Bill Maher is scoffing at the far left for slamming him over his visit to the White House ... to paraphrase Mark Antony, he feels he should not be buried, he should be praised!
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00:00So Bill Maher has taken some heat after his dinner with Donald Trump a little more than two weeks ago and the White House.
00:09We had Bill Maher on the Two Angry Men podcast, which just dropped today, and Bill Maher came out swinging.
00:17Yeah, he's not only defending, continuing to defend the fact that he went to the White House and had that dinner,
00:23but he thinks that people have the wrong impression of what he accomplished when he was there.
00:29So, well, I was shocked to hear him use the word hero.
00:36He said he should be a hero for that, and he backs it up with an argument.
00:41And look, this whole thing started, I am good friends with Bill Maher.
00:45I love him and think he's incredibly smart.
00:48But you had a very strong reaction to his revealing what the dinner was like.
00:53We agree on a lot of things, and I happen to disagree with him,
00:57although my opinion changed a little bit after the podcast.
01:02But the way I...
01:03Uh, okay.
01:04Because I think he made some points.
01:07But, you know, Bill had said that the Donald Trump that he saw at the White House having dinner was charming,
01:16was, you know, he would smile, he would laugh, he was self-effacing.
01:20And all that can be true, but I think the backlash he's getting is that Bill thinks that that is the real Donald Trump.
01:27Well, he said that that's the way when people act and, you know, when there are no cameras on,
01:32that that's usually who they are in reality, and the other is performative.
01:36And the way he put it is, the crazy man may be the performative man.
01:42That's the way he saw it.
01:43The way I see it is, it's all wrapped into one.
01:47That somebody who has the skill of being charming can be part of their personality,
01:52but the other part is that them too.
01:54Right.
01:54So, here is Bill, um, staking his claim to what he says was a very useful White House visit.
02:04I have the opportunity to go to the White House and talk to the President and not give up my principles.
02:11It seems like nobody noticed that.
02:14I didn't go MAGA.
02:15I had the opportunity to talk to Donald Trump and say the things to him that maybe he never hears.
02:23Literally, to speak truth to power.
02:26I shouldn't take that opportunity.
02:28Again, don't do that.
02:30Okay.
02:31And then there was the part about, you know, should I lie about how I found him?
02:36Because apparently that didn't please people.
02:38They wanted to hear that he was the same monster that they see in public, and he wasn't.
02:43I'm proud that I was able to go into the White House and say to the President of the United States,
02:48look him in the eye and say, you're scaring people.
02:53You don't, it doesn't bother you that you're scaring so many of your own citizens.
02:56I'm proud that I confronted him when we talked about the orangutan thing, and I didn't apologize.
03:01I said, yeah, because you were making, I did that because you were making fun and mocking Obama's birth origins.
03:08And I thought that was low.
03:09So, I should be a hero for going there and doing those things and saying those things to the President.
03:16I'm not the villain here.
03:18I mean, there's two ways you can do the Oval Office.
03:20The way I did it, honestly, or like Gretchen Wichmar.
03:26I pulled up a bunch of biners in front of your face.
03:28Do I have great hopes that saying anything to him is going to change anything?
03:34No, but you have to try.
03:36What, again, as opposed to what?
03:39Not engaging?
03:41Just, I mean, for the Democrats, you lost everything.
03:45You have no power.
03:46You have nothing.
03:47And we're slowly becoming just much more of a monarchy.
03:51But you don't want to talk to the king at all?
03:53You don't want to talk to him?
03:54That's going to fix anything?
03:56Here's the problem.
03:57The two angry men got out-angried.
04:00Because Bill seems very angry about the reaction to it.
04:04And I got to say, I agree with him on the going to the White House and saying, and he's right.
04:12He didn't come out of it like MAGA.
04:13He went there and he spoke his truth.
04:15I think the reason for the backlash is that his reaction to it when he left is that, oh, he heard me.
04:22And he's a nice guy.
04:24And he understands me.
04:25Instead of what most people believe.
04:28And look, I haven't.
04:29The people who are, I think that Bill, who are behind the backlash.
04:34Well, I don't know that most people are behind it.
04:37I don't know.
04:38I'm saying the people who are angry about him going to the White House.
04:42Yeah.
04:42Part of their anger, a big part of it, is what he said after the dinner.
04:48And that he thinks that Donald Trump is...
04:51Charming.
04:51A charming, nice guy.
04:52Okay, should Bill lie?
04:55Is that what you're saying?
04:56That Bill should lie because...
04:57People feel he...
04:58The reason people feel he...
04:59Want him to lie?
05:00No, I'm not saying I want him to lie.
05:01But the reason people feel he was hoodwinked is that he believes that that guy he was sitting with is the actual genuine president.
05:09Is the actual genuine Donald Trump.
05:11He made a point, and I don't know.
