Bill Maher did not see the humor in Larry David’s satirical column about having dinner with Adolf Hitler, a not-so-subtle critique of the late-night host’s dinner date with Donald Trump.
“The minute you play the Hitler card, you’ve lost the argument,” Maher told Piers Morgan in a new interview Thursday, adding that it wasn’t his “favorite moment” of their friendship.
In his New York Times op-ed, the Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator did not mention Maher’s name, but did imagine a dinner with Hitler that closely paralleled how Maher has spoken about his friendly visit to the White House last month.
“I knew I couldn’t change his views,” David wrote, “but we need to talk to the other side—even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.”
Maher, who grew up Catholic and did not know until his early teens that his mother was Jewish, told Morgan, “I must say, you know come on, man, Hitler? Nazis? Nobody has been harder about and more prescient, I must say, about Donald Trump than me. I don’t need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is.”
“Just the fact that I met him in person didn’t change that,” he continued. “And the fact I reported honestly is not a sin either. But to use the Hitler thing, first of all, I just think it’s kind of insulting to six million dead Jews.”
Seeming to miss the point of the clear exaggeration in David’s piece, Maher said, “Hitler has really kind of got to stay in his own place. He is the GOAT of evil. And we’re just going to have to, I think, leave it like that. So, you know, did I think that was appropriate? No, but people have the right to this.”
The Times’ deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy argued that David was “not equating Trump with Hitler,” but rather writing about “seeing someone for who they really are and not losing sight of that.”
Maher told Morgan that he has not had any contact with David, who he still considers a friend, since the op-ed ran.
“I mean, this wasn’t my favorite moment of our friendship,” he remarked.
The post Bill Maher Fires Back at Larry David: ‘Insulting to Six Million Dead Jews’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
