New rule: if you’re going to satirize me in the New York Times, then I’m going to respond to you on Piers Morgan Uncensored. That’s how Bill Maher approached his response to Larry David‘s essay “My Dinner With Adolf,” which was published in the New York Times on Monday and satirized Maher’s visit to the White House in March, after which Maher called President Trump “gracious” and “not fake.”
“First of all, it’s kind of insulting to six million dead Jews,” Maher told Piers Morgan in an interview on the set of Maher’s podcast. “It’s an argument you kind of lost just to start it. Look, maybe it’s not completely logically fair, but Hitler has really kind of got to stay in his own place. He is the GOAT of evil. We’re just going to have to leave it like that.”
David’s “My Dinner With Adolf” details a fictitious dinner with Adolf Hitler, in which David is surprised to see the Nazi leader “seemed so human” at an intimate occasion: “Th private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler.”
In a companion piece to David’s article, New York Times deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy wrote that, “Larry’s piece is not equating Trump with Hitler. It is about seeing people for who they really are and not losing sight of that.”
“This wasn’t my favorite moment of our friendship. I think the minute you play the ‘Hitler’ card, you’ve lost the argument,” Maher said about David’s piece, as Morgan offered a “That’s what I think” interjection. “Come on, man. Hitler, Nazis — nobody has been harder, and more prescient I must say, about Donald Trump than me. I don’t need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is. Just the fact that I met him in person didn’t change that. The fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either.”
“I don’t want to make this constantly personal with me and Larry. We might be friends again,” Maher continued later in the interview. “I can take a shot and I can also take it when people disagree with me. That’s not exactly the way I would’ve done it. Again, the irony: let’s go back to what my original thing was. There’s got to be a better way than hurling insults and not talking to people. If I can talk to Trump, I can talk to Larry David too.”
Maher detailed his White House visit on his April 11 episode of his HBO talk series “Real Time.” In the monologue, Maher called Trump “gracious” and “much more self-aware than he lets on.”
“Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was — I swear to God — absent, at least on this night with this guy,” Maher said at the time.
