Larry David has satirised Bill Maher’s meeting with Donald Trump in a new essay, where he imagines himself having dinner with Adolf Hitler.
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Maher has been criticised for his praise of the current US President, saying that when he met him he found the leader to be “gracious” and “self-aware”. “Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was — I swear to God — absent, at least on this night with this guy” he said on an episode of his show Real Time.
In a fictitious article for The New York Times, David mocked the tone of Maher’s comments, imagining himself meeting Hitler and being surprised by the person he met. “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,” he wrote. “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”.
He continued: “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”.
A companion piece by the paper’s Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy emphasised that the essay was not comparing the two men. “Larry’s piece is not equating Trump with Hitler” he wrote. “It is about seeing people for who they really are and not losing sight of that”.
The article expanded by saying: “Larry David, in a provocation of his own, is arguing that during a single dinner or a private meeting, anyone can be human, and it means nothing in the end about what that person is capable of”.
In March, it was reported that a return to TV could be on the cards for David, with an HBO executive suggesting that the Curb Your Enthusiasm creator has got some ideas.