Ever since Kid Rock announced that he had invited Bill Maher to have dinner with President Trump, I was interested in hearing his perspective on the event, and now we have it.
“12 days ago, I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock, because we share a belief that there’s got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away.”
“And let me first say that, to all the people whom treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you’re ridiculous! Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I have no power. I’m a comedian.” I think Maher is underselling the importance here. Maher was one of the earliest sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Like many on the left a decade ago (and, indeed, up through now), Maher seemed to loath Trump on an almost instinctual or class level. Indeed, at lot on the left still exhibit this all-consuming loathing. Even before 2020, Maher was willing to ding the excesses of social justice, but the Flu Manchu lockdowns seemed to accelerate his red pilling, to the point that he now regularly slams the left for even more extreme social justice madness and ever-more pro-censorship policies. Like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard endorsing Trump, Maher’s dinner invitation is provides a sort of psychic permission to those ever-dwindling numbers of “sane liberals” to abandon their own TDS blinders and take a long, critical look at what social justice-infected liberalism and the Democratic Party have become.
“So okay. So meet up in person. Maybe it’ll be different. Spoiler alert: It was.”
“Before I left for the capital, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets that the president has said about me. Things like stupid, dummy, low-life, dummy, sleazebag, sick, sad, stone cold crazy, really a dumb guy, fired like a dog, his show is dead. I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it. Which he did, with good humor.”
“And I know as I say that millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. ‘Oh my God, Bill, are you going to say something nice about him?’ What I’m going to do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it. And if that’s not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don’t give a fuck.”
“So no, I didn’t go MAGA. And to the president’s credit there was no pressure too.”
“After we left the Oval Office, he showed me the little room off the office. You know the one where Clinton used to…OK, the blowjob room. Now it’s the merch room. And and he gave me a bunch of hats, but he didn’t ask me to take a picture in one, which I appreciated.”
“My friend said to me ‘What are you going to wear to the White House?’ I said ‘I don’t know, but I’m not going to dress like Zelensky.'”
“Just for starters, he laughs. I’d never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including at himself. And it’s not fake. Believe me as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it, and I thank you for them.”
“In the Oval Office, he was showing me the portraits of presidents, and he pointed to Reagan and said, in all seriousness, ‘You know, the best thing about him: His hair.’ I said ‘Well, there was also that whole bringing down communism thing,’ waiting for the button next to the Diet Coke button to get pushed and I go through the trap door. But no, he laughed. He got it.” It’s good to hear liberals praising Reagan for ending communism, since they never did it when he was alive.
“At at one point we were walking through his amazing tour of the whole house, and I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but it must have been something with the 2020 election, because I know he used the word ‘lost,’ and I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow I never thought I’d hear you say that.’ He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public.” Also, I think Trump himself knows how radically more impactful the Trump47 term has been than a second term would have been. (And the 2020 election was still stolen.)
“Look, I get it. It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian, it matters who he is on the world stage. I’m just taking as a positive that this person exists, because everything I’ve ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent at least on this night with this guy.” I suspect that much of what Maher hates (or hated) about Trump (racist, antisemitic, Russian stooge, etc.) were lies created by relentless media campaign of systemic preference falsification.
“Bob, Kid Rock, told me the night before he said ‘If you want to get a word in edgewise, you’re going to have to cut him off, he’ll just go on.’ Not at all. I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected. People who don’t look you in the eye. People who don’t really listen, because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn’t track. None of that with him.”
“And he mostly steered the conversation to ‘What do you think about this?’ I know, your mind is blown. So is mine. There were so many moments when I hit him with a joke, or contradicted something, and no problem.” Why, it’s almost like he’s a master of persuasion and reading a room than the distorted caricature the MSM keeps feeding us.
Trump asked him about the Iran situation and Maher says he should have kept the Obama Iran deal. I disagree. He seems to be taking Iranian declarations at face value, which is always a mistake, and I have a feeling the real driving factor behind the Iran deal and its literal pallets of American cash were to line the pockets of Obama functionaries just as they were exiting the White House. (See also: All those USAID revelations.)
“I told him I thought parts of his plan for Gaza were wacky, but that I had supported him in the idea that Gaza could be Dubai instead of Hell.”
“I told him he was wrong when he tweeted the night before that I was critical of all things Trump. Not true. Check the tapes. Moving Israel’s embassy to Jerusalem: Loved it. The border did need to be controlled. I’m glad the cops are getting their morale back. DEI had gone too far. Biological men shouldn’t be playing women’s sports. Europe should pay for their defense. And, of course, it makes sense that Arab countries should take in Arab refugees.”
