Latest news with #TrumpDinner
The Independent
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Bill Maher roasts Sean Penn for meeting Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro but not Trump
Comedian Bill Maher lashed out at Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn on the latest episode of his Club Random podcast over perceived criticism of his decision to sit down for dinner with President Donald Trump in April. Maher, often a sharp critic of Trump, unexpectedly met with the president after an invitation was brokered by their mutual friend Kid Rock. The host left the evening with a revised opinion, speaking glowingly of the commander-in-chief. That provoked a backlash among liberals, with sitcom legend Larry David penning a scathing satire of Maher's conduct for The New York Times entitled, 'My Dinner with Adolf.' Returning to the issue in his latest interview with Penn, Maher asked the actor: 'You do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him?' Penn answered: 'Absolutely, you're so smart, you go there... Look, this is the president of the United States, whether we like it or not, it doesn't matter. There's a lot of reasons I was speculating that... it would be good for you to do that.' From there, the star revealed that he had seen Maher's subsequent account of the visit on his HBO show Real Time and wished that the ensuing coverage had been 'less successful' for Trump. Maher hit back: 'It was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I've always said about him. It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him. So it wasn't successful.' Penn, in turn, suggested Maher could have done more 'editing' in relaying the details of the dinner, suggesting he had gone too far in offering a warm account of the evening, rather than saying simply: 'He treated me fine, that's that.' Penn, a keen observer of global politics, has previously met with Central American communist leaders Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Hugo Chavez, and even the Mexican cartel boss Joaquin ' El Chapo ' Guzman for Rolling Stone, hoping to interest the latter in a possible movie project about his life. However, Penn told Maher he would not sit down for dinner with Trump, adding: 'The only reason I would not accept an invitation is... it's a long flight.' Incredulous, Maher reacted: 'Really, you'll meet with f***ing Castro and Hugo Chavez but not the president of the United States?' 'I, I, saw good results come out of some of those things...' Penn said defensively. 'I just personally wouldn't trust anything that was said in the room, including personality.' Maher hit back: 'It's not a matter of trusting it, it's a matter of seeing it, a matter of experiencing it, knowing it... I'm telling you, there's a very different guy behind closed doors in a different setting.' He went on to push Penn on whether he would accept a dinner invitation to the West Wing if he, Maher, helped facilitate it, to which the actor answered: 'I would not fool myself that... I was going to get anywhere with him. I know that I wouldn't, I know that I would have no influence.' Clearly annoyed, Maher said Penn had a 'bad attitude' and declared: 'I'll tell you this about Donald Trump and you don't know it because you don't go to dinners... It's all about personal relationships... I will get you an invite. He's a starf***er in a way. I bet you he would like to meet you.'
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bill Maher Loses His Cool With Hollywood Star Over Notorious Trump Dinner
Bill Maher lashed out at his guest Sean Penn during the latest episode of the Club Random podcast when the Hollywood star questioned his decision to dine with Trump. Maher brought up his controversial dinner with Donald Trump, and Penn responded by raising concerns over how Maher had handled the visit to the White House. That prompted a furious response from Maher who attacked Madonna's ex-husband over his own dining companions. 'Really, you'll meet with f---ing Castro and Hugo Chavez but not the President of the United States?' he asked. Maher's dinner with Trump, which was set up by their mutual friend Kid Rock, took place in April. At the time Maher defended the dinner by saying, 'There's got to be something better than hurling insults from 3000 miles away.' The two and a half hour dinner was then detailed on Real Time With Bill Maher, where Maher said they had discussed the Gaza War, Iran and Trump teasing a third-term presidency. Over cigars, booze and cigarettes on Club Random, Maher asked Penn, 'You do—I hope—think I did the right thing to have dinner with him?' Penn said, 'Absolutely, you're so smart, you go there... look this is the President of the United States, whether we like it or not, it doesn't matter. There's a lot of reasons I was speculating that... it would be good for you to do that.' The actor said he watched Maher cover the dinner on Real Time but wished it had been 'less successful.' Maher hit back at the suggestion he had painted Trump in a good light. 'It was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I've always said about him,' Maher said. 'It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him. So it wasn't successful.' Penn fired back that Maher could have done more 'editing' in relaying the details of dinner, suggesting the host could have simply said, 'He treated me fine, that's that.' The actor has humanitarian, journalistic and political interests outside of his movie career, including tracking down Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman in his hideaway to try and tie up a movie deal. Penn said he had never been invited to dinner with Trump. 