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Bill Maher discusses dinner with Donald Trump: full transcript

For what I know you’ve all been waiting for, I’d like to give you my
book report on my visit to the White House. As you know, 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 who treated this like it was
some kind of summit meeting, you are ridiculous. Like I was going to
sign a treaty or something. I have no power. I'm a … comedian and he's
the most powerful leader in the world. I'm not the leader of anything,
except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there's
got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other
every minute.

OK, so meet up in person, maybe it'll be different. Spoiler alert, it
was. First good sign, 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 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. 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
gonna say something nice about him? What I'm gonna 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 (expletive).

'One of the most effective politicians': Bill Maher clarifies he doesn't
hate Trump

So no, I didn't go MAGA. And to the president's credit, there was no
pressure to. After we left the Oval Office, he showed me the little room
off the office, you know, the one where Clinton used to ... the
(expletive) room, OK? Well, not anymore. That's where they keep the
merch now.

And he gave me a bunch of hats, but he didn’t ask me to take a picture
in one, which I appreciated. The guy I met is not the person who the
night before the dinner … tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he
thought this dinner was a bad idea and what a deranged (expletive) I
was. I read it and thought, oh, what a lovely way to welcome someone to
your house.

But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there. Now, does Trump want respect? Of course, who doesn't? 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 Zelenskyy, I'll tell you that. Just for starters, he laughs! I've 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.

Example: 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.’ (I was) 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.

I said to him at one point, ‘Mr. President, you know, the dog. That's
unusual in the White House.’ He said, ‘Well, a lot of the presidents,
they had a dog for political reasons.’ I said, ‘No, people love dogs! That's what that is.’ (Trump said) ‘Oh yeah, OK, that true.’ I’m telling you, it happened!

At one point we were walking through his amazing — it is an 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.

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 it 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. 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,
(or) 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 really don't
listen because they just want to get to their next thing, people whose
response to things you say just doesn't track. Like, what? None of that
with him. And he mostly steered the conversations: ‘So 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. At dinner, he was asking me about the nuclear situation in Iran in a very genuine, ‘Hey, I think you're a smart guy. I
want your opinion’ sort of way. And I said, ‘Well, obviously you're
privy to things about it (that) I'm not, but for what it's worth, I
thought the Obama deal was worth letting play out because we made Iran
destroy 98% of the uranium, and they were 15 years away from a bomb.’

And then I said to him, ‘Well, we got rid of that. You got rid of that.’
He didn't get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic. He took it in. 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, like the million Syrians who
wound up in Germany when Saudi Arabia took none. He said to me, ‘You're right, they took none.’ I said, ‘Well you should remind your boyfriend
in Saudi Arabia that the next time you see him.’ He laughed.

I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him, and honestly? I
voted for Clinton and Obama but I would never feel comfortable talking
to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That's just how it
went down. Make of it what you will. Me? I feel it's emblematic of why
the Democrats are so unpopular these days. He was even OK when I checked
him on the orangutan lawsuit. He was. I know.

He said to Dana White, you know, ‘Bill said my father was an orangutan,
and I said, I really love my father.’ And I said, ‘Well, Mr. President,
I did that because I didn't like what you were doing regarding Obama's
birth origins. I thought that was low.’ Again, no anger, just a little
smile, as if to say, yeah, I get it.

The most surreal part of the whole night was when I got home. I flew
back right after the dinner, and I'm in bed watching ’60 Minutes’ from
the night before. And there's Trump in one of their stories, standing at
a podium in a room that looked to me like one of the rooms and places
we'd just been in. And he's ranting, ‘Disgusting, you're a terrible person.’ And I'm like, who's that guy? What happened to Glinda the Good Witch? And why can't we get the guy I met to be the public guy?

And I'm not saying it's our responsibility to do that. It's not. I'm
just reporting exactly what I saw over two and a half hours. I went into
the mine, and that's what's down there. A crazy person doesn't live in
the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives
there, which I know is (expletive) up. It's just not as (expletive) up
as I thought it was. And I have no illusions now that I'm back to work
at my job that he might start a new list.

Because I don't have a good feeling and will be critical about a lot of
what he's doing: the trade war and disappearing people, ruling by
decree, threatening judges, gutting the government with glee. But I also
think he now understands I have a job to do, or at least he did on this
night because he said to me early on that he'd seen our last episode,
which was the Friday before this dinner And he said, ‘I thought maybe
you'd be nice, but you'd hit me really hard.’ I did, because I'm not
going to pull my punches that presidents get to propose a third term for themselves. He understood that, and without animus. That doesn't mean
he's not going try to do it.

At one point I said to him, ‘You're scaring people. Do you really want
to be scaring your own citizens so much?’ And I know now you're all
saying, and what did he say to that? Honestly, I don't remember. But it
wasn't ‘OK, I'll stop.’

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 (room off the Oval Office) 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.

Damn, missed opportunity.

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