On Bill Maher and Normalizing Trump
Being nice at dinner is easy.
The above photo is courtesy of the White House and shows Trump dancing at this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll. No doubt this demonstrates he can’t be all bad since, you know, dancing! Pay no attention to the disappearances and the trade wars! He’s just so wacky! This bit of pre-post snark will become clearer as you read.
While I will confess to having been aware of Bill Maher since his ABC show, Politically Incorrect, on ABC back in the day, I have only paid him passing attention over the decades. I am aware of his HBO show, Real Time With Bill Maher, that I have rarely watched despite the intersection of political junkie and comedy nerd that is represents. I will confess to having long found Maher to be insufferable, regardless of whether he agreed with me or not. He has long struck me as someone who thinks that making jokes about politics actually makes him an actual expert on the subject.
I have written, as best my memory and Google can tell me, precious little about Maher. I am fairly certain that the following, from a post I wrote on cancel culture back in 2022, is the most words I have dedicated to him.
An example of cancelation linked to speech that comes to mind (but is far older than the term “cancel culture”) is when Bill Maher said on his ABC show, Politically Incorrect, about the 9/11 hijackers: “We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it. Not cowardly. You’re right.” This led to his firing, as it was not a, well, politically correct thing is to say in the aftermath of 9/11. He lost that job in the middle of 2002 and was never heard from again, hence underscoring the power of cancellation before we had the term.
Just kidding, he started a new show with HBO the next year, which is still in production (and wherein he frequently inveighs against cancel culture).
Google reminds me that I quipped that Maher might be a bit of narcissist on Twitter about a year ago.
That self-importance kind of figures into this post. I had noted a few days ago that Larry David was trending on Twitter, and I noted at the time that it had something to do with Maher dining with Trump and that David had written something for the NYT in response. I was reminded of this this morning, and so I read David’s essay, which is here: Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf.
However, before one reads that essay, it would likely be useful to watch Maher’s “book report” on his dinner with Donald, which can be viewed on Instagram or YouTube.
I think it is worth your time if you want to assess the situation. I also think it is important (and the reason that I am even writing this post) because it shows, yet again, the ways in which an authoritarian can be normalized, and in a way that makes it easier for some segments of the general public to therefore rationalize away truly awful behavior.
A transcript can also be found via USAT, Bill Maher’s full monologue on his Donald Trump meeting: Read the transcript.
Maher ultimately notes that while he does not agree with Trump in a variety of topics, and will continue to say so, he was surprised at how nice Trump was to him.
To Maher’s credit he does note the following.
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.
I would note, however, that it does matter for that comedian to then take to their large stage and help make Trump seem normal.
There is a lot of fawning in Maher’s report.
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.
This made me think of the many times I have read people note that Trump often seems taken with the last person he talks to. The notion that a real estate developer/politician/reality TV star/lifelong celebrity would be charming in some capacity at a dinner should surprise no one, and it really has little saliency to much of, well, anything.
Maher continues.
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?
Because the public guy is the one that matters. And, moreover, the private guy is still making all the decisions that are a problem. Again, being nice at dinner is irrelevant. And yet, Maher continues immediately after the above paragraph.
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 (expletive) up. It’s just not as (expletive) up as I thought it was.
Setting aside the exact efficacy of the category, “crazy person,” the fact of the matter is that having dinner with someone is not enough to determine whether they fit in that category or not. I suspect most truly horrible people can be charming at dinner now and again, especially in a context wherein they hold all the cards (you know, like hosting a comedian at the White House when you are POTUS).
Maher is not doing anyone any favors telling his audience that Trump only “plays a crazy person on TV.” It is just more normalization of a person doing a lot of very bad things. Beyond that, why is the assumption that Trump is “playing” crazy, but is actually nice? Maybe he was “playing a nice person at dinner”? Or, maybe, people are complicated and they can both be gracious hosts and also heartless abusers of human rights?
The notion that a two-and-a-half-hour dinner is enough to balance off all the “crazy person” is an odd stance, to put it mildly.
One of the most basic lessons I learned as an undergraduate political science major oh those many years ago was, pay attention to what politicians do, not what they say.
Talk is, as they say, cheap.
And Maher even acknowledges the following (emphasis mine).
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.
