Trump knocks Bill Maher after jokes about border visit

Former President Trump took a swipe at talk show host Bill Maher, who made jokes about his trip to the border last week, calling the comic and liberal commentator the “worst,” with “bad ratings.” 

“Bill Maher is the worst! He never got it, and never will. Bad ratings, a big fail on CNN shot, major case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. Not worth the watch,” Trump wrote on Truth Social early Saturday morning.

His comments came after Maher ripped into Trump’s “dueling” border visit with President Biden and the former president’s Supreme Court appeal to remain on the ballot during the opening monologue of Friday’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO. HBO is owned by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. 

“Did you have a good leap day? It only comes once every four years. We got to enjoy it when it happens. Trump would not acknowledge it. He thinks it’s a woke plot to make Black History Month longer,” Maher said while kicking off his monologue.

“So, [Trump] was at the border yesterday, the border with Mexico — I mean, and so was Biden; they had like dueling press conferences there, and they were very close,” he continued. “They could see across the border to the people there … and the people could see them. Boy, a scarecrow and jack-o’-lantern. If that doesn’t stop them from coming, I don’t think anything will,” Maher added, prompting laughter from the audience. 

Biden and Trump both took trips to the southern border on Thursday, criticizing the policies of each other.

Biden visited Brownsville, Texas, to meet with Border Patrol agents, while Trump visited Eagle Pass alongside Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and local law endorsement. Eagle Pass has been the subject of a large amount of coverage over the migrant influx and is often photographed with long lines of migrants, buses and razor wire. 

“Biden was in the city of Brownsville, which to me sounds like something Trump would call Mexico. ‘They’re bringing crime, they’re raping.’ Remember when he said that?” Maher asked. “Remember when we first saw him, when he first came out, ‘They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.’ Turns out the jobs that were coming for were his.” 

Trump, in announcing his 2016 presidential launch in 2015, claimed immigrants from Mexico are “rapists” and “bringing crime,” which drew the ire of Democrats and even some GOP politicians at the time. 

Maher, a vocal critic of Trump, said last year that he was “afraid” of the former president on a “very personal level.” 

“I am afraid of Trump on a very personal level because I don’t think he likes me. I understand why,” Maher told Jake Tapper in March 2023 as part of a CNN prime-time special. “And I don’t know what he would do in a second term.”

Maher also called the former president “everything wrong with a human being stuffed into one man.”