'The only reason I would not accept an invitation is... it's a long flight,' he said. Maher then clapped back, 'Really, you'll meet with f---ing Castro and Hugo Chavez but not the President of the United States?' The Oscar-winner has had well-documented meetings with Cuban president Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl and firebrand Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Penn stumbled slightly before replying 'I, I, saw good results come out of some of those things...' When Maher interjected, Penn clarified, 'I just personally wouldn't trust anything that was said in the room including personality.' Maher hit back, 'It's not a matter of trusting it, it's a matter of seeing it, a matter of experiencing it, knowing it... I'm telling you, there's a very different guy behind closed doors in a different setting.' Maher went on to say he could try to broker Penn an invite to a Trump dinner in the future, to potentially discuss political or charity issues. 'I would not fool myself that... I was going to get anywhere with him,' Penn squirmed. 'I know that I wouldn't, I know that I would have no influence.' Maher said Penn had a 'bad attitude' and noted 'I'll tell you this about Donald Trump and you don't know it because you don't go to dinners... it's all about personal relationships... I will get you an invite. He's a starf---r in a way. I bet you he would like to meet you.'
Daily Mail
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Bill Maher blasts Sean Penn for disclosing dinner with Trump
Bill Maher was baffled that Hollywood star Sean Penn would question his dinner with Donald Trump after the Oscar winner had met with the likes of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Penn stunned the comedian on his Club Random podcast when he said he would have not met with the president as Maher did in April. But in the ultimate retort, Maher turned the tables back on Penn: 'Really? You'll meet with [expletive] Castro and Hugo Chavez, but not the President of the United States?' Penn met with socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2007, in Caracas, when he was considered a villain by the Bush administration. In 2008, President Raul Castro of Cuba granted him his first interview with a non-Cuban and at one point, he met Fidel Castro while on a trip to Havana. He also visited Iraq in 2002 and Iran in 2005. In 2016, he shocked the world, admitting to have met and interviewed Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán. Maher was actually seeking the left-wing actor's approval for his dinner with Trump: 'But you do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him.' 'Absolutely, you're so smart,' replied the Fast Times at Ridgemont High star. 'Look, this is the President of the United States, whether we like it or not, doesn't matter,' Penn continued. 'I think that when you talked about it on the show that I would have preferred that I saw his mission or his will to have the dinner, I wish I would have seen it as less successful. Because you're so smart on policy.' Maher retorted: 'Well it was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I've always said about him. It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him.' That's when Penn said he would not have done it, in part jokingly that 'it's a long flight' but also suggesting there would be no purpose. Penn responded to Maher's crack about having met Castro and Chavez by saying he 'saw good results come out of some of those things.' 'I just personally wouldn't trust anything that was said in the room,' Penn summed up. Maher replied: 'It's not a matter of trusting it, it's a matter of seeing it, a matter of experiencing it, a matter of knowing it.' He compared it to someone who didn't want to get tested medically because they might not want to know something was wrong with them. Penn ultimately agreed. Unlike Castro and Chavez, Penn later expressed regret for the interview with El Chapo, saying his goal was to start a conversation about the war on drugs. The acclaimed actor also accused the Mexican government of endangering his life by claiming that his meeting with El Chapo led to his eventual capture. El Chapo was arrested the next year and eventually extradited to the United States, where he is on trial. Maher said Donald Trump was 'gracious and measured' in what he described as a positive meeting with the president, to the point that he walked away with a cheeky gift. Maher has always attacked Trump on his HBO show dating back over a decade, when the two were involved in a lawsuit over Maher claiming the president's father was an orangutan. On Friday's show, he took time out exclusively to 'give you my book report on my visit to the White House,' which saw him have dinner with Trump and UFC owner Dana White. The lefty comedian confirmed the meeting had been arranged by musician and Trump fan Kid Rock, who also attended: 'Because we share a belief that there's gotta be something better than hurling insults at each other from 3,000 miles away.' He slammed those who saw the event as some kind of important diplomacy meeting. 'For all the people who treated this like it was some sort of summit meeting, you're ridiculous. Like I was gonna sign a treaty or something? I'm a [expletive] comedian, I have no power! He's the most powerful leader in the world, I'm not the leader of anything,' Maher said. The comic did say that he wanted to represent 'a contingent of centrist-minded people who believe there's got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.' He confirmed that Trump was a 'different' person than he'd seen in the public eye over the last decade and even the night before, when the president publicly wondered if the meeting was even a good idea. 