HBO’s Bill Maher came home from his second White House dinner boasting about it on air, and President Donald Trump answered with the longest post he has ever written on Truth Social.
Trump, 80, tore into the host of “Real Time with Bill Maher” in a roughly 1,300-word Truth Social post on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, branding the 70-year-old comedian a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER” and contradicting nearly every detail of Maher’s account of their Oct. 15 dinner at the White House.
“He looked like hell this time. Bill was drunk and had alcohol in his hand as he walked through the White House,” Trump wrote.
The post was Trump’s longest ever on the platform, according to CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, citing a CNN analysis and a third-party tracking firm. The subject was not the midterm election, Stelter noted, and not the Middle East conflict. It was Maher.
The Dinner Clock Doesn’t Match
Maher told his audience the visit ran four hours. Trump wrote that it “lasted two hours, maybe less,” that he “learned nothing” and that he “felt it was a waste of time.”
Musician Kid Rock and ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith were at the table too. The day after, Trump told reporters the dinner “was great,” that the group “even took a little tour of the ballroom” and that Maher “likes me a lot more than people understand.”
Then he watched the show. Maher’s first “Real Time” episode after the dinner aired Friday, Oct. 23, and the host opened by needling the president’s approval rating heading into the midterms. CNN re-aired the episode Saturday, Oct. 24; HBO and CNN are both owned by Skydance. Trump wrote that Maher’s program after the second dinner was far worse than after the first.
“I like these dinners,” Maher said in that monologue, telling viewers he gets cast as the villain for saying to the president’s face what critics put in articles Trump will never read.
The Bruised Eye at Dinner One
Their first dinner, in March 2025, drew a backlash. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David compared it to sitting down with Adolf Hitler. Maher defended the evening, saying everything he had never liked about Trump was missing that night.
Trump’s version is less flattering. He wrote that Kid Rock “called me incessantly” about arranging that 2025 meeting, that Maher arrived “very nervous” and “very insecure,” and that the comedian had a “seriously bruised eye and nose area, as though somebody had just beaten him up – But it wasn’t me!” Elsewhere in the post came the line “tell Bill that he’s a major POTHEAD.”
The two do not agree on who pushed for a rematch. Trump wrote that Maher’s producer, Chuck LaBella, called him 10 times to set up a second dinner. On his podcast “Club Random,” Maher said the president instigated it himself, by text.
The Press Corps News Buried Inside
Buried in the diatribe was real news: Trump confirmed he has considered moving the reporters who cover him out of the White House workspace 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.
He also went point by point against Maher’s material — the Justice Department’s targeting of ballots allegedly cast by noncitizens in California, rumors that he is converting the briefing room into a swimming pool, his midterm endorsements — and accused the host of catering to viewers who “don’t like working.” His message to the host: “Bill: Don’t call anymore.”
The tirade landed roughly a week before the 2026 midterm elections, the same day Trump campaigned at McMorran Place Sports & Entertainment Center in Port Huron, Mich. He has aimed at comedians before, calling earlier in 2026 for Jimmy Kimmel’s show to be terminated over a joke about Melania Trump, and demanding in 2025 that Seth Meyers be fired.
Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sat with Maher on the Oct. 23 episode, alongside California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. She began the interview by delivering a message from the president.
“I told him I was coming on the show, and he said, ‘Tell him he loved that dinner, and he knows it,'” Leavitt said.