Larry David because you're friends, aren't you? Why are you friends? Are you friends? Of course. I mean, this wasn't, you know, my favorite moment of our friendship. But, you know, look, I don't want to get in too much into that, but I think the minute you play the Hitler card. [00:00:16] - That's what I think. - You've lost the argument. - Yes. - Bill Maher. Bill Maher there is not happy with Larry David following his satirical piece in the New York Times. The piece was super chill, titled Larry David My Dinner with Adolf. [00:00:34] Comparing Trump's dinner with Trump, I mean, bars dinner with Trump to if he had dined with Adolf Hitler. He never calls out Bill Maher by name, but it was understood the essay was meant to mock Maher's description of his dinner with Donald Trump. After meeting with Trump at the white House, Maher said, quote, I never felt [00:00:50] I had to walk on eggshells around Trump. 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. Okay, that's just how it went down. Make it what you will. It's emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days. [00:01:09] 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. It's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw and I wasn't high. [00:01:26] Okay, so that is the debut of my Bill Maher impression, I think pretty good. It went well. Thank you. Thank you so much. And, Larry David was not a fan of that take from Bill Maher. His whole essay is a fictional story about a man who's invited to dinner with Adolf [00:01:44] Hitler, and has a surprisingly good time. Here are just two excerpts from that New York Times essay. Two hours later, the dinner was over and the Führer escorted me to the door. I'm so glad to have met you. I hope I'm no longer the monster you thought I was. I must say, mein Führer, I'm so thankful I came. [00:02:02] Although we disagree on many issues. It doesn't mean that we have to hate each other. And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night. Now Bill Maher is firing back, accusing Larry David of insulting Jewish people. Here's what he told Piers Morgan. [00:02:18] I must say, you know. Come on, man. Hitler. Nazis. Nobody has been harder about an aunt. And more prescient, I must say, about Donald Trump than me. I don't need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is. Just the fact that I met him in person didn't change that. [00:02:38] And the fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either. But, you know, to use the Hitler thing, I first of all, I just think it's kind of insulting to 6 million. Yes. Dead Jews, you know, like, that should kind of be in its own place in history. [00:02:58] And, you know, I know people can say, well, we're just comparing it in this way. Well, It's an argument you kind of lost just to start it. It's just. It's just. Look, maybe it's not completely logically fair, but Hitler has really [00:03:13] kind of got to stay in his own place. He is the goat of evil, and we're just going to have to, I think, leave it like that. So, you know, did I think that was appropriate? No. And, you know, that is fair enough. [00:03:30] Interestingly, I was directly blamed by Piers Morgan when he had Ben Shapiro on by the both of them and TYT more broadly, for Trump getting shot in the ear by comparing some of his actions to Hitler. So, you know, there is definitely some precedent there. [00:03:49] I, of course, don't think anybody is claiming that he is Hitler, but I think sometimes you do have to make the comparison of moves that stop somebody that were indicative of Hitler's rise to power and to show the kind of moves to erode democracy and to create an authoritarian Grip on power before they happen. [00:04:09] You can't wait until after they happen. And so you have to let people know this is how it starts. It starts with these slow moves, with these small grabs, with these certain moments. And no one is saying he has killed 6 million people. I think they're just saying, look, he's becoming more and more authoritarian. [00:04:24] He's shipping people out, putting people in prisons. And maybe we should take note. There are similar things to what Hitler did. I don't think that means it's you're responsible for someone then thinking he's Hitler. When you're responding to actual things the person is doing, if you're not responding to real things, that's different. [00:04:41] But Ma doubled down, defending his decision to sit down with Trump. Take a look. My whole, reason to go to the white House. You know, I said it right at the beginning of the speech I made about it was, you know, talking to kid Rock right here. And we were just like, there's got to be a better way than just [00:04:58] hurling insults from 3000 miles away. I mean, maybe, you know, nothing will come of this, but what I know nothing will come from is is pretending to ignore the person who has all the power. [00:05:15] Democrats have no power. So to think that your method of running out of the room screaming, I'm not talking to you, maybe my thing has a 1% chance of succeeding. Yours definitely has zero. So I love that bill Maher now basically says there's no point to doing commentary, [00:05:33] to doing