Ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann unloads on Bill Maher over visit with Trump
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By Hanna Panreck, Lindsay Kornick
Published April 13, 2025
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann unloaded on Bill Maher on Saturday after the "Real Time" host revealed some details from his meeting with President Donald Trump.
"BTW don't overanalyze Maher prostituting himself to Trump, Maher works for the same fascists at Warner who took over and corrupted CNN," Olbermann wrote on X Saturday.
Maher said that the president was "gracious and measured" during his visit with him, and added, "everything I've ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent at least on this night with this guy."
Olbermann savaged him as a "shameless opportunist."
"I've known Bill since 1978. He was a shameless opportunist with no real principles then and he remains so. This is so he can keep his HBO show," the former MSNBC host continued.
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Olbermann previously called Maher a "selfish and unfunny scumbag" in 2023 after Maher announced he would resume producing and airing episodes of his show despite the writers' strike at the time.
"Without writers, the new weekly SCAB edition of 'Real Time With @billmaher' will be 83 seconds long," Olbermann commented.
He added, "As somebody who's known you since 1978: F--- you, Bill, you selfish and unfunny scumbag."
Fox News Digital reached out to Maher's "Real Time" representative for a comment.
During Maher's "Real Time" segment, he called out liberals and other critics who took issue with him meeting with Trump at all.
"And I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. 'Oh, my God, Bill, you gonna say something nice about him?' What I'm going to do is report exactly what happened," Maher said, adding he "didn't go MAGA. And to the president's credit, there was no pressure to."
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He went on to share that his favorite moment was when they both said they heard from a lot of people who liked how they were having dinner together, and how they agreed they didn't like those who didn't want them to meet.
"Don't talk, as opposed to what? Writing the same editorial for the millionth time and making 25-hour speeches into the wind. Really, that's what liberals have?" Maher said.
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Frequently, incriminating information is offered by nervous exam-takers who don't understand exactly how the process works. Pop culture often suggests that when a person is hooked up to a polygraph machine, their lies will be detected. But that is not exactly true. 'The polygraph works because we think it works. It's a tool of psychological coercion in an already intimidating environment—particularly when it has the weight of the federal government behind it,' Katwala told me. But the intimidation is probably the point. 'Using the polygraph may not help you catch the leakers, but the idea of it could well scare any potential future leakers into keeping their mouths shut,' Katwala said. The man credited with fully developing the polygraph, a Berkeley police officer named John Larson, who also had a PhD in psychology, would later turn on his invention as unreliable, according to Katwala. Larson was inspired by the truth-telling machine of William Marston, himself a psychologist, but one with an active imagination and a flair for the theatrical. Zaid described him as the PT Barnum of polygraphy. Here's a video of Marston using a polygraph-like machine and claiming to identify the varying emotions of blonde, brunette and redheaded women. His conclusion was that redheads like to gamble, brunettes are looking for love and blondes are easiest to scare. Okay. Marston also invented the comic book hero Wonder Woman, with her Lasso of Truth. Katwala warns that there are new technologies being developed with the help of AI or revolving around brain waves, but he argues they should be viewed just with the same skepticism as the polygraph machine. 'None of them get past the Pinocchio's nose problem — everyone's different, and something that works for one person might not work for everyone,' he said. But they could all be used in the same coercive way as the polygraph machine.
