Author and Trump supporter Walter Kirn told comedian and pundit Bill Maher that President Donald Trump was “intimidating” and that Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin “looked like Trump’s caddy” at their high-stakes summit meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.
On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the interview guest was Thomas Chatterton Williams, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of “Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse.”
The panel guests were Walter Kirn, best-selling author and editor-at-large of County Highway; and Molly Jong-Fast, host of the podcast “Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast” and author of “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir.”
During the panel segment, Kirn went against the media narrative of Trump getting “steamrolled” by telling Maher he thought the president dominated the optics:
BILL MAHER: I went to Alaska in 2013, I think I had a better trip. I at least did a show. Surprising, disappointed, what’s your reaction?WALTER KIRN: I wish it had happened in winter because the only outfit I haven’t seen Trump wear is a parka. I mean, McDonald’s uniform, a garbage truck driver, I also wish there had been more outdoor activities it being Alaska, they could have gone fishing, but the world is divided between people who didn’t want it to happen and people who don&
#8217;t want to succeed.You seem to want it to succeed, so do I. Unless we’re going to get rid of Putin, unless we’re gonna eliminate him, we could have dropped a bomb from that B-2. We’re gonna have to talk to him at some point.BILL MAHER: Who doesn’t want it to succeed? Everybody wants it to.WALTER KIRN: There are people who didn’t want to see Putin walk across that red carpet and didn’t like it when Trump waved to him.BILL MAHER: Oh, I see.MOLLY JONG-FAST: I jmean it crushed some norms having him walk across a red carpet while Trump clapped. I mean, that generally… Oh, come on. Putin doesn’t get…BILL MAHER: Oh, come on, are we really going to go through this kind of bullshit like Obama wore a tan suit and he’s saluted with coffee in his hand? Who gives a shit what he’s walking through? I mean, there’s people dying over there.WALTER KIRN: The body language, to me, put the lie to the notion that we’ve had for 10 years that Trump is Putin’s stooge.Putin looked like his caddy. I mean he really did.He’s half his height. He was sort of smiling uncomfortably. I think we can lay to rest the idea that Trump was some Russianagent. I actually wish that he’d been a little kinder to him. I thought he was intimidating.
Watch above via HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.