Larry David appeared to ridicule Bill Maher and his cozy dinner with President Donald Trump in a searing New York Times piece of satire titled “My Dinner With Adolf.” The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star’s fictional account of a guest who spends an evening with Adolf Hitler in spring 1939 is full of parallels to Maher’s genteel recollection of his White House visit on March 31. The piece, placed in the Times’ opinion section, kicks off with the type of justifications Maher made in a monologue on his show “Real Time” earlier this month.
The protagonist in David’s essay self-identifies as someone who has always been a staunch critic of Hitler and gives themself a self-satisfied pat on the back for predicting the horrors the führer would inflict. “No one I knew encouraged me to go. ‘He’s Hitler. He’s a monster,’” begins the piece, set just months before the official start of World War II. “But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere.”
At the Reich Chancellery, the guest is met by a “few of the Führer’s most vocal supporters”: Holocaust architect Heinrich Himmler, Nazi military leader Hermann Göring, propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and England’s Duke of Windsor, the former king with thinly veiled Nazi sympathies. (Maher was joined by a less historic pair of tablemates: Trump’s celebrity acolytes Kid Rock and Dana White.)
When Hitler walks into the room, David’s character says he is charmed by the Nazi’s warmth, echoing Maher’s description of Trump as a “gracious and measured” host. As in Maher’s take on Trump, the character remarks on how he’s never seen the leader laugh and how surprisingly inquisitive he seems toward his guests. “Suddenly he seemed so human,” he says. “Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.”
After chumming it up over a two-hour meal, the guest’s time at the Chancellery comes to a close. He walks away thinking, “Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.” “And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night,” the essay concludes.
Maher has been accused of being Trump’s pawn since recounting his pleasant time with the president earlier this month. Democratic pundit James Carville said Maher, whom he called a “supremely naive man,” while left-leaning journalist Keith Olbermann accused the comic of “prostituting himself.” The former “Politically Incorrect” host dismissed the chorus of criticism as “clickbait” during last week’s episode of “Real Time,” telling viewers, “People seem to gloss over the fact that I went in there, I didn’t surrender to him.”
David’s essay, while never directly mentioning Maher, serves as a pointed critique of the comedian’s attempt to humanize Trump. In the piece, the narrator reflects on the complexities of human interaction, suggesting that even the most reviled figures can appear personable in private settings. “I thought that if only the world could see this side of him, people might have a completely different opinion,” the character muses about Hitler.
In a newsletter, Times deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy acknowledged that David proposed the article in response to Maher’s description of his recent meeting with Trump. Healy explained that the Times seeks to avoid Nazi references in the essays it publishes, but felt David’s piece “is not equating Trump with Hitler. It is about seeing someone for who they really are and not losing sight of that.”
David, who has often used Nazi references in his satire, has a history of pushing boundaries in comedy. As a standup comedian, he would goad audiences by saying, “The one thing about Hitler that I admire…” before suggesting that the dictator had no patience for stage magicians. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the “Soup Nazi” character on “Seinfeld,” and “Curb” featured a memorable clash between a Holocaust survivor and a contestant on the reality show “Survivor” who too considered himself a victim.
Such jokes have divided audiences, and even individual critics. In an essay criticizing David for a Holocaust joke he told while hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 2017, Jeremy Dauber praised the “Survivor” episode on “Curb.” “In that ‘Curb’ episode,” writes Dauber, a professor of Jewish literature at Columbia University, “David is searchingly moral, flaying a kind of ethical vacuity and historical relativism about the Holocaust.”
David’s piece is also reminiscent of a 2003 skit by Jewish comedian Jon Stewart, who imagines Hitler being interviewed by the late Larry King, the ingratiating CNN talk show host. In his Max monologue, Maher, who positions himself as a centrist truth-teller between political extremes, anticipates the blowback he was sure to receive as a result of his dinner with a deeply polarizing president. “You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured, and why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know,” he said.
Ultimately, the friction between David and Maher reflects a broader cultural conversation about the implications of engaging with controversial figures. Maher, who visited the White House for dinner arranged by Kid Rock, has faced backlash for his seemingly conciliatory approach to Trump. Critics, including Carville, have pointed out that Maher’s willingness to engage with Trump could be seen as an endorsement of the former president’s actions and policies.
In the wake of David’s essay, readers have expressed mixed reactions, with some praising the satirical take while others criticize the invocation of Hitler as excessive. David’s approach raises questions about the boundaries of humor and the ethics of using historical figures to comment on contemporary politics.
As the discourse continues, the underlying tension between the desire for dialogue and the realities of political engagement remains a contentious topic. David’s piece serves as a reminder of the complexities of human interaction, even with those whose actions have had devastating consequences.