05:13Look, I knew Donald Trump for many, many, many years.
05:17Many, many, many years before he became president.
05:20Right.
05:21And even a short period of time while he was president.
05:25And by the way, he's...
05:27That is, Bill's view is the authentic take on Trump in terms of the way he's defined...
05:33I agree.
05:34He has learned those skills.
05:34I'm sure that that's what Donald Trump did.
05:36But what Bill Maher is saying is that doesn't in any way lessen what the views are because Bill Maher has been as critical as anybody.
05:45So what does it matter if Bill Maher says, look, my take is that, you know, when a guy is sitting around having dinner, this is who he is.
05:54And the other...
05:55Because the criticism is that you are trying to normalize...
05:59It's not normalizing.
06:00You're trying to normalize what the rest of the world, what we all see every day.
06:05The bottom line is that no matter what Bill said about it, there was going to be a, you know, a fragment of the population that was going to hate it.
06:14I think the reality is on both parties, on the left and the right, you can say, hey, 10% of the people are way out there.
06:21And those are not the people that we're targeting here.
06:24I don't know if Kiro might be too strong of a word, but I think it's very admirable what he did.
06:28And I think this is the first step, and it's a big step, in finding a common ground amongst 80% of the country.
06:34Let's get the 300 million people who are actually reasonable and see if there's something that we can agree on.
06:40And I think this was a big step towards that.
06:42What is ridiculous is Gretchen Whitmer when she was at the White House.
06:48Which Bill refers to, right.
06:48You can't even see her.
06:49This is Gretchen Whitmer.
06:50This is Gretchen Whitmer hiding behind.
06:52Hiding her face.
06:53Hiding her face.
06:55He's right.
06:56Yes, of course.
06:56Of course that's absurd.
06:58But I think Bill's, Bill moved me some on this.
07:02Because it is true.
07:04I mean, look, I have had conversations.
07:07Some people might say that you've now been bamboozled by Bill the way that Bill was bamboozled by the president.
07:11No, because, no, I don't think either of us are bamboozled.
07:15I think Donald Trump is part and parcel of all of those elements.
07:19Right.
07:19I think that is Donald Trump.
07:21And, you know, I had an experience with him, which I talk about in the podcast, in September of 2017, where I was pissed at him over the Colin Kaepernick when he had said, fire those sons of bitches.
07:37And it was my last encounter with Donald Trump.
07:41And it's kind of interesting because I thought I may have connected, which I did not.
07:47And I learned that 10 minutes after the call.
07:49And you know about this because I told you that.
07:51And we've had this conversation.
07:53And I honestly, I thought about those conversations when we were talking about Bill, Bill, after he talked about what happened at the dinner.
08:00I just feel like and I will acknowledge that Bill said this on his show.
08:05He said, look, is it more important the guy that is actually in the White House and is making decisions and that we see the American people see on TV every day as opposed to the guy that he had dinner with?
08:18Because to me, that's an easy answer.
08:20The one that is more important is the person who was elected to be president of the United States and what he does every day in front of the American people.
08:29Right.
08:29And what he does at a private dinner, I don't care.
08:32OK, fine.
08:32It doesn't matter.
08:33But here's what you can do at a private dinner.
08:34And I would have liked to have heard Bill say, yeah, I know he acted like this with me, but the reality is that just doesn't matter.
08:41Who cares about anybody's psychoanalysis?
08:45The point is Bill Maher said to him, you are scaring people.
08:48By the way, I'm the first one who said that to you.
08:51I defended Bill and said, that's why you go to the dinner.
08:53That's what matters.
08:54You should go to the dinner for that.
08:56But that's right.
08:56And that's what matters.
08:58But don't walk out acting like, oh, he's a good guy.
09:02No, he didn't say a good guy.
09:03And you can know that it's not a crazy person in the White House.
09:06It's the guy who's playing a crazy person.
09:07But do you want him to lie and not say how he truly feels?
09:13I mean, it's like we're so screwed up in this country that you can't tell the truth anymore.
09:19You've got to do it when it aligns with somebody else's view so you don't piss him off.
09:23What's good about Bill Maher is he's telling the truth.
09:27And he can feel that way about him personally and maybe shift some and still have strong opinions about his views.
09:35You already have a show called Two Angry Men, so let's just.
09:38Which is available anywhere you get your podcasts.
09:40Hey, it's Matt from Ottawa, Ontario.
09:43And I just want to say in regards to Bill Maher, listen, I can respect that he went and met with Trump and put all that stuff aside.
09:48I appreciate that he was being honest about the interactions.
09:51To his point, I wouldn't want him to lie.
09:54But to say he deserves some sort of praise or should be called a quote-unquote hero, maybe that's a little too much even for Bill.
10:01Okay, I mean, that's, you know.
10:02It's like, I don't want to throw around the word hero, but.