Bill Maher defends Trump meeting after Sean Penn criticism: 'You were just triggered'
Bill Maher still has no regrets about his dinner with President Donald Trump.
During a conversation with Sean Penn on the latest episode of his "Club Random" podcast, the "Real Time" host again defended his decision to meet with Trump at the White House earlier this year. Penn said that the comedian was "smart" to go to the dinner, but also expressed some reservations about Maher's monologue on his HBO show where he described how Trump was a different person in private than he is in public.
"When you talked about it on the show, I would have preferred that I saw (Trump's) mission, or his will to have the dinner, I wish I would have seen it as less successful," Penn said.
Maher quickly pushed back, arguing that Trump's mission wasn't "successful" because he did not stop criticizing the president afterwards. "It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him," the comedian said.
To that point, Penn told Maher he could have had "more brevity" in his monologue about the dinner, saying the comedian should have "done some editing" and said something simple like, "You know what? He treated me fine. That's that."
But Maher dismissed this criticism, telling the actor, "You were just triggered."
Penn also said that he personally would "not accept" an invitation to have dinner with Trump, as he "wouldn't trust" anything that was said. Maher took issue with this, arguing that "it's not a matter of trusting" what happens during a dinner with Trump but is about "seeing" and "experiencing" it. Maher also said he merely reported on the fact that Trump acted like a "very different guy" in private, but Penn suggested this could have simply been a performance.
Later, Penn said he doesn't feel like he would "get anywhere" if he were to meet Trump, but Maher said this is a "bad attitude" and that Penn doesn't "know anything." He also called the actor "crazy" for not wanting to meet with the president and vowed to "get you an invite."
Maher met with Trump at the White House and subsequently discussed their dinner during a monologue on his show in April, saying that the president was "much more self-aware than he lets on in public."
"Look, I get it. It doesn't matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian; it matters who he is on the world stage," Maher said at the time. "I'm just taking it as a positive that this person exists, because everything I've ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent, at least on this night with this guy."
Maher received some pushback for meeting with Trump and his subsequent monologue, which inspired Larry David to publish a satirical essay in The New York Times written from the perspective of a person who met with Adolf Hitler and came away impressed. Maher fired back at David's essay, telling Piers Morgan, "I think the minute you play the 'Hitler' card, you've lost the argument."
Contributing: KiMi Robinson