Ok, so before I comment on the bolded portion, Maher seems to be treating all this like, well, Trump has his job and I have mine, so what’s the big deal? (Spoiler alert: I don’t think Trump is spending a lot of time thinking about Bill Maher, dinner, or no). Look, that worked for Dana Carvey and George H. W. Bush (i.e., a president appreciating being made fun of by a comedian).
Maher makes it sound like he and Trump are like Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, doing their jobs when they are on the clock, but really just working stiffs doin’ their jobs. I mean, it’s a livin’! Amiright?
But let me turn to, at minimum, “disappearing people.” Trump can have dinner with one comedian a night for the rest of his term, and be nice to them all, and that doesn’t make “disappearing people” just part of the gig and therefore grist for Maher’s comedy “punches.”
I’m sorry, but disappearing people is, again, a human rights abuse and is contrary to the Constitutional order and the rule of law. This is not just some topic one can have a light-hearted disagreement about.
Lauching trade wars that cause trillions of dollar in wealth to evaporate, all the while threatening economic contraction (including people’s jobs and therefore ability to care or themselves) is not just a punchline.
“[G]utting the government with glee” is a destructive action that will cause real harm and not just grist for the monologue mill.
Threatening to stay for a third term is a challenge to the constitutional order, and one that anyone who studies Latin America knows is a classic dictator move. It’s not just some wacky thing the president mentioned.
I am willing to be that Augusto Pinochet could be a gracious host at dinner. That hypothetical graciousness would not have unkilled thousands of Chileans.
And the fact that Donald Trump laughed at some of Bill Maher’s jokes doesn’t change the fact that over a hundred persons were rendered to a Salvadoran torture prison for life without due process of law.
I do not expect Bill Maher to be an avatar of wisdom, but it is nonetheless frustrating to watch someone with his platform give Trump this much cover. It does, however, confirm my assessment of Maher’s intellect and self-absorption. Although maybe he is really super-smart and humble at a private dinner!
Again here’s David essay, which I think is an effective satirical piece, makes a similar point with more humor than I did.
(Amusingly, the Times felt the need to explain why they published the David essay. I guess they didn’t want us all confused. They clearly feel a bit sensitive about using the H-word, although I suspect they also knew a Larry David piece would draw a lot of eyeballs: Opinion Today: Larry David Imagines a Private Dinner With Hitler).
Adolf Musk was a vegetarian and he loved dogs. Stalin was a movie buff.
Exactly this.
As you know, Bill has been harping on ‘both sides must start talking to each other’ and he rationalizes that his dinner with Trump is part of that. Yes, he recently joked that this was a ‘Nixon goes to China’ type of action on his part. A joke to be sure but, ‘no.’
I see a dinner with Trump as a classic Scorpion-Frog fable: the scorpion offers to ferry the frog across a river and promises he won’t sting the frog, then of course he does, and when asked by the dying frog why he did that, the scorpion basically says it’s because that’s who I am.
This is Bill joining the On Bended Knee Tour, which has so many hapless frogs on board now – Columbia University, prestgious Law Firms, Tech billionaires. To me, depressing and Disgusting.
And why would Bill not be flattered by being asked his opinion on matters like Iran? He again seems like someone who is ok with a lot of what Trump does (from the transcript: “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.”) while not liking Trump himself. And now he’s seen Trumps true face, and he likes it. Now, granted, a lot of people from Trumps first administration who spent much more time with Trump might not agree with Bill about him being such a delight but… Well, maybe this is where Maher starts his full Greenwald/Weiss turn.
It’s also a bit of a head scratcher that he thinks he would not have been comfortable with Clinton and Obama, both of whom are well known to be pretty damn charming.
Ha. We should be so lucky, we’d be better off now with Biden’s DEI hires.
Has Bill Maher ever uttered the words “white male privilege has gone too far”?
Left to its own devices, America would place incompetent, unqualified rapists like Donald Trump and drunks like Pete Hegseth in charge of everything everywhere. When clowns like these are running the country into the ground with ignorance and mediocrity, it’s clear affirmative action is needed and DEI hasn’t gone far enough.
Telsa’s board should seriously consider a DEI leader, since Nazi-saluting drug addict Musk is now ruining that company too.
So then it has to be asked: is Maher’s show to poor to put a research guy on payroll, or is Maher as big an idiot as Larry David thinks he is?
There are at least half a million Syrian refugees in Saudi Arabia — if not millions (SA is vast + does not officially track this.)
There are 1.5-2 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The NYT did a long form piece on this cohort not long ago.
