bill maher

Larry David mocks capitulation to Trump in brutal parody about a 1939 dinner with Hitler

Many of President Donald Trump's more outspoken critics believe that way too much "capitulating" is taking place —that Trump is genuinely dangerous and deserves total condemnation rather than having a lot list of universities, law firms and tech CEOs who were critical of him in the past trying to make peace with him.

Comedian Larry David has fun with that concept in a satirical op-ed published by the New York Times on April 21. In his op-ed, David describes a fictional dinner with Adolf Hitler in 1939.

"Imagine my surprise when, in the spring of 1939, a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world's most reviled man, Adolf Hitler," David sarcastically writes. "I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. 'He's Hitler. He's a monster.' But eventually, I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn't change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity."

David continues, "Two weeks later, I found myself on the front steps of the Old Chancellery and was led into an opulent living room…. Everyone stiffened as Hitler entered the room. He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly, it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents, and it was accompanied by a slap on my back."

In a separate op-ed also published on April 21, New York Times Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy describes assigning the op-ed to David after he pitched it.

Healy explains, "Times Opinion has a high bar for satire — our mission is geared toward idea-driven, fact-based arguments — and we have a really, really high bar for commenting on today’s world by invoking Hitler. As a general rule, we seek to avoid Nazi references unless that is the literal subject matter; callbacks to history can be offensive, imprecise or in terrible taste when you are leveraging genocidal dictators to make a point. I also understood Larry's intent in writing this piece."

Healy adds, "We had spoken about American politics and how some on the left and in the center think it’s important to talk and engage with President Trump."

David's op-ed follows "Real Time" host Bill Maher's decision to meet with President Donald Trump in the White House. Although Maher has often been a scathing Trump critic, he decided to meet with him anyway. And Maher, on "Real Time," commented that Trump was a lot more low-key during their one-on-one conversation that he is publicly.

"Like many people," Healy notes, "Larry listened to Bill Maher talk about his recent dinner with Trump. Bill, a comedian Larry respects, said in a monologue on his Max show that he found the president to be 'gracious and measured' compared with the man who attacks him on Truth Social. Larry's piece is not equating Trump with Hitler. It is about seeing someone for who they really are and not losing sight of that."

Read Larry David's full New York Times op-ed at this link (subscription required) and Patrick Healy's op-ed here (subscription required).

From Your Site Articles

Related Articles Around the Web

Watch: Joe Scarborough and Bill Maher pounce on MAGA fans getting played by Putin

In the non-broadcast portion of Bill Maher's "Real Time" on HBO posted to YouTube, the host and guests Joe Scarborough and Mark Cuban called out Donald Trump's MAGA supporters who have been – and continue to be – ripe targets for Russian President Vladimir Putin's propaganda.

As Cuban pointed out, fans of Trump are pinning their election hopes on a wave of betting on the former president winning re-election based upon a flood of bets on Polymarket before noting that the only people who can make wagers on that site are foreigners. He then joked that Putin was likely using it to beef up support for Trump.

That led Scarborough and Maher to single out supporters of Trump who believe accusations of Russian collusion in the 2016 election was a hoax — with both adding that it wasn't.

ALSO READ: The menstrual police are coming: Inside the GOP's plan for total control over women

In the "Overtime" segment, Maher told his guests, "They influence our elections in many ways... I think the biggest hoax going is the idea that the Russian collusion was a hoax."

"It's not a hoax there was collusion," he added. "Just because [special counsel] Bob Mueller was bad at proving it –– there was definitely collusion!"

"That's one of the more maddening things, " Scarborough interjected. "I still read the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the op-eds and it is sort of my go-to in the morning. And it is maddening to see people on there talking about a Russian hoax. And you just want to say: read the Mueller report."

"Read everything that has happened and ask yourself why time and time again Donald Trump is doing things that make no sense," he added. "Why did he say in Helsinki in 2018 regarding Russia, I trust Vladimir Putin more than my intel agencies?"

"It's more dangerous than that," Maher replied. "Because they use it as a jumping-off point to say, 'Well since Russia was a hoax then...' But Russia wasn't a hoax and once you get them to believe that, then anything goes."

Watch below or at the link.

From Your Site Articles

Related Articles Around the Web

Watch: Pete Buttigieg destroys JD Vance in 2 minutes

During an appearance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tore into Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

Buttigieg began the segment by attempting to explain why wealthy Silicon Valley tech executives (Vance previously worked in Silicon Valley) are now lining up behind the Republican ticket. The former South Bend, Indiana mayor said California's tech CEOs are typically believed "to care about climate, supposed to be pro-science and rational and libertarians," and that "normally libertarians don't like authoritarians." But he said Americans have "made it way too complicated" and the the true explanation is "super simple."

