President Donald Trump hosted comedian Bill Maher, sports commentator Stephen A. Smith and musician Kid Rock for dinner at the White House on Thursday night, the president told reporters as he left the building Friday.
“The dinner last night with Kid Rock and Stephen A. [Smith] and Bill Maher was great,” Trump said, according to C-SPAN. “I think they had a good time.”
Trump did not detail what the group discussed but said the conversation ran long. “We talked about everything. It lasted a long time,” he said. The president added that the group toured the White House ballroom, which is currently under construction. “We even took a little tour of the ballroom. We took a — we went inside the ballroom with beams that are being put up over our heads. But it was a great dinner. It was a very informative dinner. Smart people. Stephen A. is great,” he said.
Trump singled out Maher, who has repeatedly criticized him on his HBO program, for praise. “Bill Maher, I tell you what, he likes me a lot more than people understand,” Trump said. “And I absolutely like him. It was a good dinner.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Maher for comment on the dinner.
A Recurring Guest
This was not Maher’s first dinner at the White House. He attended a similar gathering in April 2025 alongside Trump, Kid Rock and UFC CEO Dana White. Afterward, Maher told his audience the president had behaved differently in private than his public image suggested. “You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured,” Maher said at the time. “And why isn’t that in other settings — I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw, and I wasn’t high.”
Maher has not softened his on-air criticism since. In June, he mocked the administration’s Iran agreement after the White House had initially demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” before settling for a memorandum of understanding. “We got everything we wanted except for everything we asked for,” Maher said on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
More recently, Maher predicted Republicans would suffer a “classic historical a–whooping” in the midterms, saying of Trump: “He screwed the pooch. That’s what happened. He got drunk with power.”
Reading the Optics
Jason Mudd, CEO of Axia Public Relations, told Fox News Digital that the dinner carried both risk and reward for everyone at the table, particularly Maher.
“Bill Maher and other comedians tend to win by joking first and clarifying later. He also has a model. It’s the same one he used in April 2025 on ‘Real Time’ after his first White House dinner with President Trump. He reported what he saw, and said it plainly. The moment a host sounds like a surrogate, he loses the credibility that makes him worth quoting,” Mudd said.
Mudd said any public figure accepting such an invitation should think ahead about how to talk about it afterward. “A dinner this high-profile carries reputation risk and reward for each guest,” he said. “I advise anyone invited to a high-profile event to decide what they’ll say about it before, during and after, whether they accept the invitation or not.”
