Bill Maher has turned Donald Trump’s favorite insult against him.
Maher, whom Trump has called “ratings-challenged,” flamed the president’s MAGA Fyre Fest of a convention for drawing fewer viewers than a typical night of network news.
“Of course Trump had to claim that the convention hall was packed, even though, you know, if you ignore the empty seats, yes, it did look packed,” Maher said during his Friday monologue on Real Time with Bill Maher.
Maher, 70, then went in for the kill, saying, “Trump’s convention on Fox News got less than [Sean] Hannity and [Greg] Gutfeld get on a regular night, and I’m the low-ratings dummy?”
The late-night host was referring to Trump’s primetime address on Wednesday failing to boost eyeballs on Fox, which reportedly had about 2.5 million viewers, less than the typical night for Hannity and Gutfeld.
Poor planning may have made matters worse for the president. Maher pointed out that Trump scheduled his rambling address, which ran for 106 minutes, on the same night as the NFL season opener featuring a much-anticipated Super Bowl rematch.
“Of course,” Maher said of Trump’s ratings disaster. “You went against football? You went against the opening two nights of football? The one thing that people still watch on television?”
Maher also attacked the substance of Trump’s addresses.
“This really happened this week, in America, which used to be a real country,” Maher said of Trump asking his midterm convention attendees to take his “pledge.”
Trump, with his hand raised and eyes closed, asked convention-goers to repeat after him: “I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends—I’ll do it any way. I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do.”
The Daily Beast spotted Trump supporters leaving en masse before Trump’s speech ended on Wednesday.
Maher and other late-night hosts, like Jimmy Kimmel, are frequent targets of the president, with Trump calling out Maher by name as recently as February.
“Fortunately, his Television Ratings are so low that nobody will learn about his various Fake News statements about me,” Trump said on Truth Social. “He is no different than Kimmel, Fallon, or Colbert but, I must admit, slightly more talented! Anyway, Bill Maher is a highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Maher’s latest attacks.
The grim reality of Trump’s ratings did not stop him from boasting about them. He claimed on Truth Social that his speech drew more eyeballs than the NFL opener, writing “the overall numbers beat the NFL.”
Ratings for Wednesday’s game on Netflix have not been made public, but the 2025 season opener had 28.3 million viewers—more than 10 times those of Trump’s speech on Fox.
