Bill Maher responds to Larry David’s harsh criticism of Trump.

Bill Maher clapped back at Larry David after the comedy icon satirized the HBO host’s meeting with Donald Trump but suggested their friendship could be repaired.

David, 77, wrote a New York Times op-ed this past week entitled ‘My Dinner with Adolf’ that mocked Maher’s recap of his dinner with the president, Kid Rock and Dana White.  

‘I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity,’ David wrote, comparing meeting Trump now to meeting Hitler in 1939.

Maher finally responded to David in an interview with Piers Morgan and he said David was insulting to Holocaust victims. 

‘I just think it’s kind of insulting to six million dead Jews, you know, like that should kind of be in its own place in history. And I know people can say, well, we’re just comparing it in this way. Well, it’s an argument you kind of lost just to start it,’ Maher said.

Maher added that while ‘nobody has been harder’ on Trump than he has, references to Hitler need to remain separate because he ‘is the GOAT of evil.’ 

‘So, you know, did I think that was appropriate? No, but people have the right to disagree.’

Morgan attempted to add fuel to the fire by suggesting that David has been silent about the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and rising antisemitism in America.

Maher noted that ‘that is an interesting irony’ but added that he hopes things can be repaired between himself and the Seinfeld co-creator, despite admitting the op-ed ‘wasn’t my favourite moment of our friendship.’ 

‘I don’t want to make this constantly personal with me and Larry. I mean, we might be friends again. I don’t know, you know, I can be. I mean, I can take a shot, and I also can absolutely take it when people disagree with me,’ he said. 

‘That’s not exactly the way I would have done it. But, you know, I again, let’s, let’s go to 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. So, if I could talk to Trump, I could talk to Larry David too.’

Maher said Trump was ‘gracious and measured’ in what he described as a positive meeting with the president, to the point that he walked away with a cheeky gift.

Maher has always attacked Trump on his HBO show dating back over a decade, when the two were involved in a lawsuit over Maher claiming the president’s father was an orangutan. 

On a recent show, he took time out exclusively to ‘give you my book report on my visit to the White House,’ which saw him have dinner with Trump and UFC owner Dana White.

The lefty comedian confirmed the meeting had been arranged by musician and Trump fan Kid Rock, who also attended: ‘Because we share a belief that there’s gotta be something better than hurling insults at each other from 3,000 miles away.’

He slammed those who saw the event as some kind of important diplomacy meeting.

‘For all the people who treated this like it was some sort of summit meeting, you’re ridiculous. Like I was gonna sign a treaty or something? I’m a f***ing comedian, I have no power! He’s the most powerful leader in the world, I’m not the leader of anything,’ Maher said. 

The comic did say that he wanted to represent ‘a contingent of centrist-minded people who believe there’s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.’

He confirmed that Trump was a ‘different’ person than he’d seen in the public eye over the last decade and even the night before, when the president publicly wondered if the meeting was even a good idea.

‘The guy I met is not the person who, the night before, s***-tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea, and what a deranged asshole I was.’ 

‘He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public,’ Maher added. 

Perhaps most striking to Maher was that Trump ‘laughed’ and has a sense of humor about himself. 

‘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,’ Maher said.

‘I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it, which he did with good humor,’ he added.

He joked about how the hoards of MAGA haters must be hating this: ‘I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened.’

‘I’m gonna report what happened and you decide. If that’s not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don’t give a f***,’ Maher said unapologetically. 

He said that the president did not ask him for his support and when he gifted Maher several Trump hats, he didn’t ask him to take a photograph wearing them. 

‘I’m just taking it as a positive this person exists because everything I’ve ever not like about him was, I swear to God, absent, at least on this night with this guy,’ he said.

The discussion largely was one of Trump asking for Maher’s thoughts on various hot political topics, which he said he was heard out on, if not agreed with. 

He confronted Trump mostly that he agreed with him on several issues, like immigration, improving police morale, keeping transgender people out of women’s sports and several other ideas.  

‘I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him,’ he said.

Maher said that while he voted for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, ‘I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was comfortable talking to Donald Trump.’

‘I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days,’ he said, taking shots at liberals for their ineffective means of protest against the president.

The pair even joked about the orangutan lawsuit, with Maher explaining he didn’t like how he discussed Barack Obama’s place of birth and Maher saying the president understood. 

All along, he seemed to reiterate that he wished the Trump he met would be like that all the time, asking: ‘Why can’t we get the guy I met to be the public guy?’

‘I went into the mind and that’s what’s down there. A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person lives there, which I know is f***ed up, its just not as f***ed up as I thought it was,’ he said in summary. 

He said that he believes that the pair will likely go back to insulting each other, joking about Trump starting ‘a new list.’

However, he said that he believes Trump understands that ‘I have a job to do.’

‘MAGA fans, don’t worry. Your boy gave me nothing, just hats and a very generous amount of time and a willingness to accept me as a possible friend even though I’m not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner,’ he said.

However, late on, the two shared a moment in the Oval Office where both admitted that there were a lot of people who liked that they were meeting but a lot of people who didn’t want them to meet whatsoever.

It was there that they were both in complete agreement. 

‘The people who don’t even want us to talk? We don’t like you,’ he said.