'The guy I met is not the person who, the night before, [expletive]-tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea, and what a deranged [expletive] I was. He's much more self-aware than he lets on in public,' Maher added. Perhaps most striking to Maher was that Trump ' laughed' and has a sense of humor about himself. 'First good sign, before I left for the capital, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets that the president said about me,' Maher said. 'I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it, which he did with good humor,' he added. He joked about how the hoards of MAGA haters must be hating this: 'I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened.' 'I'm gonna report what happened and you decide. If that's not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don't give a [expletive],' Maher said unapologetically. He said that the president did not ask him for his support and when he gifted Maher several Trump hats, he didn't ask him to take a photograph wearing them. 'I'm just taking it as a positive this person exists because everything I've ever not like about him was, I swear to God, absent, at least on this night with this guy,' he said. The discussion largely was one of Trump asking for Maher's thoughts on various hot political topics, which he said he was heard out on, if not agreed with. He confronted Trump mostly that he agreed with him on several issues, like immigration, improving police morale, keeping transgender people out of women's sports and several other ideas. 'I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him,' he said. Maher said that while he voted for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, 'I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was comfortable talking to Donald Trump.' 'I feel it's emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days,' he said, taking shots at liberals for their ineffective means of protest against the president. The pair even joked about the orangutan lawsuit, with Maher explaining he didn't like how he discussed Barack Obama's place of birth and Maher saying the president understood. All along, he seemed to reiterate that he wished the Trump he met would be like that all the time, asking: 'Why can't we get the guy I met to be the public guy? I went into the mind and that's what's down there. A crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person lives there, which I know is [expletive] up, its just not as [expletive] up as I thought it was,' he said in summary. He said that he believes that the pair will likely go back to insulting each other, joking about Trump starting 'a new list.' However, he said that he believes Trump understands that 'I have a job to do.' 'MAGA fans, don't worry. Your boy gave me nothing, just hats and a very generous amount of time and a willingness to accept me as a possible friend even though I'm not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner,' he said. However, late on, the two shared a moment in the Oval Office where both admitted that there were a lot of people who liked that they were meeting but a lot of people who didn't want them to meet whatsoever. It was there that they were both in complete agreement. 'The people who don't even want us to talk? We don't like you,' he said.
Daily Mail
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Bill Maher eviscerates Sean Penn with ultimate comeback after Hollywood star calls out his dinner with Trump
Bill Maher was baffled that Hollywood star Sean Penn would question his dinner with Donald Trump after the Oscar winner had met with the likes of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Penn stunned the comedian on his Club Random podcast when he said he would have not met with the president as Maher did in April. Maher's response: 'Really? You'll meet with f***ing Castro and Hugo Chavez, but not the President of the United States?' Penn met with socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2007, in Caracas, when he was considered a villain by the Bush administration. In 2008, President Raul Castro of Cuba granted him his first interview with a non-Cuban and at one point, he met Fidel Castro while on a trip to Havana. He also visited Iraq in 2002 and Iran in 2005. In 2016, he shocked the world, admitting to have met and interviewed Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán. Maher was actually seeking the left-wing actor's approval for his dinner with Trump: 'But you do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him.' 'Absolutely, you're so smart,' replied the Fast Times at Ridgemont High star. 'Look, this is the President of the United States, whether we like it or not, doesn't matter,' Penn continued. 'I think that when you talked about it on the show that I would have preferred that I saw his mission or his will to have the dinner, I wish I would have seen it as less successful. Because you're so smart on policy.' Maher retorted: 'Well it was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I've always said about him. It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him.' That's when Penn said he would not have done it, in part jokingly that 'it's a long flight' but also suggesting there would be no purpose. Penn responded to Maher's crack about having met Castro and Chavez by saying he 'saw good results come out of some of those things.' 