Bill Maher Accepts a Second Trump Dinner and Calls Out Larry David’s Hypocrisy, With David’s Agent in the Room

Bill Maher is going back to the White House. On the Monday, October 12, 2026, episode of his “Club Random” podcast, the HBO host said President Trump had invited him to a second private dinner and that he had accepted. Then he turned on the Hollywood liberals who treated his first dinner like a betrayal, starting with Larry David.

Maher’s guest was Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood agent and executive who, as Just The News noted, represented Trump during his years on The Apprentice. That detail matters, because by the end of the conversation Maher was using Emanuel as Exhibit A for the left’s double standard.

“Out of the blue”

“I’m having dinner with him again next week,” Maher told Emanuel, according to Townhall’s transcription of the episode. He said things had gone back to normal after their first meeting. “After the first dinner, I went back to doing what I do,” he said.

Emanuel guessed how that went. “He probably screamed at you,” he said, according to Mediaite, adding that Trump likely called Maher a “low-rating loser.” Maher confirmed it: “Of course! It never stops.” He said Trump had even tried to stop him from getting the Mark Twain award.

And then came the call. “But then, like, he just, out of the blue, let’s have dinner again,” Maher said. “And I was like, great. And he was really nice. Like, I promise I won’t say bad things about you like I did the last time.”

Maher’s reply to the president was pure Maher: “You know what, you’re the president of the United States. Say whatever the f— you want. I’m just glad we’re talking.” He compared Trump’s insults to a classic comedy roast. “It’s like being called a ‘hockey puck’ by Don Rickles. It’s just what he does. It’s how he talks.”

According to Just The News, Maher said it “blows my mind” that anyone, of either party, would turn down a dinner invitation from a sitting president.

The Larry David problem

Maher’s first dinner with Trump took place on March 31, 2025. On his April 11, 2025, “Real Time” monologue, he described Trump as “gracious and measured,” far from the cartoon he had expected. The backlash was immediate. On April 21, 2025, The New York Times published a satirical essay by Larry David titled “My Dinner With Adolf,” a mock account of a dinner with Hitler that NBC News reported was a send-up of Maher’s dinner with Trump. “Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler,” David’s narrator says.

David never named Maher in the piece, but few readers missed the target.

On “Club Random,” Maher went straight at it, with Emanuel, whom outlets identified as David’s agent, sitting across from him. “It’s so interesting to me that Larry David, I’m like, I’m the devil because I talk to him,” Maher said, “but his own agent just talked to him on Monday.”

Emanuel tried to stay out of it. “Listen, this is your stick with him,” he said.

Maher didn’t let go. “I know, but you must recognize the hypocrisy there,” he said. “Somehow when it’s his own agent doing the exact same thing, then we don’t play the Hitler card. … Just admit that. It’s true.”

A liberal who can talk to Trump

Maher has never claimed to be a conservative. He has spent decades mocking Republicans, and he still disagrees with Trump on plenty. What he rejects is the idea that disagreement requires a boycott. “That’s what I hate about the ‘purist left’ – purity, it’s the easiest thing to be,” he said on the episode, according to Mediaite. “And by the way, you know you’re not a political sophisticate when you immediately go to the Hitler card.”

He has made a striking comparison before. After the first dinner in 2025, Just The News recalled, Maher said he never felt he had to walk on eggshells around Trump. “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,” he said.

That is quite an admission from a man who has spent most of his career on the left. The Democratic presidents he voted for, by his own account, were harder to talk to than the Republican his industry calls a dictator.

Why it matters

The reaction to Maher’s first dinner told Americans something about the entertainment world: in much of Hollywood, simply sitting down with the elected president of the United States is treated as a moral offense. Agents can negotiate with him, networks can sell ads around him, and studios can lobby his administration, but a comedian who breaks bread with him gets compared to a Nazi collaborator.

Maher’s point about Emanuel exposes how selective that outrage is. The rule, apparently, is that talking to Trump is fine for business and unforgivable for anyone who admits he enjoyed it.

Some on the left will no doubt be furious all over again. Maher doesn’t seem worried. He is going to dinner.

Hollywood plays the Hitler card on anyone who talks to Trump until it’s one of its own, and Bill Maher just called the bluff with the agent sitting right in front of him.

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