“People in this country really take winning awards very seriously. It’s been mind-blowing to see how much Americans see winning an award as something that was bestowed by God.”
Bill Maher is the first recipient of the Mark Twain Prize since Trump took over the Kennedy Center in earnest, and there's no other comedian who could have come in to accept the prize under these circumstances. There are few other comedians who have the respect of both the right and left sides of the American political spectrum, and given how so many performers have simply pulled out or refused to perform under the performing arts venue's current leadership, the recipient had to be a lock.
It's been a trying time for the performing arts world, which is so obsessed with hating Trump that they try to boycott or "resist" anything even remotely connected to him. That includes the Kennedy Center. And when Maher stepped out onto the red carpet and later when he and his friends spoke from the concert hall stage, it became clear that, as usual, Maher doesn't care about whatever anyone else wants him to say, he's gonna do it his way.
The Kennedy Center is gorgeous, it's the most prestigious performing arts center in DC, a massive complex with multiple theaters from an opera house to a concert hall and a bunch of little theaters tucked in between. The red carpets are worn but still elegant. A giant bust of JFK stands in the lobby. One imagines that a bust of Trump may have joined him had courts allowed the president's desired rename and renovation to go ahead.
Instead, a judge demanded that Trump's name be removed and that he, Judge Cooper, be kept informed on renovations and a planned closure of the venue for repairs. It was in that fraught climate that a handful of Hollywood celebs, administration officials, lawmakers, members of the public and press gathered to witness Maher accept this great honor.
Though Maher is a political comedian, and has been since his days hosting Politically Incorrect, the night of the Mark Twain Prize was pretty light on political humor. The guy who attacks both sides, skewering left, right, and anyone else who deserves it for their hypocrisy, incompetence, and stupidity, managed to bring people together under Trump's roof to have some laughs at each other's expense and just chill for once.
The organizers had sent out a glimpse of who we could expect on the red carpet, a selection of people with the administration, some comics like Louis CK, and some people who undoubtedly hate the president, like Woody Harrelson. When Harrelson and his wife walked the red carpet, they stopped for a few pics then walked on by, no time to answer questions. Jay Leno, Whitney Cummings, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Stephen A. Smith, and lawmakers Anna Paulina Luna and John Fetterman all stopped to chat.
Fetterman critiqued colleagues in his own party for relying on "f*ck Trump" to pay the bills, a game he says he does not and will not play.
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Woody Harrelson and wife zipping past reporters on the red carpet.
Luna praised Maher for calling out the three new socialists who won their primaries for the US House in last week's elections. Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valez will be joining her in Congress should they win in the November general election, which likely they will—the Democrat primaries are the key metric in NYC elections.
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Former late-night host Jay Leno was asked about the termination of Stephen Colbert's CBS contract, and he said that what really killed late night were all the commercials, which have only gotten worse over the years.
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Maher touched on the "three very far-left Democratic socialists in New York who are crazy," saying that based on that, Democrats are "well on their way" to "blowing it."
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He was probably the best person to ask of all the funny Hollywood types. A bunch of them would have just said "no" probably as some misguided form of antifascist protest, but Maher would take the Prize.
"F*ck it," one could imagine him saying. He knows the president is just another president, not some fascist dictator hell-bent on destroying democracy. The only ones who keep trying to destroy democracy are the leftists who elect socialists, back communism, support terrorists (like actual real-life "Allahu Akbar" terrorists), and keep claiming that Trump is so extreme that they need to fight him by any means necessary—even if those means are anti-democratic and lead to anti-democratic ends.
So yeah, take the Prize, Bill Maher, you've earned it.
Maher is the 27th recipient of the award. Whitney Cummings came out first and got big applause when she said Maher still calls the Washington Commanders "The Redskins" and joked that Trump wanted to come to the show Sunday night but got caught in sex traffic. She told the Netflix cameras, "they told me not to say that."
"I think my favorite thing about you is that you don't think it's cool to hate America," she told Maher.
Louis CK, who did not walk the red carpet but was seated in a box next to Leno, revealed that Maher reached out to him after his career took what he called "a downturn" during the Me Too era, and said that Maher was the only one who reached out. They hadn't even been friends before that. "Look, Bill is a brilliant guy and Bill is a gutsy guy, but he has a heart," CK said.
"He speaks to both sides, he's against both sides," CK said. And for sure it was interesting to see these worlds colliding. Maher's friends have not been what you'd call pro-Trump, and the audience gave mixed reactions when jokes skewering the administration came up. CK said he spent two years working on a joke about how for would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, his day at the Butler, PA Trump rally in July 2024 "could not have gone worse."
Comedians who do not like Trump at all spoke to an audience that had plenty of people in it who do like Trump, and the jokes about the Butler rally where Trump was shot, or being a sex trafficker, created an audible tension.
Woody Harrelson, with whom Maher has gone halfsies on a weed store in West Hollywood, got big cheers when he noted that the "Trump" was removed from the name of the Kennedy Center. Maher, he said, "wants to get government off our backs."
When Maher took the stage to accept the bust, the crowd rose to their feet and applauded. Maher was interrupted by Matt Friend, voice actor and impersonator, who impersonated Trump. "I gotta say, I had one of the greatest comedy careers of all time," he said in Trump's voice. "Why are we giving this low ratings, light-weight jerk the Mark Twain Award, Mark Twain, who I knew very well," Friend went on.
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Friend joked that the Mississppi had been named the Mr. Sippi "before the crazy Democrats." The two then joked about Maher's dinner with Trump, for which the comic took a lot of blowback.
"Well, thank you everybody," Maher said, "and everybody that made this night happen for me. I gotta tell you, I learned so much from this experience, the main thing being that people in this country really take winning awards very seriously. It's been mind-blowing to see how much Americans see winning an award as something that was bestowed by God. They say 'you won'!" He said, comparing it to the New York Knicks' recent NBA championship win.
"It's not the same thing," he said, noting that these awards "are just the opinion of... who? We don't even know, usually just some very small group of people who are harboring God-knows what kind of taste or agenda. Having said that, thank you so much."
The full award show will air on Netflix in July.
