Bill Maher entered the Left’s media space, doing an interview with National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep. It wasn’t meant to be confrontational, but the HBO host did criticize the outlet directly to Inskeep’s face near the end of the interview.
Maher said he was surprised to be invited and now sees NPR as a very different place from the one he knew. The Real Time host described the outlet as a bastion of left-wing extremism. Inskeep defended NPR, stating that the audience was more diverse than Maher was told, which led the comedian to say that who you talk to is different from what you believe.
💥NEW: Bill Maher *BLASTS* NPR to NPR's Steve Inskeep's face 💥
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) July 15, 2026
"I'm surprised you even had me on! Because I just think of this place as so different than what it used to be ... I think of this place as on the far extreme of the Left." pic.twitter.com/U0LPg2hPee
Regarding Maher's remarks about NPR, it strikes close to what Matt Taibbi said about the outlet in 2021:
Conservatives have always hated NPR, but in the last year I hear more and more politically progressive people, in the media, talking about the station as a kind of mass torture experiment, one that makes the most patient and sensible people want to drive off the road in anguish.
Overall, it wasn't a bad interview, with Maher criticizing the Left for having dinner with President Trump. He explained how foolish liberals were for that dinner, saying there was no logical argument against it. He claimed it was all about feelings.
You’re elevating him—he’s already the president of the United States and has won two elections. He has tens of millions of supporters and friends. Additionally, Maher noted that he was originally invited because he was tough on Trump, with the president even signing a list of insults hurled at him by Maher.
He’s a classical liberal, not politically correct, aware that Islam is the source of many bad ideas, and willing to engage with almost anyone. He’s a free speech advocate, and declining a dinner with the president—which is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and privilege—was not something he was going to do. He hasn’t changed much, which he says is why his audience respects him. I respect him. He’s one of the few liberals I can stomach in this era because everyone else has gone the way of The View, TikTok trolls, or Jennifer Welch podcasting—most of which is just whining white liberal women screaming into their phones.
He’s not right often, but he has good guests, engages with anyone, and isn’t afraid of conversations. That’s the Left today—afraid of being proven wrong, which is why Maher agreed with conservatives that the liberal condescending attitude is insufferable.
He doesn’t kowtow to the crazy socialist Islamists taking over his party. He’ll be who he’s been for the past 33 years since he decided to leave the world of sitcoms and stand-up behind. Maher recently won the coveted Mark Twain Prize for comedy and, like after the Trump dinner, will give his thanks and then go back to criticizing the president and conservatives, while also training his fire on his own side for being outright dumb about everything Trump does. He’s tired of the ‘he’s Hitler’ stuff. It’s old.
I also wouldn’t say that Trump has a mild form of Tourette’s, as he claimed, noting that the man says things that are off the wall, but is also honest. This is who he is, is what Maher took away, and he’s obviously learned to live with it.
The rest of his side, writ large, has yet to grow up.