Bill Maher isn’t taking his latest White House snub on the chin.
After the internet lit up over reports that the comedian had been tapped for the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize—only for the White House to flatly deny it by calling it “fake news”—Maher fired back by debuting a new insult that looks a lot like President Donald Trump’s go-to diagnosis.
On Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the late-night host introduced what he suggested should be recognized by the American Psychiatric Association: “terminally online disease,” or TOD. The TOD diagnosis was part of an extended eight-minute rant about other people having opinions and being sore losers.
“Remember that the next time you read the words ‘Twitter reacts’ or ‘backlash erupts’ or ‘internet explodes,’” he told viewers. “The internet didn’t explode. Some Gen Z loser at the Daily Beast and some right-wing s—poster exploded. No one else cared.”
Maher, 70—who has a television show and a podcast largely dedicated to his opinions—described the condition as afflicting people who “feel intense emotional distress from spending all day doomscrolling on their phone.” He warned that sufferers “need your help”—and not just for their own sake, but for the “families and loved ones who aren’t terminally online.”
The comedian’s attacks on “Gen Z” losers and the perpetually enraged come after Maher had a pre- and post-tantrums about his Golden Globes loss in January. “I’ve been nominated for 33 Emmys, and they would never give it to me,” Maher said on his podcast Club Random, before he lost the Globe. “That’s not a gag number. It’s a real number.”
After he lost to Ricky Gervais, an atheist comedian regularly slammed by LGBTQ advocates for his jokes, Maher whined that he “used to get nominated for everything, and then the wokeness came in.”
The new term “TOD” comes as Maher finds himself at the center of a media firestorm following reports from The Atlantic and CNN that he had been selected for the Mark Twain Prize—one of comedy’s highest honors, previously awarded to figures like David Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Dave Chappelle.
The reporting even suggested that Trump, 79, was supportive of the choice—an eyebrow-raising twist given the pair’s long-running feud.
The alleged reconciliation between the former dinner dates didn’t last long.
When the Daily Beast reached out, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shut it down bluntly: “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.” Communications Director Steven Cheung piled on, calling the report “literally FAKE NEWS.”
Maher used his monologue to swipe at both the administration and the media frenzy surrounding the saga.
The rant—and the TOD label—echoes a familiar playbook.
Maher’s new diagnosis bears more than a passing resemblance to “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a term frequently used by Trump and his allies to dismiss critics as irrational or obsessed.
Maher’s version flips the script, targeting what he sees as chronically online outrage culture rather than anti-Trump sentiment specifically.
And Maher isn’t just diagnosing the problem—he’s offering a cure.
“Eat some fruit,” he advised viewers. “If God wanted us to have an opinion on everything, he wouldn’t have given us the shrug emoji.”
Maher’s new diagnosis drops right into an already messy history between him and the president.
Their feud escalated after a White House dinner last year that Trump later blasted as a “waste of time,” unloading on Maher in a Truth Social post as “very boring,” “relentlessly anti-Trump,” and a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT.” Maher fired back on-air, likening the dinner to a bad date.
