Comedian Bill Maher is lining up with President Donald Trump on one of the president’s signature complaints: much of the media, he says, is nothing more than fake news.
The longtime comic took aim at the mainstream press during a Monday interview with congressman-turned-convict George Santos on his Club Random podcast. Maher argued that news outlets care more about pushing their own slant than about actually reporting the news.
“They wanna shove their narrative down your gizzard! That’s what they want to do,” Maher said.
The remark came moments after Santos acknowledged that he had lied about a great deal in his past, though he insisted not about everything.
Santos said he remains puzzled by a 2023 Bloomberg story reporting that the former Republican lawmaker had told potential donors he produced a Spider-Man musical on Broadway. He also said the media got it wrong when outlets reported he had a brain tumor. Santos maintained that he never made either claim, although he is on video saying he “battled a brain tumor.”
Maher responded that he fully agreed with Santos that the media is remarkably sloppy.
“When you present the case, ‘Well the media got this wrong,’ my immediate reaction just is not, ‘Well, the media doesn’t get things wrong,'” Maher said. “My reaction is ‘Yeah, you know what, that could very well be true.'”
The HBO host did not hold back when describing his distrust of news organizations.
“I don’t trust them, EVER. Any of them,” Maher said. “I have to read three of them to get the full story. Nobody ever has any interest in telling you the full story.”
Santos echoed that criticism and took it a step further, faulting the industry for valuing speed over accuracy.
“We live in a time with the media where I’m very critical of it, because nobody is interested in being right, they’re interested in being first,” Santos said. “And if they have to make corrections later, they don’t care. They don’t care about the consequences.”
“You’re so right,” Maher replied.
The exchange found Maher, a frequent critic of the president, sounding strikingly similar to Trump, who has long blasted the press as fake news.
In a twist, the conversation came on the same morning Trump went after Maher himself, mocking the comedian’s HBO ratings as “so low.”
Even so, the president made clear his criticism was not entirely personal.
“In many ways it’s SAD because, in actuality, I like him,” Trump said.
The overlap highlights a notable moment in which the comedian and the president, despite trading jabs, landed on common ground over their shared distrust of the mainstream media. For Maher, the solution is reading multiple outlets to piece together what he calls the full story, something he says no single news organization is interested in providing.
Santos, for his part, framed the issue as one of accountability, arguing that outlets rush to be first and shrug off the fallout when they get it wrong.
[READ MORE: Trump Unloads on Bill Maher and Joe Scarborough in Monday Morning Truth Social Posts]
