to succeed, and I give credit when you do, but there are a lot of things you do that are not my idea of success, and I have every right to say that.” This is how it is in a democratic country.”
He went on to list what he believed were Trump’s failings including the current appearance of ICE: “Yes, I’m glad you got rid of the cold-blooded criminals, but no one wanted the sadism and stupidity that came with that.”
Maher added that Elon Musk’s DOGE project was “a complete disaster. People died for no reason, and it did not reduce any government waste.”
Other Trump positions Maher opposed included the president’s position on coal being “not pretty or clean,” “siding with autocrats rather than democratic allies around the world” and hatred of “Canada and the wind.”
He added: “Criminalizing dissent is wrong, as are juveniles who prosecute people and force them to remain silent.”
“It’s not a distraction for me to always talk about your obsession with rejecting elections or your style of government of pardoning my friends and punishing my enemies or your family’s side deals that always seem to be part of everything,” he said. “We see how rich you all have become, but West Virginians don’t seem to feel like winning. Recently a Democratic senator said of your administration: ‘It’s the elites who pretend to hate them.'” Free tip, if the Democrats learn to use this message as a weapon, your MAGA movement will be in big trouble.
In his initial Truth Social post on February 14, Trump, taking issue with some of Maher’s criticism the night before, said: “Sometimes in life, we waste time! TV host Bill Maher asked to have dinner with me through one of his friends, who is also a friend of mine, and I said yes. He came to the famous Oval Office much different than I thought he would be. He was very nervous, had no confidence in himself, and to calm his nerves, he immediately, within seconds, demanded an answer.” “Vodka Tonic.” “I’ve never felt this before, I’m really scared,” he told me. In one respect, it was rather endearing! Anyway, we had a great dinner, it was quick and easy, he seemed like a nice guy, and in his first presentation after dinner, he was very respectful of our meeting – but with everything I’ve done to bring our country back from OBLIVION, why shouldn’t he be?
Trump then objected to Maher at present To “interpret[ing] “Same old story – very boring, anti-Trump.”
Of Maher, Trump said, comparing him to the late-night hosts he criticized, “He’s no different than a Kimmel, or a Fallon, or a Colbert.”
Maher briefly addressed Trump’s comments on his show on February 20 before promising a more detailed response when he returned from a week-long vacation on March 6.
“He attacked me and said that our dinner was a waste of time — well, I didn’t think so — and that I was an idiot, that I was a low renter, and all this… because I never stopped criticizing him,” Maher said on February 20. “I never said I would! I know how women feel now: A man buys you dinner and then expects you to go out. I’m not that man.”
Maher spoke about his dinner with Trump, which took place in the spring of 2025 on the April 11, 2025, episode of Real Time, saying that the president during their meeting was “generous and thoughtful,” and not like “someone who plays a crazy person on TV.”
“The guy I met is not the guy who the night before dinner tweeted a bunch of bad shit about how he thought this was a bad idea and what a deranged idiot I was,” Maher said. “I read it and thought: What a great way to welcome someone into your home.” “But when I got there, that guy wasn’t living there.”
Maher’s willingness to have dinner with Trump sparked backlash from some quarters, with Larry David even writing a satirical op-ed for New York Times,” satirizing Maher’s visit to the White House, titled “My Dinner with Adolf.”
Toward the end of the year, Maher said that David was “definitely not really my friend anymore,” indicating that they had not spoken recently.