reporting, to doing political satire, to doing his entire show. If there's a literal 0% chance to ever affect, which is, of course, blatantly not true, you're not going to be able to stop simply with criticism and critique and commentary, but you can put a check on that power. [00:05:48] A very public check. And people's criticism, generally speaking, I don't think, was that he sat down with him. It was that he sat down with him and didn't really push back. I know there's a few things he says he brought up to Trump, but from his own retelling, he brought them up very softly. [00:06:05] You know, he said birtherism was low. It was a low thing to do. Wasn't low. It was racist, completely made up and garbage. Garbage. Thing to do to to attack the first African American president in our history. It's not just low. [00:06:20] And he says, I said to him, you're scaring people. Why would you want to scare people? But honestly, I couldn't remember what his answer was. It's because he probably said it real soft. And the question isn't. You're scaring people. He knows he's doing that. The point would be to say, why are you doing it? Do you not want to be a leader for all? Tell me why that's an okay thing to do. [00:06:39] It's about the follow up question. It's about actually holding somebody to account when you're having that conversation, and not just bringing up a thing quickly in passing where you don't even know what they say in response. But then, look, going on his art tour and accepting the MAGA hats that he gives you on the way out, you can also just say, no thanks, I don't want the hats. [00:06:55] I'm not MAGA, but I appreciate it. But that's not the way Bill Maher sees it. He instead believes he is a hero. This is him on TMZ. By the way. I don't need to be. Lectured on who Donald Trump is. I was one of the first people to call it out before anybody did. [00:07:11] I'm proud that I was able to go into the white House and say to the president of the United States, look him in the eye and say, you're scaring people. You don't. It doesn't bother you that you're scaring so many of your own citizens. I should be a hero. For going there and doing those things and saying those things to the president. [00:07:29] - I'm not the villain here. - Yes, yes, you're a hero for saying that. Not remembering his response and then having him sign the list of insults he has made towards you. I should be a hero. Okay. Again, the problem isn't sitting down with him. The problem is normalizing him and his result being in his conclusion, [00:07:48] being there's not a crazy person in the white House. There's somebody who plays a crazy person on TV. He was actually quite gracious, never acknowledging, even out loud, the possibility in his speech that maybe he did it to play him. Maybe he did it so that he would go on TV and say these very specific, exact things. [00:08:08] Normalizing Trump even in some way. That to me is the big issue. But I'm curious what you guys think was. Yeah, it seems obvious to me that, like what Larry. David. Larry, David, excuse me? His satirical op ed is pointing out that maybe there's all the things [00:08:29] for the last ten years that Trump has said and done right. Maybe there's that, and you're two hours spent talking with the guy like they're not the same, bro. Like to come out of that and be like, no, all the things this guy's ever done [00:08:44] and said in his capacity as a president and as a presidential candidate, you know, January 6th, sending, immigrants to the gulags in South America because they did the, the heinous crime of coming to America illegally. [00:09:01] Like the the countless things, there's all the things this guy has done and said, and, you know, the hour he spent with you, being pleasant to you, like, which one is supposed to matter more like, this is insane. And that's what I think is the genius of of Larry's, you know, rebuke of this guy. [00:09:19] It's like, let's just take that logic to its to its ultimate end. Like, if you're capable of having a human experience with somebody, that then absolves them of any and everything they've ever done before or after, that's a ridiculous thing to say. [00:09:36] And Larry used the most ridiculous example to show how stupid Bill Maher sounds like. It was like and and in his comments afterwards, like, I should be a hero. No, you're a goat. Like the idea that you couldn't even consider for one minute [00:09:51] that maybe this guy was putting on airs with you for two hours, and all the crazy stuff he does beyond those two hours is actually the real. That's true. And look, I mean, first of all, two things. One is Larry David is objectively funnier than Bill Maher and comedians hate when. [00:10:09] And Ben, you probably can speak to this better. There are always wars about comedians. And who they think is funny, or who the public thinks is funnier. And they have very sort of soft egos. I would, I would say the ones that I've known and know, but that notwithstanding, [00:10:26] you know, when Maher said to Piers Morgan, this is disrespecting those 6 million people, my bet. And we'll never know this, but would be that those 6 million people want would