(TNND) — Comedian Bill Maher recapped his dinner with President Donald Trump during HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” episode on Friday.
In a lengthy monologue, Maher revealed what surprised him the most during the dinner.
“Everything I’ve not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent. At least on this night, with this guy,” Maher, 69, said.
“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump,” the talk show host said, adding, “Make of it what you will.”
The talk show host reveled that Trump gifted him several MAGA hats.
However, he said he felt no pressure to “go MAGA.”
The comedian delivered positive reviews of Trump, going on about the President’s graciousness behind closed doors.
“I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected. People that don’t look you in the eye. People that don’t really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn’t track. None of that with him,” Maher said.
“Mostly he steered the conversation to ‘what do you think about this?’ I know. Your mind is blown. So is mine,” Maher added as the audience broke out in laughter and applause.
Maher said that at one point during the dinner, the president asked him his thoughts on the Iran nuclear situation, to which he responded with criticism to Trump for eliminating the Obama nuclear deal.
“He didn’t get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic. He took it in,” Maher said.
The comedian also talked about several character traits he saw in the “private Trump” that are supposedly absent from the president’s public persona.
“Just for starters, he laughs,” Maher stated in disbelief. “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 summarizing the experience.
Other people in attendance at the dinner include head of UFC Dana White and Kid Rock.
