Bill Maher has responded for the first time to President Donald Trump’s record-long Truth Social attack on him. He disputed several of the president’s claims, starting with who calls whom.
On Friday’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher held up a printout of Trump’s post, which ran more than 1,300 words and was Trump’s longest ever on the platform, according to USA Today's reporting.
“Longest ever! Kind of a flex,” Maher joked in his monologue. “I tell you, dining at the White House is the opposite of the Cheesecake Factory: After you leave, they review you.”
Trump’s post ended with “Bill, don’t call me anymore.” Maher said he never has.
“I’ve never called you,” Maher said. “You call me! I’d be afraid to call you; you’re the president. I think you’re too busy. Well, plainly not.”
Trump had also claimed Maher “invited himself to the White House.” Maher replied, “As if you could do that!”
Maher also denied Trump’s claim that he showed up with “a seriously bruised eye and nose area.” He pointed to photos from the dinner that, he said, the White House itself had given him.
“I don’t have it. It’s in the pictures!” Maher said.
Maher said the point of his dinners with Trump is that they can disagree without hating each other. His first guest, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), called the monologue “funny as hell.” Maher told Cruz he was “trying not to fight” and “could have been meaner.”
Trump went after Maher on Oct. 25, calling him a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER” and a “biased, dumb SLEAZEBAG.” The post came after the two had dinner at the White House on Oct. 15 with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and Kid Rock. USA Today reported that Trump initially called the dinner “great.” The attack followed Maher’s Oct. 23 monologue, in which he said Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president heading into a midterm and that Republicans are distancing themselves from him.