'I just personally wouldn't trust anything that was said in the room,' Penn summed up. Maher replied: 'It's not a matter of trusting it, it's a matter of seeing it, a matter of experiencing it, a matter of knowing it.' He compared it to someone who didn't want to get tested medically because they might not want to know something was wrong with them. Penn ultimately agreed. Unlike Castro and Chavez, Penn later expressed regret for the interview with El Chapo, saying his goal was to start a conversation about the war on drugs. The acclaimed actor also accused the Mexican government of endangering his life by claiming that his meeting with El Chapo led to his eventual capture. El Chapo was arrested the next year and eventually extradited to the United States, where he is on trial. Maher said Donald Trump was 'gracious and measured' in what he described as a positive meeting with the president, to the point that he walked away with a cheeky gift. Maher has always attacked Trump on his HBO show dating back over a decade, when the two were involved in a lawsuit over Maher claiming the president's father was an orangutan. On Friday's show, he took time out exclusively to 'give you my book report on my visit to the White House,' which saw him have dinner with Trump and UFC owner Dana White. The lefty comedian confirmed the meeting had been arranged by musician and Trump fan Kid Rock, who also attended: ' Because we share a belief that there's gotta be something better than hurling insults at each other from 3,000 miles away.' He slammed those who saw the event as some kind of important diplomacy meeting. 'For all the people who treated this like it was some sort of summit meeting, you're ridiculous. Like I was gonna sign a treaty or something? I'm a f***ing comedian, I have no power! He's the most powerful leader in the world, I'm not the leader of anything,' Maher said. The comic did say that he wanted to represent 'a contingent of centrist-minded people who believe there's got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.' He confirmed that Trump was a 'different' person than he'd seen in the public eye over the last decade and even the night before, when the president publicly wondered if the meeting was even a good idea. 'The guy I met is not the person who, the night before, s***-tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea, and what a deranged asshole I was.' 'He's much more self-aware than he lets on in public,' Maher added. Perhaps most striking to Maher was that Trump ' laughed' and has a sense of humor about himself. 'First good sign, before I left for the capital, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets that the president said about me,' Maher said. 'I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it, which he did with good humor,' he added. He joked about how the hoards of MAGA haters must be hating this: 'I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened.' 'I'm gonna report what happened and you decide. If that's not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don't give a f***,' Maher said unapologetically. He said that the president did not ask him for his support and when he gifted Maher several Trump hats, he didn't ask him to take a photograph wearing them. 'I'm just taking it as a positive this person exists because everything I've ever not like about him was, I swear to God, absent, at least on this night with this guy,' he said. The discussion largely was one of Trump asking for Maher's thoughts on various hot political topics, which he said he was heard out on, if not agreed with. He confronted Trump mostly that he agreed with him on several issues, like immigration, improving police morale, keeping transgender people out of women's sports and several other ideas. 'I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him,' he said. Maher said that while he voted for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, 'I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was comfortable talking to Donald Trump.' 'I feel it's emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days,' he said, taking shots at liberals for their ineffective means of protest against the president. The pair even joked about the orangutan lawsuit, with Maher explaining he didn't like how he discussed Barack Obama's place of birth and Maher saying the president understood. All along, he seemed to reiterate that he wished the Trump he met would be like that all the time, asking: 'Why can't we get the guy I met to be the public guy?' 'I went into the mind and that's what's down there. A crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person lives there, which I know is f***ed up, its just not as f***ed up as I thought it was,' he said in summary. He said that he believes that the pair will likely go back to insulting each other, joking about Trump starting 'a new list.' However, he said that he believes Trump understands that 'I have a job to do.' 'MAGA fans, don't worry. Your boy gave me nothing, just hats and a very generous amount of time and a willingness to accept me as a possible friend even though I'm not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner,' he said. However, late on, the two shared a moment in the Oval Office where both admitted that there were a lot of people who liked that they were meeting but a lot of people who didn't want them to meet whatsoever. It was there that they were both in complete agreement.