"These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican Party, that tends to do good things for very rich men," Buttigieg said to loud applause. "That's kind of what you're getting with JD [Vance], right?

Buttigieg then pivoted to the Ohio senator, saying that when he attended Harvard University, he "found a lot of people like him, who would say whatever they needed to to get ahead." He reminded the audience that before Trump rose to power, it was popular to be an anti-Trump Republican, so Vance put himself in that role. The transportation secretary noted that at one point, Vance called Trump an "opioid, which is kind of a weird thing to say," prompting laughter from both Maher and the audience.

"For somebody whose identity is that they're connected to Appalachia, which has an opioid crisis, that really is the darkest thing you could possibly say about Donald Trump, at least in public," Buttigieg said. "Behind the scenes, he was actually calling him 'Hitler,' right? Seriously!"

He then noted that Vance was a lot like his home state's former governor, Mike Pence — not just in that he became Trump's running mate, but because both men appeared to compromise their core values in exchange for power.

"I watched [Pence] start out as an evangelical Christian who cared about rectitude and family values, and then get on board with a guy who was mixed up with a porn star, and make excuses for him," Buttigieg said. "He got four glorious years, I guess, as vice president of the United States. And it ended on the West front of the U.S. Capitol with Trump supporters proposing that he be hanged for using the one shred of integrity he still had to stand up to an attempt to overthrow the government."

"So I guess, maybe not as a politician but as a human being, what I'll say is that I hope things work out a little bit better for JD Vance than they did for Pence," he added.

To Buttigieg's point, the former vice president is not only no longer Trump's top deputy, but has since refused to endorse him, and was notably absent from last week's Republican National Convention. One delegate told Mother Jones that Pence "betrayed his country" by refusing to help Trump try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Watch Buttigieg's segment below, or by clicking this link.

From Your Site Articles

Related Articles Around the Web

Bill Maher rips GOP’s 'demigod worship' of Trump after assassination attempt

The Republican National Convention's conclusion with former President Donald Trump taking the stage to a crowd of adoring fans wearing bandages on their ears in solidarity was a little too much for comedian Bill Maher.

In summarizing the HBO host's weekly "new rules" segment, the Daily Beast described Maher as "sick of the latest wave of religious fervor around the ex-president. Maher noted that while he was personally grateful the shooter at Trump's Pennsylvania rally last week didn't hit his target, the assassination attempt nonetheless brought out "an orgy of magical thinking."

“[House Majority Leader] Steve Scalise said, ‘Yesterday there were miracles, and I think the hand of God was there too.’ Steve was also shot, but God was having an off day," Maher said, referring to the 2017 attempt on Scalise's life by a gunman at the Congressional baseball game.

Maher — an outspoken atheist — pointed to other examples of Trump supporters alluding to divine intervention , like Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) sharing an image on social media of God intervening to stop the shooter's bullet and YouTuber Jake Paul calling the 45th president of the United States "one of God's angels.

“America doesn’t need a demigod,” Maher said. “MAGA Nation, because they are religious by nature and given to magical thinking, have been trending towards demigod worship for a while now… But Trump didn’t survive the attempt on his life because of divine intervention. He survived because a virgin couldn’t hit the fattest president since [William Howard] Taft.”

The liberal comedian posited that Trump is still alive not because of God, but because the former president is "the single luckiest motherf—r who ever lived." He then recounted Trump's life of good fortune, saying Trump's "whole life is a string of ‘you gotta be f—ing kidding me’s."

"The Real Time host recapped Trump’s absurdly lucky life, including how he inherited a fortune from his father and got away with tax fraud, and how he’s outlived Richard Simmons despite rarely exercising or eating healthy," the Beast's Michael Boyle wrote.

Maher told Republicans that it was fine if they wanted to vote for Trump, but urged them to draw the line at praying to him. He sardonically referenced Trump telling recently telling the New York Post, “The doctor at the hospital … called it a miracle. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be dead.”

“Yeah, so is Dick Cheney,” Maher said. “But karma isn’t cooperating, and karma isn’t a thing.”

Click here to read the Beast's summary of Maher's segment. And watch the segment itself below, or by clicking this link.

From Your Site Articles

Related Articles Around the Web