Photos: Kristin Callahan/Everett Collection, HBO
Given their recent history, reports earlier Friday that Bill Maher had been offered the Mark Twain Prize with President Trump’s blessing seemed surprising.
Sure enough, The Atlantic was forced to retract its story that Maher had been selected to receive the Kennedy Center’s highest honor in comedy.
The earlier report cited three Kennedy Center staffers who said Maher had been offered the prize with Trump’s support, and that an official announcement was imminent.
Hours later—and after the story had already been picked up by multiple outlets—the magazine updated its reporting with a stark reversal: The White House had intervened to shut it down.
“This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, after the administration apparently contacted the Kennedy Center directly.
The episode marks the latest twist in the long—and increasingly erratic—relationship between Maher and Trump, who have spent the better part of the past year trading barbs despite a brief detente following Maher’s widely criticized April 2025 White House dinner with the president.
That détente has long since evaporated.
As LateNighter recently reported, Trump went on a lengthy Truth Social tirade against Maher last month, calling the Real Time host a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” and lumping him in with Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert—frequent targets of the president’s attacks.
Maher, for his part, devoted nearly ten minutes of his March 6 episode to responding, joking that Trump appeared more focused on him than global events. “Someone has to help Donald Trump understand that I don’t suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Maher said. “He suffers from Bill Maher Derangement Syndrome.”
That back-and-forth made the idea of Trump backing Maher for the Mark Twain Prize all the more eyebrow-raising—particularly given Trump’s increasing influence over Kennedy Center programming since taking control of the institution last year.
The Twain Prize, one of the center’s most prestigious honors, is awarded annually to a comedian for their lifetime contribution to American humor. Past recipients have included David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno. This year’s recipient has yet to be announced.
For now, one thing is clear: it won’t be Bill Maher.
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