There’s a good bit on how he wishes Trump’s public persona could be like the Trump he met in private. But Trump’s rhetorical shit-talking is an integral part of his persuasion/negotiating style (not to mention his tit-for-tat), as well as the whole “seriously, not literally” thing, and he wouldn’t be nearly as effective a President without it.
“So MAGA fans, don’t worry: Your boy gave me nothing. Just hats. Hats and a very generous amount of time, and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend even though I’m not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner.”
“My favorite part of the whole night was we were standing in the blowjob room. And he said ‘You know, I’ve heard from a lot of people who really like that we’re having this dinner. Not all, but a lot.’ And I said. ‘Same. A lot of people told me they loved it but not all.’ And we agreed: The people who don’t even want us to talk, we don’t like you. Don’t talk? As opposed to, what, writing the same editorial for the millionth time, and making 25 hour speeches into the wind? Really? That’s what liberals have? He takes the piss out of everybody else and we can hold ours?”
“OK, that’s my report. You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer. And it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw. And I wasn’t high.”
I think Maher is doing his level best to report honestly and faithfully what happened when he met Trump.
Yes, screaming into the wind is all liberals have, because victimhood identity politics has taken over the Democrat Party. Because Trump is anathema to that, Trump Derangement Syndrome and virtue signaling have become so central to many liberal’s self worth that many would literally rather than die than give them up. (The same thing applies to admitting all the ways they were wrong, and their critics right, when it comes to Flu Manchu.) They have to continue believing the MSM-created caricature of Trump as the racist rapist buffoon because to stop doing so would mean admitting that they were wrong, that they’ve been living a lie for going on a decade, and that they are not, in fact, infinitely smarter and nicer than rednecks with MAGA stickers on their pickup trucks.
“Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer.”
“It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian, it matters who he is on the world stage.”
—Bill Maher
The interpersonal matters less than the political. Maher may be charmed by Trump’s unaccustomed cordiality but the ultimate standard by which a public figure is judged is by his public persona.
Perhaps intractability is a necessary character quality for the President. After all, the “kinder and gentler” GW Bush proved to be inadequate to the demands of office.
At the end of the day Donald Trump may be a bastard but he is *our* bastard. You cannot make peace with the political Left any more than you can come to terms with a jihadi. They are fanatics who perceive meekness as weakness.
Trump may very well have a successful second term if he is capable of distinguishing friend from foe. Chip Roy and Thomas Massie are assuredly not foes and should be treated with the same courtesy and respect that was accorded to Bill Maher.
If you picture Trump as Cronus, it invites parallels to the conflict between generations, a war by youthful usurpers against the old guard. China is Zeus.
There are even echoes of Chronus’ defeat and banishment to Tartarus, being that multiple felony convictions were a near guarantee of Trump’s imprisonment.
Treacherous usurpation at home coupled with vigorous challenges from the newly-rich Far East make for a legendary opus of betrayal and (trade) war.
In short, Trump sees himself as being engaged in a Titanic struggle. If he avoids the icebergs everything may yet work out well for him.
“Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer.”
“It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian, it matters who he is on the world stage.”
—Bill Maher
The interpersonal matters less than the political. Maher may be charmed by Trump’s unaccustomed cordiality but the ultimate standard by which a public figure is judged is by his public persona.
Perhaps intractability is a necessary character quality for the President. After all, the “kinder and gentler” GW Bush proved to be inadequate to the demands of office.
At the end of the day Donald Trump may be a bastard but he is *our* bastard. You cannot make peace with the political Left any more than you can come to terms with a jihadi. They are fanatics who perceive meekness as weakness.
Trump may very well have a successful second term if he is capable of distinguishing friend from foe. Chip Roy and Thomas Massie are assuredly not foes and should be treated with the same courtesy and respect that was accorded to Bill Maher.
If you picture Trump as Cronus, it invites parallels to the conflict between generations, a war by youthful usurpers against the old guard. China is Zeus.
There are even echoes of Chronus’ defeat and banishment to Tartarus, being that multiple felony convictions were a near guarantee of Trump’s imprisonment.
Treacherous usurpation at home coupled with vigorous challenges from the newly-rich Far East make for a legendary opus of betrayal and (trade) war.
In short, Trump sees himself as being engaged in a Titanic struggle. If he avoids the icebergs everything may yet work out well for him.