Bill Maher Doesn’t Mind Trump Bashing Him Before Receiving Mark Twain Award: ‘That’s Just His Way of Talking’

Bill Maher said you have to take President Donald Trump’s public bashing in stride, because “that’s just his way of talking.”

The host of HBO’s Real Time shrugged off Trump’s fairly frequent acid-fingered posts about him while speaking to CNN on Sunday, right before he was set to receive the Mark Twain Prize from the Kennedy Center.

“You know, the last 4 or 5 times he’s been public about me, it’s all it’s all back to yelling and screaming,” Maher told correspondent Camila DeChalus. “I’m this, I’m terrible, I’m a lunatic liberal, I’m a lunatic, I’m a lightweight, I’m a jerk. So we’re back to that. It’s okay.”

Maher said he preferred the back-and-forth — even if it was critical — than pretending people on the other side of the political aisle are “too deplorable” to acknowledge.

“I’d rather be fighting and yelling. And that’s just his way of talking to people,” Maher continued. “You know, you just kind of have to accept it. I’d rather the channels be open, and anything is better than channels just being shut off.”

Maher’s answer comes after Trump’s White House called it “FAKE NEWS” when the comic was first named this year’s Twain Prize winner; Maher later said the administration tried to block him from getting the award during an episode of Real Time.

Maher and the president have a famously rocky relationship. The comic has a framed page with dozens of insults Trump has hurled at him over the years hanging in his podcast studio. But their relationship appeared to be improving last year, when Maher had dinner with Trump and Dana White at the White House — where the president signed the list of insults for Maher.

Things have soured since then, with Trump calling him a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” earlier this year. He then skewered Maher — whom he called a “weak and ineffective person” — for his conversation with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in May.

Maher does not appear to have taken it too personally. He quipped to CNN that he still expected the Trump Administration to try and thwart the event, even as he was walking the red carpet on Sunday.

Watch above.

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