Comedian Bill Maher went off on actor Sean Penn during a heated exchange on Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, posted Sunday on YouTube. The topic? Penn’s refusal to dine with President Donald Trump — even though he’s met with notorious dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Maher didn’t hold back. “But you do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him,” Maher said.
“Absolutely, you’re so smart,” Penn replied — but then drew a line. He made it clear he would never break bread with Trump.
Maher was stunned. “Really, you meet with f***ing Castro and Hugo Chavez, but not the President of the United States?” he fired back.
Penn stood firm. “I saw good results come out of some of those things,” he said. But when it comes to Trump? “I just personally wouldn’t trust anything that was said in the room, including the personality.”
Maher compared it to avoiding a medical test. “It’s like saying, ‘I don’t want this medical test because I don’t want to know.’ I want to know,” he replied.
Penn then said he wished the Trump dinner hadn’t been seen as “successful.” Maher pushed back. “Well, it was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I’ve always said about him,” he said. “It would’ve been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him, so it wasn’t successful.”
Maher has caught flak from the left over the dinner. He insists he didn’t “go MAGA,” but said Trump’s usual bombast was missing that night.
“And I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. ‘Oh, my God, Bill, you gonna say something nice about him?’ What I’m gonna do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it, and if that’s not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don’t give a f***,” Maher said.
He even recalled Trump using the word “lost” in reference to the 2020 election. “I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d hear you say that,’” Maher said. “He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public.”
Maher summed it up bluntly. “Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was — I swear to God — absent, at least on this night with this guy,” he said. “He mostly steered the conversation to, ‘What do you think about this?’ I know: your mind is blown. So is mine.”
“A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House,” Maher added. “A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is fed up. It’s just not as fed up as I thought it was.”