President Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday to torch television host Bill Maher, calling a prior White House dinner with the Real Time host a waste of time and lumping him in with the rest of late-night television's anti-Trump lineup.
The post came in direct response to Maher's Friday broadcast, where the host criticized Trump over a Truth Social post about China, Canada, and ice hockey. Trump wasn't having it.
"Sometimes in life you waste time! T.V. Host Bill Maher asked to have dinner with me through one of his friends, also a friend of mine, and I agreed. He came into the famed Oval Office much different than I thought he would be."
What followed was a detailed — and characteristically vivid — account of a dinner that took place at the White House at the end of March 2025, one that Maher himself had requested through a mutual friend.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Trump painted a picture of Maher as a man utterly out of his element in the Oval Office. According to the president, Maher was rattled from the moment he walked in — asking for a vodka tonic within seconds of arriving.
"He was extremely nervous, had ZERO confidence in himself and, to soothe his nerves, immediately, within seconds, asked for a 'Vodka Tonic.' He said to me, 'I've never felt like this before, I'm actually scared.' In one respect, it was somewhat endearing!"
Trump acknowledged the dinner itself went well — quick, easy, even pleasant. And he noted that Maher's first show after the meeting reflected that.
"Anyway, we had a great dinner, it was quick, easy, and he seemed to be a nice guy and, for his first show after our dinner, he was very respectful about our meeting — But with everything I have done in bringing our Country back from 'OBLIVION,' why wouldn't he be?"
That's the part worth paying attention to. Maher left the White House and told his audience exactly what he saw. On the April 11 episode of Real Time, he described Trump as "gracious and measured" — someone entirely different from the caricature cable news constructs nightly.
"Trump was gracious and measured and why he isn't that in other settings, I don't know and I can't answer, and it's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw and I wasn't high."
Maher even acknowledged the disconnect between the man he met and the online persona, noting that Trump had posted negative comments about him the night before the dinner — then welcomed him warmly in person.
"The guy I met is not the person who the night before the dinner shit tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this was a bad idea and what a deranged asshole I was."
"But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there."
So Maher saw the real thing. Said so publicly. And then — like clockwork — drifted right back to the script.
This is the part that matters more than any dinner anecdote. Maher had a firsthand experience that contradicted the dominant media narrative about the president. He admitted it on air. He told his audience he wasn't lying.
And then he went right back to mocking the president on the next convenient pretext — in this case, Trump's Monday Truth Social post joking that China would terminate all ice hockey in Canada and eliminate the Stanley Cup.
Trump made clear the hockey comment was a joke. He said so explicitly in his response:
"I jokingly stated in a TRUTH that, 'The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup.' Well, he went on and on about the Hockey statement, like 'What kind of a person would say such a foolish thing as this,' as though I were being serious when I said it"
This is the cycle. A media figure encounters Trump in person, finds him nothing like the monster they've been selling their audiences, says so — and within months is right back to treating every post as a psychiatric exhibit. The gravitational pull of the entertainment-media ecosystem is stronger than any single honest moment.
Maher himself said it best in April: "You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar." The problem isn't that he lied then. It's that honesty had a shelf life.
Trump's sharpest line landed at the end. After recounting the dinner, the hockey joke, and Maher's apparent desire to return to the White House — even requesting an invite to the Christmas Party — Trump delivered the verdict:
"Fortunately, his Television Ratings are so low that nobody will learn about his various Fake News statements about me. He is no different than Kimmel, Fallon, or Colbert but, I must admit, slightly more talented!"
For years, Maher cultivated a brand as the liberal who would say what other liberals wouldn't. The one who pushed back on progressive orthodoxy, who called out wokeness, who occasionally gave conservatives a fair hearing. That brand earned him a White House dinner. It earned him a level of respect from people across the political spectrum who were tired of the monoculture of late-night television.
Trump just revoked the distinction. In one sentence, he collapsed the space Maher spent years carving out — reducing him to just another member of the late-night chorus. Kimmel. Fallon. Colbert. Maher. Same product, slightly better packaging.
Whether that's entirely fair is beside the point. What matters is that Maher had an opportunity almost no media figure gets: a private dinner with the president, a genuine human interaction that he publicly acknowledged shattered his expectations. He could have built on that. He could have used it to model something different — a media figure capable of disagreeing with a president without defaulting to the same exhausted contempt.
Instead, he went back to the greenroom and picked up right where he left off.
Trump called the dinner a waste of time. He's probably right — but not for the reason he thinks. The waste isn't that Maher reverted to form. That was predictable. The waste is that Maher proved, on camera, that the media's Trump caricature doesn't survive contact with the actual man — and then decided it didn't matter.
That tells you everything about the incentive structure of modern political entertainment. Honesty about Trump doesn't get clips shared. It doesn't trend. It makes your audience uncomfortable and your bookers nervous. So you tell the truth once, collect your credibility points, and quietly shelve it.
Trump, meanwhile, moves on to the next negotiation, the next policy fight, the next rally. He doesn't need Bill Maher's validation. He said as much:
"I'd much rather spend my time MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN than wasting it on him."
The dinner happened. The truth came out. And then the machine swallowed it whole.
