Last night, comedian Bill Maher received the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center. His acceptance speech—a relatively mellow recitation of thanks for various entities that have helped him (HBO, his haters)—did feature an interruption by comedian Matt Friend, who came onstage impersonating President Trump and tried to take the award for himself. (“Why are we giving this low-ratings lightweight jerk the Mark Twain Award?” Friend said, adding that, “I get so many more laughs than this guy. Why are you getting a comedy award? Remember when I took the Sharpie and drew the extra path of destruction of the hurricane on the map? That was funny stuff.”)
Throughout the evening, there were some laughs and a smidge of gaiety, but overall, it was fairly sedate. Whole swaths of balcony seats stood empty. Volunteer seat fillers—meant to plump the crowd for the TV cameras—were given the option to bring up to five guests. At the Mark Twain Prize, one encountered precious few celebrities (Howard Lutnick and Pam Bondi were there), clashing Washington factions (arts patrons vs. MAGA glam), and felt the general sense of doom hanging over the Kennedy Center. Here’s what the evening was like:
Maher’s Dinner With Trump Kept Coming Up
Last year, Maher took some heat for attending a dinner with Trump at the White House, arranged by mutual friend Kid Rock, after which he said that the president was “gracious and measured” and a decent listener who’s capable of laughing at himself. (When Maher continued to criticize Trump on TV, the president took to Truth Social to call him a “very boring” and “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” who suffers from “a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”) Throughout the evening, Maher’s comedian friends seemed to try to dispel the awkwardness of that dinner. Jay Leno mentioned it, and Whitney Cummings did, too. (“He went there to prove a point that he’s been trying to prove for years,” she said. “Seeing Donald Trump, Dana White, and Kid Rock together in the White House once and for all proves there really is no God.”)
In his own remarks, Maher tried to defend himself. “We had a deal,” said Friend while impersonating Trump. “You come to the White House, I give you a steak, you go completely MAGA.” Maher pushed back: “No, no, no, no, I gotta stop you there. You keep saying that. We never had any deal. That dinner was always about just having the two sides talk to each other instead of shouting at each other. There was no quid pro quo.” Maher didn’t really ding Trump directly—the closest he came was saying that people would like a president who “doesn’t just pull shit out of his ass.” Instead, he had Friend satirize the president’s egomania, reminded the crowd that he found Trump “very nice” and “not at all to be so belligerent,” and generally failed to put the dinner issue to bed.
Awkwardness Over the Kennedy Center’s Board
Pamella DeVos, a member of the Kennedy Center’s board, gave the evening’s opening remarks. The Trump donor (and sister-in-law of former education secretary Betsy Devos) hit a few sour notes about the beleaguered Kennedy Center, claiming to “believe in it deeply” and telling the crowd that “great institutions matter and the Kennedy center is as great as they come.”
DeVos, of course, is among the Trump appointed trustees who have lately authorized a cascade of catastrophic decisions for the Kennedy Center, including its (now reversed) renaming for the president, and its planned two-year closure for renovations—a decision that a federal judge found to be so imprudent as to be unlawful. “The responsibility that comes with [overseeing the Kennedy Center] is one that our board takes very seriously,” DeVos said, before giving profuse thanks to the evening’s corporate sponsors (Wells Fargo, Booz Allen) and a token nod to the Kennedy Center’s staff for “doing an amazing job putting this together.” Among employees in attendance—many of whom will soon be unemployed—these remarks surely did not go over well.
An Uncomfortable Reaction to a Redskins Joke
Comedian Whitney Cummings, a DC native, opened by describing how strange it is that Bill Maher would choose to be a political comedian, as opposed to any other type. (She compared it to a surgeon choosing a colorectal specialty; both involve spending one’s life examining assholes.) “If that metaphor was too weird,” Cummings added, “I have another one that can help you understand how masochistic it is to do what Bill Maher does. Being a political comedian is like being a sports commentator who chooses to only talk about the Washington Commanders.” The room lit up at that, cheering and applauding our terrible hometown team. Then she added, “Or as Bill calls them, the Redskins.” A few cheers and whistles emanated from the MAGA portions of the room, enough to make Cummings cringe.
Ditto to a Joke About the Trump Shooting
Louis CK was briefly resurrected from career purgatory last night to give a fairly earnest tribute to his friend Bill Maher. He didn’t tell a lot of jokes. “I am not a political guy,” he said partway through his remarks. “I wrote one joke about Trump, and it took me about 18 months.” He then gave a slightly meandering recitation—saggy for effect—of a joke about the 20-year-old man who shot the president in 2024. “The kid had a plan, you know, he was going to go to the rally, shoot Trump, and kill him, but instead he got shot and he died.” When Louis CK said that, he wasn’t done—but a few members of the crowd interrupted to whoop and clap.
John Fetterman Loved a Dick Joke
One montage of old Maher jokes included a jab at Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who was there at the Kennedy Center last night, sitting with his wife in a box. The cameras panned to him and he waved. Then tape rolled of Maher describing the “procession of skinny, fey, gay-adjacent, meek, porcelain-doll, shy-guy, twink-like, tortured poet metrosexuals” that Taylor Swift has dated. The joke was that “the second she got some old-school wood from the heartland” her songs went from “what a dick this guy was to her, and what a dick this guy was to her” to “what a dick this guy has.” I am here to tell you that Senator Fetterman loved that one. He gave it an enormous laugh.
The Vibe at the Kennedy Center Itself
The whole atmosphere of the evening was a little odd, blighting what would normally be a marquee event. When guests entered the building from the plaza, they passed eight uniformed troops—actual military personnel, not private security—stationed next to the heroic-scale tarp that’s hiding the spot where Trump’s name was recently stripped from the facade. Woody Harrelson made the evening’s sole joke about it: “Finally, an award for my dear friend,” he said of Maher, who has lost 41 Emmys over the course of his career. “Ironically, it’s at the Trump Kennedy Center—no, right, we fixed that. Not so you’d be able to notice.”
It was conspicuous, actually, that so few jokes were made about the Kennedy Center itself, given the oddness of everything that’s unfolding there. Jay Leno told an innocuous one. (“For the second time in our nation’s capital, there is a Big Beautiful Bill in Washington!” he said. “You know, the Kennedy Center was not Bill’s first choice, but the Playboy Mansion was unavailable.”) Cummings was a little more barbed, joking that Trump is planning to program the Kennedy Center with “White Hamilton” this fall, and that he’d failed to show up for the Mark Twain Prize because he “got caught in sex traffic.”
Between the military presence, the tarp, the subdued atmosphere, and the diminished crowd, it was clear that things are weird at the Kennedy Center right now. This was likely to be the last big night there for quite some time, given the absence of programming after July 4. It’s a pity that it wasn’t more joyful.
