Bill Maher calls Larry David’s mockery of his Trump dinner ‘insulting to six million dead Jews’

Come­di­an and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Bill Maher has pub­licly expressed his dis­ap­proval of Lar­ry David’s satir­i­cal essay titled “My Din­ner With Adolf,” pub­lished in The New York Times. The piece par­o­dies Maher’s recent din­ner with for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump by draw­ing a provoca­tive com­par­i­son to din­ing with Adolf Hitler.​

In an inter­view on Piers Mor­gan Uncen­sored, Maher stat­ed that invok­ing Hitler in this con­text was “kind of insult­ing to six mil­lion dead Jews,” empha­siz­ing that such com­par­isons dimin­ish the unique atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by the Nazi regime. He fur­ther remarked, “I think the minute you play the Hitler card, you’ve lost the argu­ment.”

Maher defend­ed his deci­sion to attend the din­ner with Trump, not­ing that he found the for­mer pres­i­dent to be “gra­cious and mea­sured” dur­ing their inter­ac­tion. He clar­i­fied that his hon­est report­ing of the event does not equate to an endorse­ment, stat­ing, “Just the fact that I met him in per­son did­n’t change that, and the fact I report­ed hon­est­ly is not a sin either.” ​

Despite the ten­sion caused by the essay, Maher acknowl­edged his long­stand­ing friend­ship with David but admit­ted that the piece strained their rela­tion­ship. He expressed hope for future dia­logue, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of engag­ing in civ­il dis­course even with polit­i­cal oppo­nents. ​Yahoo

The con­tro­ver­sy has sparked broad­er dis­cus­sions about the bound­aries of satire and the appro­pri­ate­ness of his­tor­i­cal com­par­isons in polit­i­cal com­men­tary.​The Dai­ly Beast

For more on this sto­ry, watch the fol­low­ing video: