Bill Maher stood his ground during a podcast released Monday, telling his guest Sam Harris to get a reality check after criticizing his dinner with President Donald Trump.
After years of criticizing him and his policies, Maher made headlines when he accepted Trump’s invitation to a private dinner at the White House last year. Maher praised Trump for his friendly reception and hosting that night, and has rebuked his fans and fellow celebrities alike for criticizing him for accepting the invitation.
Harris, a prominent atheist and liberal podcaster, challenged Maher about the dinner, saying he was frustrated by “podcast bros” and those who had done “irresponsible interviews” that helped normalize Trump before he won the 2024 election. Harris had also criticized Maher directly on his own podcast last April, the same month the actual dinner with Trump occurred.
They spoke about their past disagreement over this issue, and Maher asked, “Then what is the argument?”
“So here’s the argument,” Harris replied. “I think it’s a truly a no-win situation you walked into. Now I don’t – I – now I completely understand why it seemed like the right thing to do, and I’d be interested to know if it if in retrospect you think it, it seems like the right thing.
“It’s only no it’s only a no-win with the people who hated me already. The Bluesky crowd who don’t like you either, and that’s okay. We wear that as a badge of honor,” Maher said.
Harris compared Maher normalizing Trump to all of the establishment figures who worked with the first Trump administration, arguing that rather than bring political normalcy, they had actually served to normalize Trump’s agenda.
Maher immediately balked, saying he was not a cabinet member, he merely had dinner with Trump. He went on to cite that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had a friendly meeting with Trump as well and argued that accepting Trump’s role as president is a mere pragmatic acceptance of reality.
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“I’m not saying you can take the crazy out of the equation,” Maher said. “I’m just saying he’s there. He’s not going anywhere. You can’t isolate him. You can’t elevate him. You have to deal with the person who is there.”
He went on to reject the critique that he was irresponsibly humanizing him.
“He’s a human. Can I just be up upfront about that? He is a human with great flaws which we’ve all recognized. But it is a human you have to deal with, and it’s better to deal with. There is no there there to the other side. The other side is just ‘No we go sit at the lunch table, and we don’t invite him over.’ It’s just silly,” Maher said.
