Bill Maher Addressed His Falling Out With Larry David And Why It Happened

It might be hard to imagine that comedic genius Larry David and the perpetually annoying “comedian” Bill Maher were once friends, but life is full of surprises. To wit — here’s a pic of them chumming it up back in 2016 at a Vanity Fair party.

Let’s get back to the “annoying” part for a minute. Earlier this year, Bill — who, for better or (mostly) worse, has trafficked in political comedy for his entire career — visited the Trump White House and lavished some praise on its chief occupant.

“You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar,” Bill said on his show Real Time With Bill Maher about his meeting with Trump himself. “Trump was gracious and measured and why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw and I wasn’t high.”

One person who wasn’t impressed by Bill’s comments was Larry (no, not me), who wrote a satirical essay for The New York Times called “My Dinner With Adolf” that functionally criticized Bill’s sentiments and his decision to visit the White House. ” Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler,” he wrote. “But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.”

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Bill responded to Larry’s essay last month on another episode of Real Time. “The people who got all butt-hurt because I had dinner with [Trump]. You know, ’cause he’s Hitler. Except he’s not,” he said. “So unhelpful and dumb.… Every year, I used to ask Larry David to do Real Time and he’d always say, ‘Bill, I can’t, I’m not smart enough about politics to do your show.’ Yeah, I get that now.”

“​​I mean, Larry David certainly is not really my friend anymore,” he claimed, before adding that he no longer speaks to him and that Larry hasn’t reached out since the publication of the op-ed.

He also told the interviewer that he was “surprised” by Larry’s essay, but that he also believed that his response on Real Time constituted a “great clapback.” “You should watch it,” he told the interviewer.