A Saturday evening Fox News panel segment praising Bill Maher triggered a blistering attack from President Trump, who took to Truth Social to demand the conservative network stop featuring the HBO comedian.
The outburst came roughly 30 minutes after “The Big Weekend Show” aired on May 2, 2026, when Fox personalities applauded Maher’s interrogation of California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a Friday night “Real Time” interview. The 79-year-old president appeared to be watching live as hosts praised someone he considers a political enemy.
“Fox should stop putting this person on. He’s not representing us. You look weak, stupid, and ineffective, and I hate seeing that. DON’T USE BILL MAHER ANY LONGER AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF YOU!” Trump wrote. He concluded by calling Maher “a MORON, though slightly more talented than Jimmy Kimmel.”
The Segment That Set Him Off
Fox co-host Tomi Lahren and Dr. Marc Siegel, the network’s senior medical analyst, walked viewers through clips of the 70-year-old Maher grilling Newsom on California’s economic troubles. A chyron reading “The Truth Hurts” appeared beneath footage of Maher pressing the 58-year-old governor on gas prices, rents, and the state’s troubled high-speed rail project.
“I mean the train. Gavin, you got to get rid of the train. I say this as a friend, you got to let that train go,” Maher told Newsom — referencing a project that lost roughly $4 billion in federal grants in July 2025 after the Trump administration pulled funding. Lahren called it a “boondoggle” and said she “loved” the way Maher “called him out.”
The rail project’s projected cost has since ballooned to $231 billion, and the first operating segment may not open until 2032. Although construction on the Central Valley stretch is partially complete — with more than 50 structures built and roughly 70 miles of rail bed laid — the full Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line remains far from reality.
Lahren later seized on the exchange to highlight what she described as a “smug” Newsom getting cornered.
Newsom’s “Mirror” Defense
During the HBO interview that sparked the controversy, Maher confronted Newsom about his increasingly combative online behavior and his $787 million lawsuit against Fox News. The comedian suggested Newsom was adopting Trump’s playbook of trolling and litigation more than any other potential 2028 Democratic candidate.
“I’m trying to put a mirror up to Donald Trump,” Newsom responded. The governor attacked Trump as unwilling to “unite this country in any way, shape, or form” and blamed him for “the sewer we’re now living in because of Donald Trump.”
Maher pressed hard on whether the governor’s optimism extended to California’s economic failures. When Newsom responded with a giddy “good!” to criticism, Maher shot back: “Are they gonna say ‘good’ about gas prices? Are they gonna say ‘good’ about how high the rents are?”
Trump’s California Indictment
Trump’s marathon Truth Social posts read like a prosecutorial case against Newsom — whom he called “Newscum.” The president accused Newsom of taking Maher “over the coals” because the comedian was “defenseless, and totally deficient,” lacking either the knowledge or the nerve to push back.
The president cataloged what he portrayed as the governor’s failures: homelessness across Los Angeles and San Francisco, the rail project he called “Billions of Dollars over budget,” and the roughly 25,000 homes destroyed by fire earlier this year. Trump credited EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin with rescuing the rebuilding effort, writing, “If it weren’t for our Superstar EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and me, they wouldn’t have any homes being built right now!”
He also argued California is hemorrhaging residents, claiming that “for the first time in History, more people are leaving than coming.”
A Familiar White House Grievance
Trump revisited his much-discussed dinner with Maher at the White House in early 2025, describing the comedian — recently named the next recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor — as rattled and overmatched in the Oval Office. He claimed Maher was “nervous, scared,” and that the comedian’s first words were a request for a drink, calling the moment “endearing but, at the same time, absolutely pathetic.”
The president has long expressed discomfort with conservatives occasionally embracing Maher. He previously urged Republicans to stop using the HBO host to “show how the Left is coming over our way.” On Valentine’s Day this year, he unleashed a similarly blistering post calling Maher a “jerk,” a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” and a sufferer of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” This latest broadside arrived against that backdrop.
What began as a Saturday evening panel discussion on a friendly network ended with the president publicly lashing the cable channel that has spent a decade as his most reliable megaphone — all because two Fox hosts agreed, briefly, with a comedian Trump cannot stand.