There are 1.5+ million Syrian refugees in Egypt, etc.
I could go on listing the data that proves Maher has no credibility, but the point is that facts do matter. Just not to AfD types, MAGA, and Trump apologist pickme pundits who can’t be bothered to factcheck long enough to stop brainwashing audiences with bs rightwing propaganda.
I wish I could find a clip because I only have vague memories of it… but back in the 80s show “Wiseguy” the undercover cop was once talking to his mom about how he was feeling bad that he would betray all these people he was getting friendly with.. and she pointed out that everyone is nice to their friends, it’s how they treat everyone else that shows what they are really like. I mean, i hope I’m not suffering some sort of Mandela effect…
Forget where i heard this. “If you are nice to me but mean to the waiter, you are NOT a nice person.”
I’m sorry, Steven. I cannot be sure if the concerns you highlight are your real concerns about Trump.
I feel like what Maher experienced at that dinner might be best described as an influence op. I don’t think it’s all that much different than inviting a Supreme Court Justice to vacation with you on your yacht. Gosh, he’s such a charming guy, and he wants my opinion on things!
I think that what happened to Musk was a series of these done by rich guys and Russians. Along with the drug abuse.
@Kurtz: It’s hard to tell, I know.
@Assad K: “I wish I could find a clip because I only have vague memories of it… but back in the 80s show “Wiseguy””
I doubt you’re looking to comb through the entire first season searching for this scene (which as I recall comes in the first half of the first season) but if you’re interested in revisiting the series it’s one of many vintage Cannell shows that have just started streaming on Amazon Prime. It holds up really well — essentially inventing the short-run serialized Netflix format decades in advance…
If Kid Rock is at the dinner table, sorry, it’s not a serious affair, nor are any of the discussions to be deemed serious or taken seriously. It was just Trumps dinner and you happened to be invited. He could care less. Put cameras at that dinner and let’s see what happens.
What I’d like to know is whether this not-crazy person who plays a crazy person discussed any non-crazy policy in at the dinner with the Quisling.
There are people in Boston that will tell you Whitey Bulger was a nice guy when you ran into him at the liquor store.
@wr:
Thanks! May need to rewatch at least the first season…
As far as I can tell, both Maher and Trump have a surface level understanding of basically every issue of importance. Naturally they’d get along, regardless of whether they actually agree. Everything can be reduced to a soundbite or a joke, and whoever has the best one wins in their world.
@DK:
iirc the largest number of Syrian refugees is in Turkey.
One reason why Ankara moved to support the ouster of Assad, and to stabilise the new Syrian government
@Kathy:
Attila the Hun was known for his hospitality, when not at work on the day job of pillage and massacre.
I caught on to Bill during the Obama administration. Bill had a show wherein he went on and on about Obama’s refusal to explain why he would not use the term “Muslim terrorists”, but I paused the show to google that question and straight away there was Obama on You Tube explaining exactly why he avoided the term. No research, Bill? Or perhaps there was. Doesn’t make any difference to me. Lazy, dishonest, both equal “unreliable source of information”.
Another calm, rational person (in private).
As Prof Taylor said so well….It’s what a person does, Bill. The only information from this is that you’re a sucker for flattery too.
@DK:
Consulting the Magic 8 Ball… “signs point to yes”
I think Bill Maher could be replaced by an LLM. Exposed to lots of information, cannot distinguish good from bad, wildly incurious about the difference, makes shit up to fit his beliefs, and supremely confident in his answers.
He’s just not as polite as most LLMs.
Sooo… this is not very important, but I did notice something. When Trump dances, he makes fists. Those are pretty tight fists in the photo above, you can see the tension in them. (Oh, and by the way, those are terrible fists for punching, too, because his wrists are bent, and other reasons as well).
When I dance, my hands are open. Not “jazz hands” open, but open, unless I do a specific gesture.
But maybe that’s just me, I thought. So I just looked at about 100 photos that Google showed me in response to “amateur male dancing”. I saw one where the men had closed hands, but it looks like they were maybe about to snap their fingers? Another one where a closed hand (but relaxed, and it would not occur to me to call it a “fist”) is near the mans face.
Does this strike all of you unusual? I’m certainly not someone who has studied regional/cultural difference in “natural” male dancing.
Trump is no stranger to dancing. I recall seeing stories about appearances at Studio 54 once upon a time. It just seems an odd stylistic choice. He seems to really love making fists.
