Trump Gets Roasted on Bill Maher’s Night

The Kennedy Center was ready for a night of comedy yesterday. But before guests even reached the red carpet, the building presented a setup of its own. A large tarp was still hanging across the building’s facade, blocking any view of the spot where Donald Trump’s name had been added and then taken away following a court order. Inside, the punch lines practically wrote themselves.Officially, comedians had gathered there to pay tribute to this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the talk-show host Bill Maher. Onstage, comic after comic—including Jay Leno, Louis C.K., and Whitney Cummings—took potshots at the president while celebrating Maher’s contrarian posture and decades-long joy at sparing neither the left nor the right. “Finally, an award for my dear friend, ironically at the Trump Kennedy Center,” the actor Woody Harrelson told the audience. “No, oh right—we fixed that.”Cummings imagined a Kennedy Center transformed by Trump, joking that under his influence, the Washington arts complex’s fall lineup would include a “three-month run of white Hamilton.” Another joke—that Trump missed the ceremony because he was caught in “sex traffic”—drew a mix of laughter and groans before Cummings revealed she had been instructed not to use it. “The thing about comedy is that we aren’t scared,” she said. “We try not to be scared of the people that bully. It’s something I love so much about Bill Maher: He bullies the bullies.”As Maher took the stage to accept his prize at the end of the night, he was “interrupted” by the popular Trump impersonator and comedian Matt Friend, who emerged from the crowd to gripe about Maher. “Why are we giving this low-ratings, lightweight jerk the Mark Twain Award?” Friend said, repeating insults the president had used against Maher in a Truth Social post earlier this year.The bit between the two comedians emphasized Maher’s feud with Trump, whose administration in March denied reporting in The Atlantic that Maher would rec