Trump rails against Bill Maher in his longest Truth Social post ever
By Brian Stelter, Andrew Kirell, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump has just penned his longest Truth Social post ever, according to a CNN analysis and a third-party tracking firm.
The topic of the president’s essay? Not the midterm election or the Middle East conflict. The post is about his complicated relationship with HBO comedian Bill Maher.
“Bill: Don’t call anymore,” Trump wrote toward the end of an emotional 1,323-word diatribe that started by calling Maher a “complete and total loser” in all caps.
The lengthy post also included some genuine news: Trump confirmed recent reports that he has considered evicting the reporters who cover him from the White House workspace that the press corps has used for decades.
“I am thinking about moving the Press, and putting them in a different location, but I will use that location for very badly needed space,” Trump wrote.
But most of the president’s post was in response to Friday’s edition of HBO’s “Real Time,” which was Maher’s first episode since dining with Trump at the White House on October 15.
The following day, Trump said it was a “great dinner” and said Maher “likes me a lot more than people understand, and I actually like him.”
Evidently, that changed after Trump tuned into Maher’s show. In a post riddled with inaccuracies, Trump blasted Maher, business partner Chuck LaBella, and HBO. Trump concluded, “I never watched your show much, but I will never watch it again, because it is nothing more than FAKE NEWS.”
“Real Time” is a comedic talk show featuring Maher’s pointed commentary, plenty of jokes, and an array of political and cultural guests. Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was a featured guest on Friday, along with Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for governor in California, and Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky. CNN re-aired the episode on Saturday. (HBO and CNN are both owned by Skydance.)
Trump’s post about Maher contained multitudes. At some points he sounded disappointed. “You’re a hopeless guy,” the president wrote.
At other points, he sounded vengeful. “I’m going to have the Republicans not cover you anymore,” Trump said, again seemingly writing directly to Maher via Truth Social.
By “cover you,” Trump may have meant Republicans who agree to appear on Maher’s show. Or maybe he was referring to the tendency of Fox News and other right-wing channels to play sound bites from Maher’s heterodox monologues.
Trump made other unclear comments, including about a “Laughter Machine,” insinuating that Maher’s show uses a laugh track: “Bill Maher lied, but he lies about everything, and I believe he lied to me when I asked him, with all the applause and laughter he gets after almost everything he says, about thing that aren’t funny or even any good, what Laughter Machine does he use? People can’t think he’s funny.”
The “Real Time” studio audience apparently thinks Maher is funny, because they’re seen and heard cheering during the show.
Trump recounted his first dinner with Maher, in March 2025, and said “he gave me a good first show” afterward, then “reverted back to his former self, and his old ways.”
Trump went on to claim that LaBella lobbied hard to get Maher invited back, “saying how much Bill loves me, that he respects me more than anybody, and wants to come back for a second meeting.”
The October 15 dinner also included ESPN host Stephen A. Smith and musician Kid Rock. Smith said on his podcast the next day that “we were there for over four hours in the White House, and Donald Trump did not run from any questions.”
Maher repeated the four-hour estimate on HBO, leading Trump to object: “Overall, I thought it was a good meeting. It didn’t last four hours, it lasted two hours, maybe less, and everybody was happy. We have the timestamps. I learned nothing, and felt it was a waste of time.”
Trump also defended himself against Maher’s jabs at his low approval ratings by wildly mischaracterizing CNN’s reporting.
“I have High Ratings and, more importantly, he said that I’m losing the support and approval of the Republican Party when, in fact, CNN just came out with a Poll showing that I’m at 98 and 99% support within the Republican Party, an All Time Record High,” Trump wrote.
CNN’s most recent poll, released last week, showed Trump with 74% approval among Republicans, “a new numeric low.”
Trump’s 98 and 99% claims likely refer to a weeks-old video clip of CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten, who highlighted another network’s poll finding that self-professed MAGA Republicans still back the president almost unanimously.
Trump has been approvingly showing that video clip at midterm rallies. But the GOP contains many millions of voters who do not self-identify as “MAGA Republicans.” Trump has repeatedly conflated his loyal MAGA base with the broader Republican Party.
Maher obviously touched a nerve, or several. Trump’s record-long rant against the comedian was nearly double the length of his second-longest post, a 723-word screed from May that began with complaints about the Kennedy Center’s plumbing and air conditioning before veering into attacks on a federal judge and his wife, the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling and birthright citizenship.
The operators of the Factbase database wrote on X that the anti-Maher essay was Trump’s “longest post ever out of 97,455 cumulative social media posts since 2011.”
Of course, Trump started out posting on Twitter, which enforced a 140-character limit for many years. Nowadays, many social media sites encourage longer posts.
Still, Trump beat reporters found that they could barely screenshot and summarize Sunday night’s harangue. This article is more than 900 words long, and it still doesn’t even come close to matching the president’s verbosity.
Trump ended with his customary eight-word sign-off, perhaps never more appropriately deployed: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
The-CNN-Wire
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