<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like that time Pinocchio became a real boy: News that was labeled \u201cfake\u201d last week is real today, per the Kennedy Center, and Bill Maher will indeed be the 27th person to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. <\/p>\n
The White House strongly dissed the Atlantic\u2019s reporting (followed by unreporting<\/a>) last week that Maher was the next in line for the 2026 prize that Conan O\u2019Brien got last year and Kevin Hart picked up the year before that. The Twain honor has been bestowed on comics almost annually since 1998 by the Kennedy Center, a \u201ctired, broken, and dilapidated\u201d building<\/a> that President Trump slapped his own name on in December and plans to close for two years\u2019 worth of renovations starting July 4 \u2014 hence the response from White House flacks. <\/p>\n \u201cLiterally FAKE NEWS,\u201d said Steven Cheung, White House director of communications, on his official X account<\/a> reacting Friday to the Atlantic story. Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement to the publication, \u201cThis is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.\u201d<\/p>\n But People reported Thursday that although the Atlantic\u2019s news was deemed \u201cfake\u201d at the time, according to word from a White House official, the situation had \u201cevolved\u201d in the six days since then. <\/p>\n You say tomato, I say to-mah-to? At any rate, Bill\u2019s getting the Twain, given previously to comedic luminaries including Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Dave Chappelle.<\/p>\n Maher had no response on social media, perhaps reserving his reaction for the upcoming \u201cReal Time With Bill Maher\u201d episode due out Friday on HBO or his next \u201cClub Random\u201d podcast. But he did issue a dryly amusing statement Thursday in a Kennedy Center news release, saying, \u201cThank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it\u2019s like an Emmy, except I win.\u201d<\/p>\n (Maher\u2019s show has been nominated for Emmy Awards 22 times, from 2004 through 2024, including 13 nods for variety series and the rest for writing, directing and personal performance. It has won exactly zero of those times. Even Susan Lucci only had to wait through 18 Daytime Emmy nominations before she finally won on the 19th \u2014 and proceeded to lose out on two more.)<\/p>\n The comic\u2019s statement continued: \u201cI\u2019d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who\u2019s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,\u201d Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, said in a statement of her own. \u201cFor even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse \u2014 one politically incorrect joke at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n Maher, a self-described liberal who has no love for the Republican Party, found himself in strange-new-respect territory among conservatives in recent years after he started slamming far-left ideology as ruthlessly as he slammed the far right. Then last spring he accepted an invitation for dinner with Trump at the White House, and many heads exploded. <\/p>\n \u201cOK, as you know, 12 days ago, I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock because we share a belief that there\u2019s got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away,\u201d said Maher, who lives on the West Coast<\/a>, on the April 11, 2025, episode<\/a> of \u201cReal Time.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAnd let me first say that to all the people who treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you\u2019re ridiculous. Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I have \u2014 I have no power. I\u2019m a f\u2014 comedian, and he\u2019s the most powerful leader in the world. I\u2019m not the leader of anything except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there\u2019s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.\u201d<\/p>\n Maher said he brought with him to the dinner a list of almost five dozen epithets the president had hurled his way over the years, intending to ask Trump to sign it for him. Which the president did. And after sharing some anecdotes from the visit, including some snappy retorts, Maher told his audience that Trump was \u201cmuch more self-aware than he lets on in public.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That\u2019s just how it went down. Make of it what you will.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mark Twain Prize will be given to Maher at a gala set for June 28, with Netflix streaming the event at a later date, yet to be determined. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s like that time Pinocchio became a real boy: News that was labeled \u201cfake\u201d last week is real today, per the Kennedy Center, and Bill Maher will indeed be the 27th person to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. 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