Last week, Bill Maher closed his HBO show Real Time with a mock-eulogy for President Trump, joking that he taught his children “the wrong lessons of life,” including to “see the worst in people, and treat them all equally based strictly on how much money they make and what they look like.” He closed the speech with, “He died as he lived: wearing makeup and lying in front of all of us. So fly free, whiny little bitch. Fly free. May you find the peace your Twitter thumbs never could.”
Trump, who once sued Maher for $5 million (and lost) for cracking that he was “the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan,” did not take kindly to the comic’s bit, tweeting this week, “Watched @billmaher last week for the first time in a long time. He’s totally SHOT, looks terrible, exhausted, gaunt, and weak. If there was ever a good reason for no shutdown, check out this jerk. He never had much going for him, but whatever he did have is missing in action!”
So on Friday’s Real Time, Maher issued a not-so-formal response to the president of the United States, who’s chosen to spend his time feuding with a late-night host in the midst of a global pandemic that’s killing hundreds upon hundreds of Americans a day.
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“But oh, the president, you see, got mad at me! You see that tweet this week?” said Maher. “Yes, last week I gave him a eulogy—in good fun. It was not mean…too much. But I think anybody benefits from hearing a eulogy in their own lifetime. That was my point. He did not see it that way.”
Then Maher dove into the tweet, saying, “He wrote a tweet saying, ‘I watched Bill Maher last week for the first time in a long time’—he’s always accidentally watching me or watching me for the first time in a long time—and then, oh boy, did he level up. He said, ‘Bill Maher, totally SHOT, looks terrible, exhausted, gaunt and weak.’”
“Perhaps,” offered Maher, adding, “But in my defense: earlier that day, I had to walk down a ramp. So…anyone would look bad.” (President Trump has a longstanding fear of walking down steps or ramps, or bathmophobia.)
And he wasn’t done. Later on during his monologue, Maher addressed Kamala Harris’ VP candidacy, and Trump—who broke onto the political scene with his racist birther movement against Barack Obama—choosing to question her citizenship, despite the fact that she was born in California.
Cue Maher: “Trump was so confused he didn’t know where to tell her to go back to.”
