Bill Maher and Donald Trump’s relationship has ping-ponged from cordial dinners to public insults and back again. On Thursday night, it was dinner time once more.
The Real Time with Bill Maher host returned to the White House for a second meal with the president, joined by Stephen A. Smith and, once again, Kid Rock—the musician who helped broker Maher’s first dinner with Trump in 2025.
Kid Rock revealed the gathering Friday morning on Fox & Friends, calling the evening “epic.”
“There’s so many points I could do a whole hour on it,” he said.
According to Kid Rock, the four discussed everything from socialism and communism to the war in Iran, Afghanistan, unemployment among Black women, HBCU funding, and DEI.
“Two Democrats, two Republicans sit down, break bread, have laughs, talk about, have tough conversations on a lot of the issues,” he told the Fox & Friends hosts.
He said Maher raised the issue of Afghan interpreters who assisted the United States, while Smith focused in part on unemployment among Black women and funding for historically Black colleges and universities.
Smith also apparently challenged Trump on whether the administration’s rollback of DEI initiatives had discouraged private companies from supporting HBCUs, Kid Rock said.
“Stephen made a point—I want to give him a lot of credit for saying, ‘Yeah, but with Trump putting a dagger through the heart of DEI, it seems like it’s kind of scared off a lot of the corporate money coming to HBCUs,’” Kid Rock recalled.
He also claimed the table found common ground on one broader political question.
“One thing we all wholeheartedly agreed on is that socialism and communism has no place to have a foothold in our government,” he said.
Neither Maher nor Smith had publicly offered their own account of the dinner as of Friday morning.
For Maher, Thursday’s meal marked the latest turn in a long and rocky relationship with Trump.
Kid Rock helped arrange Maher’s first White House dinner with Trump in the spring of 2025. Maher came away from that meeting describing the president as “gracious and measured” in private, and suggesting the Trump he encountered face-to-face was notably different from the one he regularly criticized on Real Time.
The goodwill did not last long.
Maher went back to criticizing Trump on HBO, and Trump resumed attacking Maher in public. Over the months that followed, the president called him a “MORON,” a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT,” and said their first dinner had been a “total waste of time.”
Maher later revealed that Trump had also complained to him privately.
“I thought you were better than you used to be,” Maher recalled Trump texting him. “You’re still a lunatic.”
The cycle continued as recently as Sept. 28, when Trump once again mocked Maher’s ratings and urged Republicans to stop appearing on his show.
“It’s SAD because, in actuality, I like him,” Trump added.
Then came another invitation.
Maher disclosed on Club Random earlier this week that Trump had asked him back to the White House and, according to Maher, even promised to behave himself this time.
“He was really nice,” Maher told Ari Emanuel. “Like, ‘I promise I won’t say bad things about you like I did the last time.’”
Maher told him not to worry about it.
“You’re the president of the United States,” he recalled responding. “Say whatever the f*ck you want.”
Maher’s Real Time is on a one-week break. We’ll see if he addresses his latest meal with Trump on the show when it returns next Friday Oct. 23.