@JohnSF:
If the US is ever liberated, I recommend visiting the Mob museum in Las Vegas. Among the last exhibits if you go through the museum in order (you begin at the top floor), are family photos of several early XX century mobsters, mostly big fish. These are totally normal family photos.
I found them disturbing, considering how violent and depraved the mob bosses were. Very much like the felon and nazi in the White House these days.
@Jay L Gischer:
I think it’s Trump’s half-assed notion of the frug.
@Jay L Gischer:
@CSK:
That pose, especially with the fists, reminds me of the australopithecines when the Monolith plays Thus Spoke Zarathustra in 2001.
@Jay L Gischer: @CSK: @Kathy: Ironically, Maher himself has a description, and it is one that I have heard multiple people say. I confess it is apt, albeit obscene.
And I would be lying if I said it didn’t leap to mind when I picked the photo.
When someone invites you to dinner and turns on the charm, sometimes they are just trying to get into your pants. Bill, do you think that Trump respected you the next morning?
@Slugger: @Steven L. Taylor:
These two comments need to be separated:
We do need liberals and conservatives to talk to each other. You can have, for example, civil conversations about whether to open borders to immigration or tightsen immigration standards; the efficacy of a VAT vs. an income tax; or the multifarious failings of the Dallas Cowboys. But I, for one, find it difficult to be civil toward a person who views due process as a mere inconvenience and inferior to our president’s “BecauseISaidSo” legal doctrine.
@Quietus Minimus: “But I, for one, find it difficult to be civil toward a person who views due process as a mere inconvenience and inferior to our president’s “Because I Said So” legal doctrine.”
The last few comments in response to a post are often ignored. Hopefully, that won’t be the case here, because this is key, IMO.
@Winecoff46: The fact that comments late in the thread are not replied to is not the same as being ignored.
@Quietus Minimus: THIS! 100% THIS!
@Quietus Minimus: THIS! 100% THIS!
@Winecoff46:..@just nutha:..late comments…
The first thing I do when I open OTB in the morning is check the previous days threads for comments posted after the Midnight Hour.
@Quietus Minimus: Indeed. Maher makes this all sound like it is about talking to one another.
But this isn’t Trump talking to him. It is Trump, at best, placating him.
@Kurtz: I dunno. It seems a surreptitiously accurate alignment!
This could very well be the takeaway of Maher’s report. At no point did he say anything to normalize anything Trump has done. You’re the one doing that – and then attacking that strawman argument that nobody made. Yes, Hitler could have loved puppies, and that doesn’t change a thing about how vile he was. Him being vile also doesn’t change the fact that he loves puppies. Facts are facts. Are you so terrified that people might start liking Hitler because he loves puppies, that you need to suppress that information from the world?
This is extreme left partisanship on display and you know what? That’s exactly what created the environment for someone like Trump to emerge. Keep at it, and see what happens to your country.
@JohnSF: Maher would have been better regarded had he closed his supplication with the last sentence of the link you presented: “After spending most of the night at the party, we left, having no wish to pursue the drinking any further.”
Christ, did you have to call the paramedics Steven when Obama was seen laughing with Trump at Carter’s funeral???
Oh the horror! Didn’t Obama realize the Nazi he was sitting with? Why didn’t Barack slap him, eh?
Or maybe, just maybe a guy named Hussein knows infinitely more than all the closed minded woke people here on how to WIN elections and appeal, to let’s say white people in Indiana. DK, can you ever stop with your bigotry towards white people?
Let’s attack Obama now as it’s fashionable for all the woke new Millennial libs to bury anyone that dares disagree with their DEI trans open border obsession which no doubt elected a lunatic for the second time
Howls of “go screw yourself Nazi Trumper” in 5..4..3..2….
Steven, since you admitted you barely watch him, go back to his shoes in 2019/2020 when he asked every Dem candidate how they would handle Trump when he refused to accept the election results.
All of them called Bill basically an alarmist and dismissed the notion. Maher was calling out Trump since 2016 as a fascist narcissist that would undermine the Constitution and no one believed him then. He was prescient 6 years ago when he said Trump learned his lesson and would appoint only crony loyalists yes men/women/they/ next time to remove any guard rails.
