Latest news with #MyDinnerWith
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fox Star Maria Bartiromo Sucks Up to Trump in Stunning New Video
President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for Maria Bartiromo this week—and she wants everyone to know. The Fox Business Network anchor gushed about her private dinner with the president the night prior, praising Trump's 'very successful first 100 days in office' in a fawning segment on Mornings With Maria Thursday. 'The president could not have been more gracious and generous with his time,' she said. During the intimate meal, Bartiromo was wined and dined with 'a bundle of bibb lettuce salad and petite filet of beef with baby kale, followed by strawberry shortake.' She was joined by White House Communications Director Steven Cheung and later fawned about the event for her Mornings With Maria fans. 'I was incredibly honored to have dinner with President Trump and his key communications director, Steven Cheung, at the White House last night,' she wrote, adding that the trio discussed Trump securing the border and 'reining in inflation'—despite major stock market instability prompted by his chaotic tariff rollout. The praise didn't end there. 'After an incredibly busy night meeting business leaders at the press conference and then in the Oval Office, the president was kind enough to dine with me,' she added. Before the feast, she added, she was able to tour the president's home. 'I was so grateful to see some of the president's new designs at the White House and the changes, including that iconic portrait of President Trump with his fist in the air saying fight, fight, fight after being shot in the ear back on July 13 last year,' she said. She ended her speech by expressing extreme gratitude: 'Thank you so much, President Trump, for your leadership, friendship, and protection of this great nation.' Trump reposted the video of Bartiromo's high praise on his Truth Social account. It's not the first time the MAGA lover has dined with Trump, and it's likely far from her last. And Bartiromo isn't the only one that's been wooed by Trump's banquets. Bill Maher recently came under fire for his cozy meal with the president. The comedian compared Trump to a king and later called himself a hero for even stopping by. Like Bartiromo, he called the president 'gracious and measured.' Maher received major backlash for his obsequiousness, including from actor Larry David, who wrote a scalding New York Times essay titled 'My Dinner With Adolf' to parody Maher's visit.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bill Maher changes his tune on Trump again - calls president's first 100 days a ‘s*** show'
Bill Maher has appeared to have changed his mind about Donald Trump once again, branding the president's first 100 days in office a 's***show.' The comedian and chat show host said that though he had vowed that he was 'not going to pre-hate anything,' the decisions taken by Trump so far in his second presidency were 'just objectively bad.' Maher, who has long been critical of Trump and previously called for him to be impeached, surprisingly accepted an invitation to dine with him last month, along with musician and noted Republican Kid Rock. He said he had decided to accept the invitation to try to soften hostilities between the pair, and later caused a stir after describing the president as 'gracious and measured', and far different from the 'crazy' man he watches on TV. However, writing in a recent article for The Free Press, Maher did not pull any punches. 'After 100 days, there are probably 100 things to legitimately hate, starting with disappearing people, the inefficiency of DOGE, ignoring the Supreme Court, killing people overseas with drastic aid cuts, firing the guy in charge of his election-integrity office because he won't say 2020 was rigged, tariff-related market collapse, America no longer being seen as a safe place, the third-term talk, suing the media, Andrew Tate. . . I mean, I could just keep going,' he wrote. 'And I want to emphasize: None of my disapproval for any of this comes from reflexive Republican opposition. On all these issues, it's just objectively bad. And they know that, too.' Maher's remarks came less than a month after he described his experience with Trump as 'f***ed up… just not as f***ed up as I thought it was.' 'A crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there,' he said after the dinner, adding, '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 the time, Maher admitted he still had negative feelings about the Trump administration, but said that the president gave him a 'generous amount of time' and showcased 'a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend even though I'm not MAGA', which he said 'was the point of the dinner'. His remarks still prompted a wave of criticism, including from fellow comedian Larry David, who penned a satirical guest essay in The New York Times entitled 'My Dinner With Adolf,' in which he fictionally fawned over 'the most reviled man in history.' Although the Seinfeld co-creator never mentioned Maher by name, it was clear he was parodying the TV host's White House dinner meeting. Maher was not happy with David's comparison, telling Piers Morgan Uncensored: 'I must say, you know, come on, man – Hitler, Nazis? Nobody has been harder about – and more prescient, I must say – about Donald Trump than me. I don't need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is. 'Just the fact that I met him in person didn't change that, and the fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either.'
