Bill Maher Has Some Choice Words for Trump After His 1,300-Word Rant: ‘I Don’t Want It to Be This Way’

“So, did you see the 1300 word tweet he sent out? Longest ever. Kind of a flex,” he said during Friday’s monologue for HBO’s “Real Time.” “I’ll tell you, dining at the White House is the opposite of the Cheesecake Factory. After you leave, they review you. I mean, he went off on me like Kelly Clarkson in a toy store. Eating with Trump is like dating Taylor Swift. It’s a lot of laughs at the time, but later on they’re tearing you a new asshole.” He added: “I have it here. I’m going to look. I don’t want it to be this way … The whole point of having these dinners was talk, disagree, but listen, which he does in person. But don’t hate each other. And then I go back to my job here, and then the heartaches begin.” As Maher went on, he fact-checked several of Trump’s digs, with the comedian noting it “pisses [him] off” that the president “doesn’t even notice what I actually say.” Maher then cut to all the times he has defended the Iran War, with the comedian quipping at the end of the compilation: “So am I smart now?” “He talks about how I called him incessantly,” he continued. “I’ve never called you. You call me. I’d be afraid to call you. You’re the president. I think you’re too busy.” On Trump’s claim that he invited himself to the White House, Maher hit back, “As if you could do that. ‘Sir. Bill Maher is here.’ ‘Well, he’s he’s not invited, but it’s the law.’” Maher’s response came five days after Trump took to Truth Social and sounded off on the comedian’s Oct. 23 episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” which featured former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. In the lengthy post, Trump once again trashed Maher as a “complete and total loser” with a “low rated show.” He further referred to the comedian as “useless,” “a coward,” “fake news” and much more in the rant that followed their second White House dinner together. “When I have watched the show, which isn’t often, it always ends with dishonesty, about me at least, but, who cares? He doesn’t think it was a good thing to take the Nuclear Weapon away from Iran, which shows you that he is not very smart,” Trump added, referencing recent CNN polls to prove his ratings. “Bill Maher lied, but he lies about everything, and I believe he lied to me when I asked him, with all the applause and laughter he gets after almost everything he says, about things that aren’t funny or even any good, what Laughter Machine does he use? People can’t think he’s funny. I didn’t know Bill, he didn’t know me, and that was OK.” “He looked like hell this time. Bill was drunk and had alcohol in his hand as he walked through the White House. Stephen A. Smith and Kid Rock came along with him,” he recalled of their latest meeting. “Overall, I thought it was a good meeting. It didn’t last four hours, it lasted two hours, maybe less, and everybody was happy. We have the timestamps. I learned nothing, and felt it was a waste of time.” Maher, however, actually defended his meetings with Trump during the Oct. 23 show, admitting that he likes the dinners as a chance to tell the president “the things you write in articles that he’ll never read.” “I brought Stephen A. Smith. He was perfect, on point. I give myself an A+ for choosing him. But me. Trump never lost his temper. He never yelled. He never interrupted me. I did,” Maher also noted at the time. “I could not have been treated better if I was Russian.” Maher and Trump’s relationship has been notably tense over the years, despite the two sitting down for a friendly dinner in March 2025. The pair’s ceasefire was short-lived, as, a year later, the two began exchanging jabs once more. “Real Time With Bill Maher” airs new episodes Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO.