Bill Maher confirms second Trump dinner and dares his critics

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Bill Maher and President Donald Trump side by side in separate images. foxnews.com

Bill Maher attends the Vanity Fair Oscar Party at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. foxnews.com

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Bill Maher confirmed on Friday's opening monologue of his HBO show Real Time that he dined with President Donald Trump at the White House for the second time, alongside sports commentator Stephen A. Smith and musician Kid Rock. "Yeah, I did it again," Maher told his audience, before adding: "You know what? F--- you. I like these dinners."

The dinner on October 15 followed a first White House meal in April 2025, which Maher attended with Trump, Kid Rock and UFC CEO Dana White. That first visit produced the heresy: Maher told his audience Trump was "gracious and measured" and "more self-aware" in private than in public — "You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar."

The backlash did not change his behavior, and it did not visibly cost him anything either. Maher has continued criticizing Trump in the months between the dinners, mocking the president's Iran deal in June with the line "We got everything we wanted except for everything we asked for." On his Club Random podcast, Maher told Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel that after the first dinner he went back to doing what he does, and that Trump then proposed a second dinner "out of the blue." Trump, according to Maher, promised not to say bad things about him this time; Maher texted back that Trump is the president and can say whatever he wants — "I'm just glad we're talking."

Trump, for his part, told reporters the dinner was great and that Maher "likes me a lot more than people understand." Jason Mudd, CEO of Axia Public Relations, told Fox News Digital that Maher "walked in with a plan" and that his Friday monologue showed it.

The anger directed at Maher has a familiar shape. Late-night comedy spent a decade converging on a single unanimous monologue, and the mechanism that produced that convergence is the same one now being applied to a comedian who eats with the wrong person. The enforcement used to work because it priced out the deviant. Maher's second dinner, announced from his own HBO stage with profanity attached, suggests the price has been set to zero.

Trump told reporters the dinner "lasted a long time" and that he thinks his guests had a good time.