Bill Maher hit back at Washington Post reporter Josh Rogin after he accused Maher of falling into Trump's 'trap' as the Real Time host defended his chummy dinner with the President.
On Friday night, Maher was met with grief from Rogin on the show's discussion panel after defending his meeting with the President and describing Trump as 'self-aware.'
Maher said: 'You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured.
'And why isn't that in other settings? I don't know, and I can't answer, and it's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw, and I wasn't high.'
But the panel discussion with Piers Morgan and Rogin grew tense as Rogin accused the host of 'playing the game of proximity is principle.'
'I think you've fallen into the trap; I think I represent 99 percent of the internet when I say this,' Rogin said to Maher.
'What people are worried about is not your motivation, we believe you. We love you, Bill.'
'I'm not questioning your motivation, I'm questioning Trump's... If we can say that you went there in good faith, but maybe - just maybe- he wasn't there in good faith,' Rogin added.
'I think you've fallen into the trap; I think I represent 99 percent of the internet when I say this,' Washington Post reported Josh Rogin said to real Time host Bill Maher about his chummy dinner with Donald Trump
On Friday night, Maher was met with grief from Rogin after defending his meeting with the President and describing Trump as 'self-aware'
You don't have to patronize me dude. I don't know you, I never met you... There are people who didn't want it to happen at all - you sound like one of them,' Maher said
'I mean you sold him on the Iran deal and he took it in? I mean give me a break, okay. So, the idea here is that your motivation is sound but what's the impact,' he said.
Rogin concluded by adding that 'people love you' and that he himself is a fan of Maher's.
But the host snapped back and said: 'You don't have to patronize me dude. I don't know you, I never met you.'
'Not everybody has to like it,' Maher added. 'There are people who didn't want it to happen at all - you sound like one of them.'
'What is the alternative to not talking? Just sit at your lunch table and don't talk to anybody?' he queried.
Rogin answered that he 'believed in the principle of engagement' but questioned if whether from Trump's perspective the meeting between them was a 'PR stunt.'
Piers Morgan, however, jumped into the conversation to defend Maher's decision and furthered that 'the idea that Bill Maher is now gonna stop criticizing Donald Trump... It's preposterous.'
Morgan's intervention praised Maher for 'walking across' and having a conversation with the President.
'I'm not questioning your motivation, I'm questioning Trump's... If we can say that you went there in good faith, but maybe - just maybe- he wasn't there in good faith,' Rogin said
Piers Morgan jumped into the conversation to defend Maher's decision and furthered that 'the idea that Bill Maher is now gonna stop criticizing Donald Trump... It's preposterous'
The host then hit back again at Rogin for putting too much emphasis on the dialogue of social media.
'The fact you began your little rant with the internet - that tells me everything,' Maher said. 'You take your cues from the internet. Good luck. The internet is a cesspool that just wants to fight.'
The longtime Trump critic described on Friday's show his meeting with the President as overly positive, to the point that he walked away with a cheeky gift.
Maher emphasized he believed that the dinner had been made into too much of a big deal and said: ''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.'
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.'
'What is the alternative to not talking? Just sit at your lunch table and don't talk to anybody?' Maher asked
The longtime Trump critic described on Friday's show his meeting with the President as overly positive, to the point that he walked away with a cheeky gift
'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 hordes 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 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,' Maher said of Trump
Pictured: Bill Maher and Donald Trump attend the 56th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium September 19, 2004
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.
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.
