So: is the breakup official now? No more “let’s try it again, for the good times?”
Looks like it. Donald Trump says he is officially done, finished, finito with that “biased, dumb, sleazebag,” Bill Maher.
And Trump said it vehemently and voluminously, so logorrhea-ly that he set a personal record for a word-total-busting social-message screed with his denunciation of his on-again, off-again favorite late-night host. (Not counting Greg Gutfeld, who isn’t really on in late night.)
This volcanic reaction came ten days after Maher showed up for a return dinner engagement in the White House and after the Real Time host boasted on air of the encounter as a testament to his unwillingness to join in the all-encompassing condemnation of Trump by those on the left (including virtually all his late-night peers).
And it spoke volumes about how unlikely any rapprochement was in the first place.
Maher is a comic who enjoys being a contrarian. It’s his brand. He made his late-night name, after all, on a show called Politically Incorrect.
And, over the years, he has been reliably bold in bucking conventional public sentiment: as when he challenged the notion that the 9/11 hijackers were “cowards” for their suicidal mass killings of Americans—in contrast, he said, to America firing “cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.”
His point—that you could hardly call self-destruction cowardly, no matter how heinous it was—did qualify as defensible, even if it played offensively enough that some advertisers quit the show and he wound up apologizing.
However it played, it was unquestionably contrarian.
Maher has been insistently contrarian about Trump for some time now, contrasting sharply with the comic approach of his late-night host colleagues. He clearly did not fit in with Strike Force Five, the podcast gathering that included a collection of the biggest names in late-night hosting: Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver.
His willingness to keep a (relatively) open mind about Trump certainly made him stand apart from those other hosts, and even, apparently, a significant segment of his own audience. Presumably not “deranged,” those viewers certainly have no issue laughing heartily at Maher’s Trump jokes—which are often quite good.
As in, of the cordial welcome he received from Trump at the White House: “I couldn’t have been treated better if I was Russian.”
In Trump’s belittling and sometimes misspelled soliloquy, he mocked Maher for pumping up his jokes with a “laugh machine.” A cheap shot. Maher’s studio audiences do engage in more “clapter” than audiences of any other late-night program (not every joke is worthy of a laugh and applause), but he does have legit fans in the seats laughing.
In most ways, they seem like other late-night audiences—primed to laugh at punchy jokes about a truly absurdist, perhaps flat-out crazy, president. Maher called them “bitches” for presumably being down on his era-of-good-feelings diplomacy with Trump, saying, “I know I’m the bad guy because I go and say face-to-face to the man the things you write in articles that he’ll never read. But OK, fuck you, I like these dinners.”
Speaking to media critics as well as to his audience? Because they kind of all think the same thing about Trump?
Maher’s enthusiasm for the dinners—including the “thrill” of being announced before walking in (a setup to a joke)—now has a whiff of something unexpected in such an experienced topical-humor comic: naivete.
Bill apparently walked out of that dinner (four hours long, he says; two, Trump says—surely lean toward Maher on that one) thinking he had clarified the relationship: rapport and comfort in person, with permission to do his job and speak comedy to power when onstage.
To echo Jay Leno’s most memorable line: What were you thinking? Narcissists can’t take a joke. Trump may have been able to roll with late-night jokes from David Letterman in the past. Now he sends the full force of the government after Jimmy Kimmel (and the First Amendment).
Maher did what he was supposed to do Friday night. He mocked the week’s typical bounty of ridiculousness and offensiveness. And to his credit, many of the jokes had real edge.
After describing Trump’s recent rhapsodizing about men’s asses, he said the White House had ordered new red hats reading, “Make America ‘Glee’ Again.”
And in an especially spicy shot, Maher attacked the vile Vivek Ramaswamy ad in Ohio that took advantage of his opponent’s childhood trauma. Maher’s take: Trump was saying a 12-year-old rape victim is fair game. “I know that looks bad. It sounds better on a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.”
Trump was watching and was apparently expecting some late-night “benefits” for the price of his dinner: maybe a few of those unctuous bouquets usually strewn in his path by his cabinet.
Of course he was watching. Trump reflexively derides every late-night show as “low-rated,” but he’s as reliable a viewer as any of them have. He hate-watches, hoping against hope for somebody to say something nice.
He’s always disappointed. And then enraged. Trump seems to take slights from late-night hosts harder than hot political rhetoric from Democrats. Probably because he sees them as fellow celebrities and TV stars—his competitors not for votes, but for stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
So what Bill Maher got for generously sharing cordiality was Trump on full blast. Not even Kimmel has inspired such a torrent of venom.
In one sense, it’s all good, though. Maher was in the news all day. And wow, who doesn’t want to hear what he’s going to say in response on this week’s Real Time?
Get stories like this in your inbox: Sign up for LateNighter’s free daily newsletter.
