{"id":594659,"date":"2026-02-16T19:32:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/594659\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T19:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:32:16","slug":"bill-maher-calls-viewers-who-stopped-watching-after-trump-dinner-idiots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/594659\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Maher calls viewers who stopped watching after Trump dinner &#8216;idiots&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!\n  <\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Comedian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/bill-maher\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Bill Maher<\/a> called people who stopped watching his show after he dined with President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/donald-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Donald Trump<\/a> &#8220;idiots&#8221; during an interview with CNN&#8217;s Elex Michaelson posted on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">&#8220;First of all, the people who stopped watching my show because I had dinner with him are idiots, in my view,&#8221; he said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ixsBp0YTir8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">during the interview<\/a> on &#8220;The Story Is with Elex Michaelson.&#8221; &#8220;They just are. They&#8217;re just completely emotional because they&#8217;re always asking the wrong question, which is like, &#8216;How dare you have dinner with Donald Trump?'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Maher had dinner with the president in April 2025 and caught flak from liberals for the meeting. Trump raged at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/trump-tears-jerk-bill-maher-truth-social-says-hosting-him-white-house-total-waste-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Maher in a Truth Social post<\/a> over the weekend and called the dinner with the comedian a &#8220;total waste of time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The question should always have been, &#8216;What did I say after I had dinner with Donald Trump?&#8217; Now, if, after I had dinner with Donald Trump, I came back to the show and was seduced by that dinner and stopped tearing him a new one every week, every time I thought he did something wrong, then you would have a case. That didn&#8217;t happen,&#8221; Maher said.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/bill-maher-dinner-trump-idiots.jpg\" alt=\"Comedian Bill Maher\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Bill Maher visits SiriusXM Studios on May 20, 2024, in New York City. (Noam Galai\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/dana-white-andrew-schulz-commend-bill-maher-trump-white-house-visit-being-honest\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><strong>DANA WHITE AND ANDREW SCHULZ COMMEND BILL MAHER FOR TRUMP WHITE HOUSE VISIT, BEING HONEST<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>He said he hasn&#8217;t paused in making fun of the left when he thinks they&#8217;ve gone too far, and has continued to criticize the president.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So I feel like we\u2014having met him and sat down for three hours, you know, it was a long dinner\u2014and the left got very mad at me for reporting it accurately, which is he&#8217;s very different in person. By the way, everyone who&#8217;s ever met him says the same thing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Maher told Michaelson that Trump texts him sometimes, &#8220;yelling&#8221; at him.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/trump-maher-gaza-peace-deal-fox-news.jpg\" alt=\"Split image of President Donald Trump, left, and comedian Bill Maher, right.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>Bill Maher spoke to Elex Michaelson for an interview about his relationship with President Donald Trump. (Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images; Todd Owyoung\/NBC via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/bill-maher-says-dems-need-tell-celebrities-shut-f-up-hollywood-holding-party-back\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><strong>BILL MAHER SAYS DEMS NEED TO TELL CELEBRITIES TO &#8216;SHUT THE F&#8212; UP,&#8217; HOLLYWOOD IS HOLDING PARTY BACK<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;You&#8217;re still part of the lunatic left,'&#8221; Maher said, repeating a text from the president. &#8220;He watches. He gets it. Yeah. That I didn&#8217;t change, but you know what? It&#8217;s just better, because then I can say something back and it becomes a conversation and not just what it was.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Maher went on to say that Trump does a lot of stupid things, but also &#8220;makes people stupid.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I felt like, OK, we had done this for 10 years, just this yelling at each other from across the barricades. It is better to talk to somebody,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/bill-maher.jpg\" alt=\"Comedian Bill Maher\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>Bill Maher at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes on Jan. 11, 2026, in Beverly Hills, California. (MEGA\/GC Images))<\/p>\n<p>Michaelson agreed and wondered what the alternative might be, asking, &#8220;A civil war?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just purely emotional. It&#8217;s just so disappointing that some of the people who I think of as rational people, Donald Trump, he does a lot of stupid things. He also makes people stupid,&#8221; Maher responded. &#8220;Like, again, what is the alternative? He&#8217;s the president. You can&#8217;t not talk to him. What is the downside?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.onelink.me\/xLDS?pid=AppArticleLink&amp;af_dp=foxnewsaf%3A%2F%2F&amp;af_web_dp=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fapps-products\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><strong>CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Comedian Bill Maher called people who stopped watching his show&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":594660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[4087,69,171,68246,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-594659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bill-maher","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-fox-news-media","12":"tag-tv","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116081979980808293","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}