The Independent
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Bill Maher changes his tune on Trump again - calls president's first 100 days a ‘s*** show'
Bill Maher has appeared to have changed his mind about Donald Trump once again, branding the president's first 100 days in office a 's***show.' The comedian and chat show host said that though he had vowed that he was 'not going to pre-hate anything,' the decisions taken by Trump so far in his second presidency were 'just objectively bad.' Maher, who has long been critical of Trump and previously called for him to be impeached, surprisingly accepted an invitation to dine with him last month, along with musician and noted Republican Kid Rock. He said he had decided to accept the invitation to try to soften hostilities between the pair, and later caused a stir after describing the president as 'gracious and measured', and far different from the 'crazy' man he watches on TV. However, writing in a recent article for The Free Press, Maher did not pull any punches. 'After 100 days, there are probably 100 things to legitimately hate, starting with disappearing people, the inefficiency of DOGE, ignoring the Supreme Court, killing people overseas with drastic aid cuts, firing the guy in charge of his election-integrity office because he won't say 2020 was rigged, tariff-related market collapse, America no longer being seen as a safe place, the third-term talk, suing the media, Andrew Tate. . . I mean, I could just keep going,' he wrote. 'And I want to emphasize: None of my disapproval for any of this comes from reflexive Republican opposition. On all these issues, it's just objectively bad. And they know that, too.' Maher's remarks came less than a month after he described his experience with Trump as 'f***ed up… just not as f***ed up as I thought it was.' 'A crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there,' he said after the dinner, adding, '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 the time, Maher admitted he still had negative feelings about the Trump administration, but said that the president gave him a 'generous amount of time' and showcased 'a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend even though I'm not MAGA', which he said 'was the point of the dinner'. His remarks still prompted a wave of criticism, including from fellow comedian Larry David, who penned a satirical guest essay in The New York Times entitled 'My Dinner With Adolf,' in which he fictionally fawned over 'the most reviled man in history.' Although the Seinfeld co-creator never mentioned Maher by name, it was clear he was parodying the TV host's White House dinner meeting. Maher was not happy with David's comparison, telling Piers Morgan Uncensored: 'I must say, you know, come on, man – Hitler, Nazis? Nobody has been harder about – and more prescient, I must say – about Donald Trump than me. I don't need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is. 'Just the fact that I met him in person didn't change that, and the fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either.'
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bill Maher doesn't get Larry David's joke
Larry David — co-creator of 'Seinfeld' and creator/star of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' — penned a satirical column for The New York Times this month titled 'My Dinner With Adolf,' which lampooned 'Real Time' host Bill Maher's public comments following his dinner at the White House. Maher praised President Donald Trump over things like laughing in casual, private conversation and not ranting maniacally as he is wont to do in public. David's satirical column seemed to reference this: 'I realized I'd never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I'd seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal.' Maher, a longtime Trump critic who says David has been a friend to him, does not seem to appreciate the joke. This can't be a comfortable position for Maher to find himself in, and he's insisted that his critics are, in fact, intolerant and part of the problem. 'To use the Hitler thing — first of all, I think it's kind of insulting to six million dead Jews,' Maher told Piers Morgan Thursday. 'The minute you play the 'Hitler' card, you've lost the argument.' Maher's wrong, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. So in the style of his most recognizable routine, here are three new rules that might help him on the journey to enlightenment. New Rule #1: If you're going to build your image of being a take-no-prisoners, 'politically incorrect,' 'anti-woke,' anti-sensitivity culture comic, don't tone-police your peers' political satire or put Hitler jokes in a comedic no-go zone. Maher seemed to invoke a form of 'Godwin's Law' when he told Morgan that invoking Hitler means 'you've lost the argument.' However, Mike Godwin himself has said certain Trump-Hitler comparisons are apt — particularly his racist rhetoric about immigrants. Maher's also taking offense to a joke premise written by Larry David, who co-created a show with a legendary episode called 'The Soup Nazi,' another show with frequent Hitler and Holocaust jokes — including a Nazi dog — and who made a controversial concentration camp joke in a 'Saturday Night Live' monologue. Were all of his Hitler jokes kosher until he included Maher in one? And really, it's not hard to dig up many jokes Maher's made comparing Trump to Hitler. Just days after Trump won the 2024 election, he even told a Republican guest that Trump was 'Hitler-like' — and it didn't sound like he was joking. New Rule #2: If you're going to justify your White House dinner with Kid Rock and Trump as 'reporting' — then come out with a bigger scoop than Trump occasionally laughs in private conversations with celebrities. Maher said he heard Trump admit in the White House that he lost the 2020 election. And, Maher added, Trump 'didn't get mad' when the comic pointed out that fact. That's kind of a big deal! Especially since Trump has lied about it for five years, attempted a self-coup over it and convinced almost half the country that this incredibly consequential lie is the truth. That he was 'not mad' at a private dinner doesn't matter at all. He was quite mad about losing the election, which is why he continues to poison American politics with his big lie about it to this day. Maher claims to fearlessly speak truth to power and to be brave enough to break bread with his political adversaries. I'd ask Maher — in the event he gets another White House invite — to please, for America, politely ask his host if he'd consider doing the patriotic thing and stop misleading tens of millions of his followers and eroding trust in American elections. Then, Maher could let us know what the president says. That's news we can use! New Rule #3: When you get it wrong, be brave enough to admit it. Maher, on his own show, said of Trump: '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.' With the exception of the last sentence, that's basically the whole point of David's column. So what's the problem? 'There's gotta be a better way than just hurling insults from 3,000 miles away,' is a rationalization Maher has repeated several times since he was a guest of the president. He's argued that by enjoying a superficial social engagement with Trump, he's signaling to Trump supporters — and his own fans — that Maher is one of the good liberals searching for common ground in a divided country. This is a straw man argument. Few people are saying 'ignore Trump' or 'don't speak with Trump supporters' — the issue is whether Maher's 'reporting' served any purpose other than to soft-sell the increasingly authoritarian Trump as a normal guy in private. I mean, who cares if he is? It was 16 years and many pounds of marijuana ago, so Maher might not easily recall, but in 2009 he caused a bit of a stir by referring to America as a 'stupid' country. Because, he said, Sarah Palin — who recently had lost as the Republican vice presidential candidate in a landslide election victory for Barack Obama — might someday be elected president. Palin's know-nothing populism found a much more famous and charismatic vessel in Trump, who rode it to the White House twice — with a failed self-coup attempt thrown in between for good measure. The reality of Trump as a two nonconsecutive-term president far exceeds the horrors Maher feared of a Palin presidency that was never in real danger of actually happening. Maher recently mocked Trump's critics for lamenting the state of America after Trump won the 2024 election. But if 2009-era Bill Maher thought America was 'getting dumber by the day,' as he put it, because Palin was lingering around the edges of electoral respectability, what would that Maher think of America now that's twice elected Trump? To Maher's credit, he continues to describe Trump as a unique threat to the country, and said it's not even a close comparison to the supposed threat posed by 'wokeness.' He even listed a new rule at the end of his most recent show that seemed to get at almost exactly the point as David's column, 'New Rule: Republicans have to stop excusing all the dictator-y stuff that comes out of Trump's mouth by saying 'He's just kidding!'' The point of David's column was not that Trump has committed anything comparable to Hitler's crimes; it was to mock Trump's useful idiots (a term Maher's fond of using for pro-Palestinian student protesters), people with influential perches who are easily charmed by a powerful person's flattery, as that leader amasses power, crushes dissent and scapegoats a marginalized group of people. Maher has long lamented younger audiences 'not getting' his comedy, supposedly because they're too easily offended. I don't get the sense that Maher's actually in the tank for Trump or MAGA at all. But could it be possible, maybe just a little bit, that he's the one not getting the joke here? This article was originally published on
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Our After-Dinner Debate About Larry David's Satire
To the Editor: Re 'My Dinner With Adolf,' by Larry David (Opinion guest essay, April 25): Larry David's spoof draws a provocative analogy between Bill Maher's recent meeting with President Trump and a hypothetical dinner with Hitler. It's clever — and clarifying. But it's also incomplete. By Mr. Maher's own account, he pushed back on Mr. Trump over election denialism, Iran and birtherism — views that the president likely doesn't often hear in his echo chamber. That matters. In authoritarian systems, culpability often lies less with the despot than with the chorus of enablers around him. Mr. Maher's willingness to dissent in that room shouldn't be discounted. Still, Mr. David makes a sharp point: Personal charm — even in monstrous men — proves nothing. One needn't meet a demagogue to grasp his nature. Mr. Trump's predictably affable performance with Mr. Maher told us little. And Mr. Maher's instincts, however noble, risk confusing engagement with legitimization. Yes, we should talk across divides. But those efforts are best reserved for people at least open to change or compromise, not for those committed to manipulating and destroying the conversation itself.
