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Late Night / Published 2026-10-31

Bill Maher Answers Trump’s 1,318-Word Post, Line by Line

Bill Maher spent Friday’s Real Time reading Trump’s 1,318-word post about him, conceding the “complete and total loser” line and disputing the rest. Deadline counted a 1,300-word tweet.

Q.QIBA Screen deskSource-backed article · 5 min read
Event date Prepared Published 2026-10-31
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THE SHORT VERSION

  • Trump published a 1,318-word post on Truth Social on Sunday calling Maher a “complete and total loser” and criticizing Real Time and producer Chuck LaBella.
  • Maher read it on Friday’s Real Time, conceding the insult, disputing the Iran and phone-call passages, and quoting the “major POTHEAD” line back at the audience.
  • Deadline describes the same post as a record-setting 1,300-word tweet and dates Maher’s second dinner with Trump to this month, with Kid Rock and Stephen A. Smith present.

1,318 words on a Sunday

President Donald Trump published a 1,318-word post on Truth Social on Sunday, and it was aimed at Bill Maher. The Hollywood Reporter records that Trump called the host a “complete and total loser” and went after Real Time and its producer Chuck LaBella in the same passage. The post moved through Maher's show, his friendship with LaBella and the dinners between the two men. Maher answered on Friday's episode of Real Time, holding up a printed copy and walking through it page by page.

Deadline described the broadcast as a reaction to a record-setting 1,300-word tweet, published after the two men had dinner earlier this month. The same account notes that this was Maher's second dinner with Trump, and that Kid Rock and Stephen A. Smith were part of the group this time. The Hollywood Reporter adds that the post appears to have followed jokes about Trump's remarks on men's bodies in Maher's 23 October monologue. Neither outlet reports a response from the White House to the monologue.

Cheesecake Factory, then a toy store

Maher opened by working through the midterms. He noted that Barack Obama had caused what he called a “big scandal” by saying at a rally that Trump has “got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory”. He also said that only one percent of Republicans were mentioning Trump in their ads. “He went off on me like Kelly Clarkson in a toy store,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The White House dinner got its own routine. Maher said that “dining at the White House is the opposite of the Cheesecake Factory. After you leave, they review you.” He also compared eating with Trump to dating Taylor Swift, with “a lot of laughs at the time”. Deadline recorded him calling the printout of the post “three pages of ‘who cares?’” after allowing that it was “a little long”.

The Iran claim and the phone calls

The section Maher lingered on was the one about Iran. Trump wrote that Maher does not think it “was a good thing to take the Nuclear Weapon away from Iran”, and that this “shows you that he is not very smart”. Maher said that “what pisses me off” is that “he doesn't even notice what I say”, and Real Time then played a run of clips that showed him saying the opposite, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

Page two, in Maher's telling, was about the phone calls. He read out the claim that he calls Trump incessantly and rejected it: “I've never called you, you call me. I'd be afraid to call you.” The post also said Maher invited himself to the White House. Deadline's account has him conceding the “complete and total loser” line before he checked the rest: “You got me there. OK, I'll own that one.”

The pothead paragraph, and Kid Rock

Trump wrote that Maher is a “major POTHEAD”. Maher's answer, as The Hollywood Reporter printed it: “Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag now. Boy, that explains a lot. I thought I was just happy.” Later in the same episode, Kid Rock, who had been at the dinner, told Maher he had been “pretty high” at the White House.

Maher kept reading. He described the post's account of walking through the White House with a drink in his hand, then read the verdict that followed: “Overall, I thought it was a good meeting.” He also read the passage in which Trump described him as “not a nice guy”, then told the audience that the line about catering to a base of losers was aimed at them.

What Trump wrote about LaBella

The post spent several lines on Chuck LaBella, Maher's friend and business associate, whom Trump described as a former “gofer” on The Apprentice who was moved quickly up the ranks at NBC. Trump wrote that LaBella had lobbied him for years to meet Maher and to appear on Real Time, and that he had refused the show. The same passage called Maher's program low-rated on HBO, which it said was once, long ago, a network of quality and excitement, before all of that went away. “It won't happen!” he wrote, in The Hollywood Reporter's quotation.

Trump also wrote that his first response to the request was “Fellas, this guy's a Goofball”, and that LaBella and Kid Rock had called him incessantly about a meeting. The Hollywood Reporter dates the first dinner to March 2025. Deadline puts the second one this month, with Kid Rock and Stephen A. Smith present, and recalls that Trump had called the first dinner a “total waste of time”.

What the two accounts leave open

The two accounts agree on the shape of the night and differ on the label. The Hollywood Reporter counts 1,318 words in a Truth Social post published on Sunday; Deadline describes a record-setting 1,300-word tweet without giving an exact figure. Neither outlet prints the post in full, and neither says whether Maher's answer drew a reply from Trump. Deadline's piece is the shorter of the two and quotes fewer passages from the monologue.

Maher's own summary of the arrangement came early. The dinners, he said, were meant for “talk, disagree, but listen”, and the post was the return he got. Deadline adds that Maher has now had two of them, and that the second took place this month. The two accounts of the same monologue do not line up line for line. Related coverage on this site includes Netflix's fifth season of The Diplomat, Matthew Weiner's exit from The Chairman and Criminal Minds ending with season 20.

Sources & reporting limits

  1. Bill Maher Responds to Trump 1,318-Word Social Post — The Hollywood Reporter
  2. 'Real Time': Bill Maher On Trump's "Longest Ever" Tweet Berating Him — Deadline
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