Scott Jennings ripped into Larry David’s scathing New York Times op-ed on Bill Maher’s White House dinner, saying on CNN it might scare the American left into refusing to speak with President Donald Trump.
“Silence yourselves or we’ll do it for you. That’s the purpose of this op-ed, so that the next comedian or the next person on the American left chooses not to speak to Donald Trump,” Jennings said on CNN’s NewsNight With Abby Phillip. “This is all an effort to get people not to do what you just said, which is to talk to each other, or our political leaders.”
Headlined “My Dinner With Adolf,” David’s Monday op-ed was a thinly veiled attack on fellow comedian Maher. The fictional piece detailed being invited to dinner with Adolf Hitler in 1939 and paralleled the way Maher has spoken about his recent dinner with Trump beat for beat.
On Monday night, Jennings defended Maher’s dinner with the president, saying that “even though I disagree with most everything [Maher] believes politically, he was right to do this and he was right to speak out about it.”
Comedian Larry David at Madison Square Garden. Wendell Cruz/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con
David’s likening of Trump to Hitler raised some hackles among CNN’s guests on Monday, with Mediaite founder Dan Abrams excoriating Curb Your Enthusiasm creator for bringing the Nazi leader into his argument.
“When you start bringing in Hitler… you’ve lost the argument,” Abrams said. “Anytime anyone invokes Hitler, and makes the comparison, you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose because no one, everyone apart from the echo chamber, is going to stop listening to you.”
David’s op-ed described the imagined meeting with Hitler, who was “quite disarming” and was proud to crack a joke about his tan suit. “I realized I’d never seen him laugh before,” the comedian wrote. “Suddenly he seemed so human.”
Maher first revealed he would be having dinner with Trump at the White House last month, explaining that the meeting had been arranged by their mutual friend Kid Rock.
He later shared a monologue on his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, in which he described the dinner and boasted about making Trump laugh, telling viewers, “I had never seen him laugh in public. But he does. At himself. And it’s not fake.”
