Quite the eclectic group.
These days it’s not really a surprise to see Kid Rock hanging out at the White House. As strange as it may seem, the “Bawitdaba” rapper has become close friends with President Donald Trump, and even testified before Congress early this year during a hearing on ticket prices and whether to break up the monopoly of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
But seeing Bill Maher hanging out with Trump might be a little more surprising.
Trump has clearly never been a big fan of Bill Maher – and for good reason. The liberal comedian and talk show host has been a fierce critic of the president, frequently mocking him on his show Real Time with Bill Maher and calling him various not-so-flattering names like “a spectacular prick” and warning that he’s a threat to America.
In fact, Trump even filed a lawsuit against Maher back in 2013, when Maher jokingly offered $5 million to charity if Trump produced his birth certificate to prove that his mother hadn’t mated with an orangutan. (Yes, this really happened). Maher obviously claimed it was a joke, Trump tried to force Maher to pay up, and the lawsuit was dropped a few weeks later.
So yeah, not somebody you’d expect Trump to invite over for dinner.
But last year, Kid Rock set up a meeting between the two, which seemed to go surprisingly well. Afterwards Maher praised Trump for being “much more self-aware” than he lets on in public, and said the president seemed to truly value his differing perspective:
“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted 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 as you will. Me, I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days.”
Now, Maher didn’t exactly walk away from that dinner a MAGA fan, saying at the time that he wished Trump behaved publicly more like he did in private. But he says that he walked away realizing that the person on TV may not be the real Trump:
“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 f**ked up, it’s just not as f**ked up as I thought it was.”
Well the relationship between the two didn’t seem to last long: In February of this year, Trump took to Truth Social to call the dinner a “waste of time” and blast Maher as an “overrated lightweight.” Even as recently as September, he took aim at the comedian for his low ratings – though this time he at least threw him a backhanded compliment:
“Bill Maher’s ratings are so low that it is hard to believe his show can continue. In many ways it’s SAD because, in actuality, I like him.”
Doesn’t sound like somebody who’s going to be getting a White House invite any time soon…except apparently, he did.
Maher recently revealed that he had a “really nice” text exchange with the president, who had once again invited him to dinner at the White House. And apparently that dinner took place last night, and included not just Maher but Kid Rock and…sports commentator Stephen A. Smith.
Now, Smith has claimed that he’s “never been interested in politics,” despite flirting with a presidential run in the past and saying that he believes he would be a better candidate than most Democrats:
“I think I’d be a better candidate than most Democrats. But as it pertains to me, I don’t have any desire to be a politician. My life is really nice.”
Well after the dinner at the White House last night, Kid Rock spoke on Fox News about the conversation that the men had – revealing that there was at least one thing they all agreed on:
“Last night, I’m having dinner at the White House with the president, Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith. One thing we all wholeheartedly agreed on is that socialism and communism has no place to have a foothold in our government.”
He says the dinner between the four of them was “epic,” and revealed some of the priorities that the others brought up to the president:
“Two Democrats, two Republicans, sit down, break bread, have laughs, have tough conversations on a lot of the issues, everything from socialism and communism to the war in Iran.
Bill Maher was talking about getting our interpreters back from Afghanistan that helped us out. Stephen A. Smith was very much engaged in talking about unemployment with black women and the funding of HBCUs. We reminded him that President Trump did fund $174 million to historically black universities and colleges in 2016.”
Sounds like an interesting dinner. But if those four can sit down and have a civil conversation about issues on which they disagree, why can’t everybody else?
