Curb Your Enthusiasm actor Larry David had social media users cackling after he penned a satirical essay for the New York Times about an imagined dinner with Adolf Hitler to jab comedian Bill Maher over Maher's recent White House dinner with President Donald Trump.
Earlier this month, Maher said on his show that Trump was “gracious and measured" during their late March meeting. Maher, who has a history of criticizing Trump, stressed that he did not turn “MAGA” and “to the president’s credit, there was no pressure to” do so.
He added:
“Just for starters, he laughs. I’ve never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including to himself, and it’s not fake, believe me. As a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it.
“I don’t remember what we were talking about, but it must’ve been something with the 2020 election. Because I know he distinctly used the word ‘lost.’ And I said, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d hear you say that.’ He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public.”
Now David is using satire to criticize Maher's fawning statements in his essay, titled "My Dinner with Adolf," a spoof of My Dinner with André, the 1981 classic directed by Louis Malle and written by and starring André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, who play fictionalized versions of themselves engaged in a wide-ranging conversation over dinner at Café des Artistes in Manhattan.
He wrote, in part:
“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. 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.”
“I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit because if he wore that out, it would be perceived as un-Führer-like. That amused him to no end, and 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.”
After spending two hours in conversation over a meal, the fictitious guest prepares to leave the Chancellery and offers his final reflection:
“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."
As far as many were concerned, David was spot on.
David has made no secret of how he feels about Trump, whom he has criticized for attacking the country's democratic institutions.
Last year, David condemned Trump's lies about the 2020 election results, saying Trump's behavior is akin to a "sociopath":
"You can’t go a day without thinking about what he’s done to this country because he’s such a little baby that he’s thrown 250 years of democracy out the window by not accepting the results of the ― I mean, it’s so crazy, he’s such a sociopath, he’s so insane, he just couldn’t admit to losing."
"And we know he lost. He knows he lost. And look how he’s fooled everybody, he’s convinced all these people that he didn’t lose."
"He’s such a sick man. He’s so sick.”
David has previously taken aim at Trump on Curb Your Enthusiasm, particularly when he incorporated Trump's infamous Fulton County mugshot into the premiere of the long-running HBO show's final season.
Playing off that, in the concluding moments of Curb's "Atlanta" episode, David's eponymous character was arrested for providing water to a friend waiting in line to vote on an extremely hot day. David's well-intentioned act ran afoul of Georgia's state law prohibiting the distribution of food or water to voters in line.
As the character was taken away by the police, his mugshot appeared on screen. Strikingly, his scowl closely resembled the photo of Trump taken after the former president's arrest in August 2023.
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