A fine column in the New York Post relating what Bill Maher said about his dinner with President Trump. Please read the whole thing. Some key quotes:
Trump used the word “lost” in relation to the 2020 presidential election. “And I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d hear you say that.’ He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public,” Maher said.
I’d never seen him laugh in public. But he does — including at himself — and it’s not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of forty years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it.”
“A crazy person does not live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there. Which I know is f–ed up, it’s just not as f–ed up as I thought it was,” Maher said in summation.
There is an insight I haven’t seen elsewhere. Trump’s years in show biz were spent learning how to project different aspects of himself in different situations, as needed. In other words, he is a performer like Ronald Reagan and Maher. It takes one to know one, eh?
Later … RealClearPolitics has the transcript of what Maher said on-air about his dinner with Trump, the good, bad, and ugly of it. There is quite a bit of good. If I were to attempt a summary of Maher’s view, he sees Trump as someone who has chosen to portray a bigger-and cruder-than-life public persona because it works, so many people like it, even if Maher doesn’t.
This reminds me of a performer many young people won’t remember = Milton Berle. I found him absolutely icky but he was a big draw on early black and white TV, and I still can’t understand why.