I’ve watched virtually every Real Time show so I do know that you take a rather facile, superficial knowledge of his show (as you admitted) and extrapolate this one dinner to fit your rather limited view of Maher’s gestalt when it comes to Trump.
@John Smith: Announcing that Hitler loves puppies while six million are starved and executed in the concentration camps is, yes it is, distracting and normalizing. Announcing that Hitler loved puppies while doing a postmortem on his corpse, however, is ironic.
I watched Bill Maher’s show for a while in the early 2000s. At first, I enjoyed it. But as time went on, I noticed attitudes and behaviors that put me off more and more, until I found him unwatchable. For one thing, he overestimates his own intellect and believes he can match wits with any guest on the show, regardless of their expertise. This only works out well if the guest agrees with him. Whenever they start outpointing Bill in debate, he’ll quickly shut them down via changing the subject and/or ridicule. Sometimes he even does a solo spot about it in a future episode, attacking that person’s views when they are no longer there to defend themselves.
Maher’s overstuffed ego makes him prone to flattery. So it’s no surprise to hear him ooze about El Presidente thinking him “a smart guy” and soliciting his opinions. I guarantee that if Trump offered to make Bill one of his “Hollywood ambassadors,” he’d accept in a heartbeat.
Maher donated $1 million to Obama’s campaign. Regularly skewers Trump and was sued by Trump for saying his father was an orangutan and has said ad nausea he will never switch parties to Republican then launches into a comparison of Trump Cabinet members kowtowing to Trump and says “here’s why I will never be a Republican. I believe in democracy not blind loyalty to a madman.”
But Bill is not woke enough to the purity police who’d rather lose to a Nazi then admit our trans policy is unpopular and cost us votes.
And to all you who say it’s the economy that was the issue, explain Dems losing Arizona?
AZ has the fastest growing state economy and is awash with CHIPS Act money. It’s 1950s boom times caused in large part by Biden’s policies. There’s a Dem Governor and two Dem Senators yet we LOST
Why? Border, DEI and trans. The economy was the best in the country yet Harris could not make the connection to Dem industrial policy and the robust economy. I do business in Arizona and they ran that prison and the them/they commercials non stop. We didn’t see that in California since the GOP didn’t want to waste $$$$ here.
But when I saw those commercials, I had a sinking feeling. And I was right. Those ads had a big impact. Enough in my opinion to overcome the economic success.
So the skunk had dinner with the rat and says he doesn’t stink so much.
@The Q:
No. Really more thoughts along the lines that you are being unnecessarily confrontational (which has been your wont of late).
But, really, worse, your rant ignores the post and ignore what Maher said. If you want to argue with what I have written feel free.
Note that I did not extrapolate anything. I was reacting to what Maher himself said. Would you like to comment on that?
@The Q:
What you are noting is that bigotry is more powerful than reality, not that Harris was running, say, on trans rights are her signature issue.
@The Q: And BTW, what Maher donated and said previously doesn’t change what he said.
If you watch him so religiously, I am assuming you saw his book report. What is your view of that?
@The Q: One question: what do you think was the point of Maher’s monologue about his dinner with Donald?
@Ken: Exactly.
@Garth Blackwood: “he overestimates his own intellect” and
“Maher’s overstuffed ego makes him prone to flattery.” Indeed.
Dr. Taylor, I watched his book report. But I viewed it in a context that you can’t, i.e. I’m much more familiar with his oeuvre than you as you admit. I cringed at certain parts but I understood what he was trying to do. The organizer of the dinner was Kid Rock, who everyone hates here. He played Obama’s inaugural party. Republicans did not like this but he said it he did it because he was asked by the POTUS. Did the GOP go apeshit because it “normalized” Obama? Yes, of they did and they came off as just as big azzholes as those condemning Maher on this thread.
My take is we got our ass kicked by a nascent Nazi lunatic and most purists here REFUSE to give up their silly, doctrinaire obeisance to policies that are unpopular. I don’t want to lose another election to prove these out of touch, narrow minded Maoists wrong. But we will if Beth and DK hold sway in the Party.
Victor, thank you for that eloquent Churchillian response.
Maher is not the problem. The people who are the problem are those that think Maher is the problem.
@The Q: I understand and acknowledge you know more about Bill Maher than I do.
However, nothing in your comment addresses anything I wrote in the OP. It seems fair that if you are going to criticize me, especially as forcefully as you are doing, you should address the substance of what I wrote rather than having a side argument about something else.