Donald Trump Calls Bill Maher ‘Befuddled Mess’ After ‘Real Time’ Prediction That He’ll Lose

One week after Bill Maher stated his belief that Donald Trump would lose the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Trump went off on the Real Time host in a Truth Social tirade.

“The ratings-challenged Bill Maher, on his increasingly boring show on HBO, is really having a hard time coping with TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” Trump wrote on Saturday, September 21. (The emphasis is his.)

He added: “He is a befuddled mess, sloppy and tired, and every conversation, with B- and C- list guests, seems to start with, or revert back to, ME!”

Trump also aimed his name-calling at two of Maher’s latest guests, calling MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle a “‘dumb as a rock’ bimbo” and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens a “Trump-hating loser … who seemed totally confused and unsure of himself, much like Maher himself.”

The Republican candidate continued: “Steven’s [sic] should find himself another line of work because I am driving the FAILING New York Times absolutely crazy, and it is very hard, perhaps impossible, for a writer to write well of me without suffering the wrath of the degenerate editors who, with a push from the top, have gone insane. They apologized to their readers in 2016 for their complete and total MISS, and they’ll do it again in November. The FAILING New York Times is a badly run ‘newspaper’ that has totally lost its way. Put it to sleep!”

(Trump has claimed before that the New York Times apologized to subscribers for its 2016 election coverage, likely referring to former newspaper publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s letter to subscribers in which Sulzberger said the Times and other publications underestimated Trump’s support among voters, per Politico. In a 2017 tweet, the Times called Trump’s claim “false” and said it stood by its coverage.)

In the September 13 episode of Real Time, Maher called time-of-death on Trump’s election chances, citing Trump’s baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs.”

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Maher said, “Every time he’s done crazy s**t and gotten himself in trouble, I said, ‘No, no, it’s not over.’ Tonight I’m saying, I think it’s over. … I just think he’s going to lose.”

Trump dissed the comedian in June, too, calling him “highly overrated” and Real Time “dead.” At the time, Maher was defending President Joe Biden, who was then the presumptive Democratic nominee for this year’s election, against ageist criticisms.

Despite Trump’s characterizations, Real Time isn’t “dead,” and it doesn’t appear to be “ratings-challenged”: In March, HBO renewed the talk show through 2026, per The Hollywood Reporter. And The New York Times doesn’t seem to be “failing”: The newspaper gained 300,000 new digital subscribers in the second quarter of this year, with a 13.6 percent year-over-year profit increase, as it reported in August.

Real Time With Bill Maher, Fridays, 10/9c, HBO