HBO’s Bill Maher said he will soon be making his Fox News debut in an upcoming interview with Tucker Carlson, and he probably has former President Donald Trump to thank for it.
Maher told comedian and podcast host Howie Mandel that he “made clear I’d love to come on with Hannity or Carlson,” but that it wasn’t until he and Trump engaged in a spat on Twitter that he was actually booked on the right-leaning network.
“Last weekend, Trump was going after me in his rallies. He got a big bug up his a** about something I said on my show a week ago about [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis being a better president,” Maher told Mandel.
“He called me a radical left-wing maniac, which is not true. And he said … ‘he’s always laughing at Fox News.’ Okay, true. I am doing that. And then he said, ‘and Fox News kisses my a**, which isn’t pretty.’ So I tweeted about that,” Maher added.
“[Trump] said, ‘he’s booked on Fox News.’ Well, I wasn’t booked on Fox News. He just made that up. I know, it’s so unlike Donald Trump to just make something up,” Maher joked.
“So I wanted it out there that, no, I’m not f***ing booked on Fox News, but I wanna be. I’ve tried to be. And now, because of that and because I tweeted about it, now I am booked on Fox News. Now we are negotiating and I’m gonna do Tucker Carlson.”
“There’s a reason why Fox News puts me on their website and that’s what drives Trump crazy,” Maher went on to say. “Because I’m not afraid to go after the left when they’re wrong, and they’re wrong a lot these days, but I have perspective about who’s more crazy.”
Maher said no date is currently set but that he “can’t wait” for the upcoming interview with Carlson.