Original subtitles

And now, for what I know you've all been waiting for,

I'd like to give you my book report on my visit

to the White House.

(CROWD CHEERING)

Okay, 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's got to be something better

than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away.

And let me first say that to all the people who treated this

like it was some kind of summit meeting,

you're ridiculous.

(CROWD LAUGHS)

Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I have--

I have no power.

I'm a fucking comedian, and he's the most...

powerful leader in the world.

I'm not the leader of anything except maybe a contingent

of centrist-minded people who think there's got

to be a better way of running this country

than hating each other every minute.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

So... thank you.

So...

(CROWD CONTINUE APPLAUDING)

Okay, so meet up in person. Maybe it'll be different.

Spoiler alert, it was.

First good sign before I left for the Capitol,

I had my staff collect and print out

this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets

that the president had said about me.

Things like "Stupid, dummy, low-life dummy,

sleazebag, sick, sad, stone-cold, crazy...

really a dumb guy, furred like a dog,

his show is dead."

Sixty-- I brought this to the White House

because I wanted him to sign it.

Which he did.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

CROWD MEMBER 1: Yeah!

Which he did with good humor.

And I know as I say that,

millions of liberal sphincters just tightened.

"Oh, my God, Bill,

are you gonna say something nice about him?"

What I'm gonna do is report exactly what happened.

You decide what you think about it.

And if that's not enough pure Trump hate for you,

I don't give a fuck.

CROWD MEMBER 2: Yeah!

So...

So no, I didn't go MAGA.

And to the president's credit, there was no pressure to.

After we left the Oval Office,

he showed me the little room off the office,

you know, the one where Clinton used to...

(CROWD LAUGHING)

Okay.

The blowjob room, okay?

(CROWD LAUGHING)

Well, not anymore.

That's where they keep the merch now.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

It is.

(CROWD APPLAUDS)

And he gave me a bunch of hats,

but he didn't ask me to take a picture in one,

which I appreciated.

The guy I met is not the person who the night before the dinner

shit-tweeted a bunch of nasty crap

about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea

and what a deranged asshole I was.

I read it and thought, "Oh, what a lovely way

to welcome someone to your house."

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there.

Now, does Trump want respect?

Of course. Who doesn't?

My friend said to me,

"What are you going to wear to the White House?"

I said, "I don't know, but I'm not going to dress

like Zelensky, I'll tell you that."

(CROWD LAUGHS)

Just for starters, he laughs.

I'd never seen him laugh in public, but he does,

including at himself.

And it's not fake.

Believe me, as a comedian of 40 years,

I know a fake laugh when I hear it.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

And I thank you for them.

Uh, no.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

Okay, example. In the Oval Office,

he was showing me the portraits of presidents,

and he pointed to Reagan and said,

in all seriousness,

"You know the best thing about him? His hair."

I said, "Well, there was also

that whole bringing down communism thing,

waiting for the button next to the Diet Coke button

to get pushed and I go through the trap door."

But no, he laughed, he got it.

I said to him at one point,

"Mr. President, you know the dog,

that's unusual in the White House."

He said, "Well, a lot of the presidents,

they had a dog for political reasons."

I said, "No, people love dogs, that's what that is."

"Oh, yeah. Okay, that's true."

I'm telling you what happened.

At one point, we were walking through his amazing,

it is an amazing tour of the whole house.

And I don't remember exactly what we were talking about,

but it must have been something with the 2020 election

because I know he used the word "lost."

And I distinctly remember saying,

"Wow. I never thought I'd hear you say that."

He didn't get mad.

He's much more self-aware than he lets on in public.

Look, I get it.

It doesn't matter who he is

at a private dinner with a comedian.

It matters who he is on the world stage.

I'm just taking it as a positive that this person exists

because everything I've ever not liked about him was,

I swear to God, absent,

at least on this night with this guy.

Bob, Kid Rock, told me the night before,

he said, "If you want to get a word in edgewise,

you're going to have to cut him off.

He'll just go on." Not at all.

I've had so many conversations with prominent people

who are much less connected,

people who don't look you in the eye,

people who don't really listen

because they just want to get to their next thing,

people whose response to things you say

just doesn't track like, "What?"

None of that with him.

And he mostly steered the conversation to,

"What do you think about this?"

I know. Your mind is blown.

So is mine.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

There were so many moments when I hit him with a joke

or contradicted something, and no problem.

