Bill Maher admitted that Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, are frustrated with him after he publicly attacked McNearney for revealing that she had lost relationships with family members who voted for Trump.
“I was as kid-gloved as I could,” Maher said on the Dec. 7 episode of his Club Random Podcast, while reflecting on his previous slamming of McNearney for giving her relatives an “ultimatum” on his talk show, Real Time With Bill Maher. “And I see they’re mad at me.”
He then apologized while still defending his words.
“I’m sorry. I mean, I was being, again, as respectful as I could, but I don’t agree with that point of view,” he said. “And since she went public with it, it wasn’t out of school for me to go public with it.”
The comedian admitted that he has friends who “didn’t like what I said,” but stood firmly in his beliefs that cutting off relatives isn’t the path forward.
“I’m in the ‘talk to them’ wing of the Democratic Party, I’m not in the ‘cut your people off,’” he said. “Don’t cut them off.”
Maher admitted that he and Kimmel “weren’t close” before his words, but he liked “Jimmy a lot.”
“I love Jimmy. I always have,” he said. “I don’t know him that well, but he’s a great guy. And we have a connection, like we were both fired by ABC.”
“I hope we’re friends forever,” he added. “But I don’t know. You know, the liberals and the woke, that’s a schism. It just is.”
Maher’s reflections stemmed from comments McNearney—who is an executive producer and co-head writer for her husband’s show—made on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast in November.
There, just months after Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended following controversial remarks made after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, she expressed that her husband is “fighting” Trump daily, which complicated her relationships with family members who supported the president.
McNearney, who said she “grew up in a very conservative, Republican house” in St. Louis, Missouri, admitted that she has “a little bit of sympathy” for people in her family who are “deliberately being misinformed every day,” but now it feels personal.
“To me, them voting for Trump is them not voting for my husband and me and our family and I unfortunately have kind of lost relationships with people in my family because of it,” she said on the podcast while sitting next to Kimmel, who has long been a vocal critic of Trump, even recently receiving renewed pressure from the president to take his show off the air.
“This is not just Republican vs Democrat for me anymore, to me it’s family values,” she added, noting that when she sees headlines about Trump now, it just makes her “mad at certain aunts, uncles, cousins who put him in power.”
She also revealed that she had sent emails to her family members before the election with a list of 10 reasons not to vote for Trump, but was either ignored “or got truly insane responses.”
“I’ve definitely pulled in closer with the family that I feel more aligned with. And I hate that this has happened,” she said. “Part of me goes, ‘Don’t let politics get in the way.’ But to me, this isn’t politics. It’s truly values. And we’re just not aligned anymore.”
Maher then addressed the situation on his HBO show, explaining that while he had many issues with Trump himself, he didn’t agree with losing relationships with family members.
“Ten reasons? I can think of 100,” he said on the Nov. 21 episode of Real Time. “But I would never present it to someone as an ultimatum. Ultimatums don’t make people rethink their politics. They make them rethink you.”
He also said that people like McNearney were part of the reason former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election.
“Write a top ten list to yourself where you try to imagine ten reasons why 77 million Americans didn’t want to trust you with taking power, and I say that as someone who votes Democratic,” he said. “As I like to remind my very pure friends, we voted for the same person. You’re just why she lost.”
