In response to comedian Bill Maher’s glowing account of his meeting/dinner with Trump on March 31, Larry David wrote an op-ed for the New York Times skewering Maher without even mentioning his name.
The title of the essay was “Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf.”
It begins: Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Larry David goes on about meeting with supporters in an opulent living room where they talked about some beautiful artwork on the walls that had been stolen from Jews, when Hitler himself walked into the room wearing a tan suit. He suggested a tan suit was un-Führer-like, which amused his host.
...I realized I’d never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. 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.
Yada, yada, yada….
Two hours later, the dinner was over, and the Führer escorted me to the door. “I am so glad to have met you. I hope I’m no longer the monster you thought I was.” “I must say, mein Führer, I’m so thankful I came. 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.
Bill Maher’s meeting with Trump set off a firestorm when Maher gave glowing reviews of his time at the palace.
Of note, Maher said, “A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is fucked up. It’s just not as fucked up as I thought it was.”