At dinner, he was asking me

about the nuclear situation in Iran in a very genuine,

"Hey, I think you're a smart guy.

I want your opinion," sort of way.

And I said,

"Well, obviously, you're privy to things about it I'm not.

But for what it's worth, I thought the Obama deal

was worth letting play out, because we made Iran

destroy 98 percent of the uranium,

and they were 15 years away from a bomb."

And then I said to him, "But we got rid of that.

You got rid of that."

He didn't get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic.

He took it in.

I told him I thought

parts of his plan for Gaza were wacky,

but that I had supported him in the idea

that Gaza could be Dubai instead of hell.

I told him he was wrong when he tweeted the night before

that I was critical of all things Trump.

Not true. Check the tapes.

Moving Israel's embassy to Jerusalem?

Loved it.

The border did need to be controlled.

I'm glad the cops are getting their morale back.

DEI had gone too far.

Biological men shouldn't be playing women's sports.

Europe should pay for their defense.

And of course, it makes sense

that Arab countries should take in Arab refugees,

like the million Syrians who wound up in Germany

when Saudi Arabia took none.

He said to me, "You're right, they took none."

(CROWD LAUGHING)

I said, "Well, you should remind your boyfriend in Saudi Arabia

that the next time you see him."

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

He laughed.

I 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's just how it went down.

Make of it what you will.

Me, I feel it's emblematic of why the Democrats

are so unpopular these days.

He was even okay when I checked him

on the orangutan...

(CROWD LAUGHING)

lawsuit.

He was.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

You know, he said to Dana White,

"You know, Bill said my father was an orangutan, and I...

I really love my father."

And I said, "Well, Mr. President,

I did that because I didn't like

what you were doing regarding Obama's birth origins.

I thought that was low."

Again, no anger.

Just a little smile as if to say, "Yeah, I get it."

The most surreal part of the whole night

was when I got home.

I flew back right after the dinner,

and I'm in bed watching 60 Minutes

from the night before.

And there's Trump in one of their stories,

standing at a podium in a room that looked to me

like one of the rooms and pod-- places we'd just been in.

And he's ranting, "Disgusting. You're a terrible person."

And I'm like, "Who's that guy?"

What happened to Glinda the Good Witch?

(CROWD LAUGHING)

And why can't we get the guy I met to be the public guy?

And I'm not saying

it's our responsibility to do that. It's not.

I'm just reporting exactly what I saw

over two and a half hours.

I went into the mine, and that's what's down there.

A crazy person doesn't live in the White House.

A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot

lives there, which I know is fucked up.

It's just not as fucked up as I thought it was.

And I have no illusions now that I'm back to work at my job

that he might start a new list.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

Because I don't have a good feeling,

and will be critical about a lot of what he's doing,

the trade war and disappearing people,

ruling by decree, threatening judges,

gutting the government with glee.

But I also think he now understands I have a job to do,

or at least he did on this night

because he said to me early on

that he'd seen our last episode,

which was the Friday before this dinner.

And he said,

"I thought maybe you'd be nice, but you hit me really hard."

I did, because I'm not gonna pull my punches

that presidents get to propose a third term for themselves.

He understood that, and without animus.

That doesn't mean he's not gonna try to do it.

At one point, I said to him,

"You're scaring people.

Do you really want to be scaring your own citizens so much?"

And I know now you're all saying,

"And what did he say to that?"

Honestly, I don't remember. (SMACKS LIPS)

But it wasn't, "Okay, I'll stop."

So MAGA fans, don't worry.

Your boy gave me nothing, just hats.

Hats and a very generous amount of time,

and a willingness to listen and accept me

as a possible friend, even though I'm not MAGA,

which was the point of the dinner.

My favorite part of the whole night

was we were standing in the blowjob room.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

We were.

And he said, "You know, I've heard from a lot of people

who really liked that we're having this dinner.

Not all, but a lot."

And I said, "Same.

A lot of people told me they loved it, but not all."

And we agreed, the people who don't even want us to talk,

we don't like you.

Don't talk as opposed to what?

Writing the same editorial for the millionth time

and making 25-hour speeches into the wind?

Really? That's what liberals have?

He takes the piss out of everybody else

and we can hold ours?

Okay, that's my report.

You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar.

Trump was gracious and measured

and why he 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.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

Damn, missed opportunity.