want us calling out exactly what this is, [00:10:42] that these are I mean, what was the turn of phrase that came out of the Holocaust? Never again. Right. We don't do never again in the rear view mirror. You do it as it's happening. You do it when they're arresting judges in their own courtrooms. You do it when they're defunding departments of education, when they're sending people to essentially camps in another country. [00:11:00] You do it when you know, when the people that you're pardoning, the people who were wrongly, in your estimation, imprisoned, when you're discrediting the entire press and you've made fake news, something that we all talk about. So I think this is perfectly appropriate time to to invoke fascism. [00:11:19] And and you don't invoke fascism in the common parlance by talking about Pinochet, who very few people know about. You invoke it by talking about the picture of fascism. And yes, is is Donald Trump organizing the extermination of a people? No, he's not. [00:11:35] But I do think that you have to talk about some of the hallmarks of what fascism is, and that we see them in our midst. And I think those 6 million people on on balance, many of them would say, thank you for doing that. Thank you for pointing it out. It's important that this not happen again. And the way you stop it from happening is when you notice it's happening [00:11:51] right before your eyes. Absolutely. And it's not as though there aren't hints of that happening. And it's not as though our president is doing anything to combat it because he is not, you know, in the midst of these deportations, you have white nationalist groups [00:12:07] marching saying, we are white nation. The deportations begin. We are a white nation. The deportations begin, and the president doesn't come out loudly and immediately and says, Those guys aren't with me. I disavow those guys. He lets it happen and so who knows what the long term plans are. [00:12:24] But I do know for a fact that if somebody was staunchly against this nation becoming more racist and becoming this white nationalist nation, you'd very clearly speak out against it. So at the very least, you're creating a gray area and creating the room for that to happen. Now, later in the interview with Piers Morgan, I think an interesting [00:12:42] thing came up that Larry David hasn't really spoken out on behalf of Jews or on behalf of Israel in any way, but at least the very directly on behalf of Jews. In the time of rising, rapidly rising anti-Semitism in the last year and a half in this country. [00:12:57] And so to invoke it, maybe when Bill Maher has been a great ally of the Jewish people and, as I see it, of like rational thought holding the the appropriate people and places to account, during a very difficult time. That's the point to be made. [00:13:13] But that doesn't mean that somebody doesn't speak out on one thing, can't make a stark point on the other. And like you said, Michael, saying Hitler is just a way to personify the concept of evil in a way that people can understand. What was also, I think, very telling later in the interview is Piers Morgan said, did you hear? [00:13:31] Said Tamar, did you hear from Trump after your speech recounting on your show? The meeting with him? And Mar uncharacteristically completely goes, I'm not going to comment on that. Okay. And so piers goes, I'm taking that as a yes then obviously. [00:13:48] So obviously now they have some sort of chummy relationship where they're communicating. And that also furthers the problem. Now you have sort of a soft spot. So not yeah you're still going to make Trump jokes the next week on your show, but you're not immediately going to now rebuke probably as hard this person [00:14:05] because you don't generally go after your buddies as much, he said. I'm not buddies with him. We're not friends yet, for some reason, suddenly you're protecting the fact that you're speaking with him. Yet he, Bill Maher himself and many others criticized, like when Trump goes and is supposed to confront Vladimir Putin in Russia [00:14:22] and instead has a private meeting off the record and says nothing but positive things about him. Well, you wonder why it's hard to speak truth to power and really do it and really hold up that when it's hard, when the person butters you up, when the person acts cool to you. That's when it's extra hard to do. [00:14:37] And it seems like Mars a little too excited. And Mars the person I like. And I love how he's fought, and I love how he stood up over the years for a lot of causes I agree with and some things that I don't. And I think he is a funny comedian also. But you know, I've hung out with Bill Maher. [00:14:55] I have smoked weed with Bill Maher personally. That doesn't mean I'm not coming out here and being very harshly telling you the things that I think he does that are wrong. And just because we hung out a couple times and he was cool to me, kind of, and also kind of rude the first time, but overall kind of cool. [00:15:11] Doesn't mean I'm not going to tell you I'm still aware of the things he's doing that are wrong or are right. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.