Bill Maher will be meeting with President Donald Trump after years of regularly criticizing the MAGA leader on HBO’s “Real Time,” he confirmed in a preview of an upcoming episode of his “Club Random” podcast shared Saturday with multiple media outlets.
Maher reportedly told his guest and fellow comedian Andrew Schulz, who hosted Trump on his own podcast weeks before the 2024 presidential election, that the impending meeting was brokered by none other than MAGA darling and musician Kid Rock.
“Kid Rock was here a couple of weeks ago, and he said, ‘I want you to meet Trump,’” Maher told Schulz during the “Club Random” episode, which will be released Sunday, per Mediaite. “He said, ‘I’m gonna take you to the White House.’ So now we’re gonna do that.”
The “Bawitdaba” singer said earlier this month that he planned to “try and unite this country” by bringing Maher to the White House
Maher has slammed Trump’s policies and baseless statements for more than a decade on his HBO show — and was even sued by Trump in 2013 — but has also criticized fellow Democrats for their supposed tribalism and refusal to engage civilly with Republicans.
On “Club Random,” Maher preemptively lashed out at criticism over the meeting.
“There will be lots of people on the left who will be like, ‘How dare you talk to this man,’” he said, per Mediaite. “It’s like, ‘fuck you, I’m not playing this game that you mean girls play.’ ‘Oh, you know what? You can’t sit at my lunch table, because I’m just not talking to you.’”
“Not talking to you?” Maher continued, according to The Daily Beast. “You lost the election. Who the fuck do you think you have to talk to? It’s one thing if you win it, it’s another thing if you lose it.”
HuffPost has reached out to representatives of Maher for comment.
The self-described Democrat also noted that he won’t be dressing like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who wore black pants and a collarless black shirt at an Oval Office meeting earlier this month, and will instead wear a suit as a “sign of respect.”
The comment comes mere weeks after Maher condemned Trump for berating Zelenskyy at the White House during a televised meeting that was set to conclude with an agreement regarding Ukrainian rare minerals — but ended in a controversial blowout.
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“That’s my model for meeting Trump, it’s like, be respectful, which he deserves,” Maher told Schulz, per the Daily Beast. “He won, not once but twice. It’s funny my girl said to me, ‘What are you gonna wear?’ I said, ‘I’m not gonna dress like Zelenskyy.’”
He added, “I’m wearing a suit and tie.”
Maher has repeatedly claimed Trump is a Russian asset who won the 2016 election with help from the Kremlin. The planned get-together will make the comedian the latest prominent Trump critic to meet with him after the 2024 election, following in the footsteps of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
