Bill Maher declared that he doesn’t care what Donald Trump does or says about him, essentially giving up the fight in their never-ending feud.
The host, 70, announced his stance on Trump during a new episode of his Club Random podcast, where he shared why his surrender to Trump is the best way to deal with his presidency.
“I don’t care,” Maher said. “If at this point, 10 years into the Trump situation, you are still obsessing about his personality, my view is that’s on you.”
“Should we always be criticizing, as I do, what he actually does while he’s in office? Absolutely. But to keep just focusing on these personality things that we’ve talked about for 10 years—they’re not going to change,” he explained.
“That’s who he is. I don’t care when he calls me names now. The way he does it, it’s the way he talks. It’s who he is. Of course, he’s going to hang a tarp on the building,” he went on, referencing Trump’s covering up of the Kennedy Center after a judge ordered that his name be removed.
“First he tried to stop it, but then it was going through, and then they took his name off the building. He didn’t like it. When they took his name off the building, he covered the building in drapery so you couldn’t see anything on the building. I’m not kidding. And I don’t care,” he told his guest, British actor Jack Whitehall. “He does these things which you can’t even imagine if you tried your hardest.”
Maher said the way to “win” when Trump does outlandish things is to say “well played,” and move on—like when the administration tried to block Maher’s Mark Twain Prize Award and told the press the comedian’s selection was “fake news.”
The comedian drew widespread criticism for visiting Trump at the White House and then praising him as “gracious and measured” afterward. Since then, Maher hasn’t stopped sharing his criticisms of the president, which he told ABC’s This Week made Trump feel “betrayed.”
The president’s attacks on Maher have grown more intense since then. According to Maher, this is how you “win” the war of words.
“When he does it, I just got to go, ‘OK, well played.’ This is what you do,” he said. “And as long as it’s something that doesn’t really affect me or other people for real—I don’t care about your reflecting pool. I don’t care about your ballroom. I don’t care what you do on the lawn. You can have UFC fights. You can have sheep grazing there, like one president did. You can do anything. Pickleball! I don’t give a s--t what you do on the lawn.”
“And if you’re a person who does, you’re just way too into Donald Trump as the person who controls how you think in life,” he added. “Everything is about him. I’m not going there with you. And I’m winning. And I’m somebody he attacks personally. And I care less than you do.”
Finally, he insisted, “Your life is all about Donald Trump. Mine isn’t.”
