Bill Maher, 70, apologized on-air for his claims that most Trump-endorsed candidates lost primaries after receiving a text message from Trump, 80, himself.
“I said last week, I’m quoting myself, ‘Trump used to win all his endorsements. Now he’s winning almost none of them. None of them,’” Maher said on his show, Real Time with Bill Maher. “I heard from this one viewer who was very upset about this. Contacted me directly.”
Maher was alluding to the “viewer” being Trump, and continued to explain that the two text.
“I’m glad we do,” Maher said. “I’d rather have communication. He sent me a lot of information, and I promised, if this is not true what I said, I will say it on the air. He’s right. I did overstate it. That wasn’t true. Overstated. There, was that so hard, to not be a d--- about everything?”
Only nine of the 260 candidates Trump has endorsed this cycle have lost, yielding a 97 percent success rate, Maher discussed. He then added that, despite the numbers, he views things with a little more nuance.
“My point is that the trend looks like it is going downward on that, because he did lose five governorships,” Maher said. “Republican voters—this is from CNN—now rejected 10 Trump-endorsed candidates for statewide office this primary season. That’s equal to the number who lost in 2018, ‘20, and ‘24 primaries combined.”
Trump’s outrage at journalists over discussing endorsements extends well beyond just Maher. The president threatened to report Meet the Press host Kristen Welker to the FCC after she commented on Trump’s “mixed” endorsement results in a pre-show appearance on D.C.’s local NBC station. Trump also demanded Welker face “rebuke or punishment,” calling the press “a threat to our country.”
“The Radical Left News is going out of their way to harass, demean, and libel anything ”TRUMP,“” the president complained on Truth Social. “Their new weapon is to say that my 99% SUCCESS Rate on Endorsements, 100% on Senatorial Endorsements, (Many of whom were not even given a shot of winning until I Endorsed!) is either a mixed result, or not very good. In actuality, it is, without question, the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics.”
Trump’s endorsement success rate is a bit lower at 96 percent - and many of his winning candidates were unopposed incumbents.
Maher came under fire in March 2025 for sharing a private dinner with the president at the White House. Though Maher said Trump was “gracious and measured” at the dinner, their relationship spiraled into a public feud, with the two trading jabs on social media and television. Maher has alternated between lauding Trump’s behavior and roasting him, finally raising a white flag to allegedly end their incessant war of words.