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Top Democrat demands answers on Trump's major crypto investors
A top House Democrat has demanded Donald Trump reveal a list of who attended his private dinner last week for major investors in his meme coin, as questions swirl about the deep and secretive connections between the Trump administration and the cryptocurrency industry. With the Trump administration rolling out the red carpet for cryptocurrency at a glitzy Las Vegas conference this week, Jamie Raskin on Thursday called for an investigation into last week's private dinner at Trump's Virginia golf club, which Trump hosted for the top buyers of his $TRUMP digital tokens. Raskin, a progressive Maryland representative and ranking member on the House judiciary committee, warned that foreign governments may be secretly funneling money to the US president through anonymous cryptocurrency purchases. 'Publication of this list will also let the American people know who is putting tens of millions of dollars into our President's pocket so we can start to figure out what – beyond virtually worthless memecoins – they are getting in exchange for all this money,' Raskin wrote in the letter, first reported by the Washington Post. The demand for an investigation comes as the vice-president, JD Vance, and other senior Trump administration figures descended on Las Vegas on Wednesday and Thursday for the bitcoin 2025 conference, where they are promoting the administration's pro-cryptocurrency agenda to industry leaders and investors. Among those attending the three-day Las Vegas gathering include cryptocurrency promoters including the Winklevoss twins, the former 'dark web' marketplace Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht – sentenced to two life sentences for illegal drug sales, then pardoned by Trump – and Trump's sons Donald Jr and Eric. Also addressing the gathering was Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader and Brexit architect who is now eyeing Downing Street. A former MEP who has positioned himself as an advocate for financial sovereignty and critic of central bank digital currencies, Farage is polling competitively as a potential future UK prime minister and has previously appeared at cryptocurrency events discussing monetary policy and digital surveillance concerns. Last week's dinner in Virginia was restricted to the 220 largest holders of Trump's meme coin. Buyers spent around $148m in total, according to cryptocurrency analysis firm Inca Digital, with a separate private reception for the top 25 spenders. Unlike traditional political fundraising events, the crypto dinner directly benefited Trump family businesses rather than political entities. Buyers faced none of the disclosure requirements that apply to campaign donations. Raskin said his own investigation into the dinner would center on Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto mogul who bought $20m in Trump coins to become the top purchaser, and also invested $75m in the Trump family's World Liberty Financial venture, another cryptocurrency. Sun had been facing Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges since 2023, but in February the SEC asked for a pause in his case, and a judge obliged. Raskin said he was concerned the dinner could violate the constitution's emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments without congressional permission. Raskin has also questioned whether the administration verified that funds used to purchase Trump's cryptocurrency were not linked to terrorist organizations, drug cartels or other criminal enterprises. A Washington Post analysis found that half the dinner attendees likely came from overseas, and traced many of the purchases to cryptocurrency exchanges that bar US customers. The watchdog group State Democracy Defenders Fund has estimated that Trump's cryptocurrency ventures, launched less than a year ago, are now worth approximately $2.9bn. The Trump Organization has said the president's business interests are managed by his children in a trust, though critics argue this arrangement provides insufficient protection against conflicts of interest. 'Trump's crypto schemes are profoundly corrupt,' said Senator Jeff Merkley, who along with the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has introduced legislation to block Trump from using his office to benefit his crypto businesses. 'He's selling access to his administration and enriching himself in the process.' The Trump family's cryptocurrency ventures have expanded rapidly since the election. World Liberty Financial, promoted heavily by Eric and Donald Jr, was recently selected to play a key role in a $2bn investment deal between an Abu Dhabi financial fund and the crypto exchange Binance, which was found liable in 2023 for money-laundering violations and fined more than $4bn. The White House has dismissed conflict of interest concerns. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has argued that Trump attended the dinner in his 'personal time' and that it was not a White House event. She declined to commit to releasing the guest list. The investigation represents the latest Democratic effort to scrutinize Trump's business dealings while in office. Representative Maxine Waters has introduced legislation preventing presidents and other officials from owning significant amounts of digital assets, while Representative Sean Casten has called for a justice department investigation into potential bribery law violations. 'This is an orgy of corruption,' Senator Elizabeth Warren said about Trump's meme coin dinner at a recent news conference.
