Transcript: Lara Trump on Club Random w/ Bill Maher Podcast

I know, and they still are. And, you know, it’s so funny. This is a little surreal because, you know, Friday is our last show of the season. It’s right before Thanksgiving, is when we always get our winter break.

So, you know, the Thanksgiving show, I’m over there waiting for you to come, and I’m writing, you know, the end of the show, what we call our editorial there at the end. And, you know, it’s a… At this time of year for this show, it’s I’ve done the same topic, I feel every year, because I have to, because there’s only one topic that’s sort of appropriate, which is, it’s Thanksgiving. Be with your family, don’t cut off your family.

LARA TRUMP: Agreed.

BILL MAHER: I know you do.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Trump’s Creative Insults

BILL MAHER: Even when there’s a lot of things we don’t agree on, and there’s certainly a lot of things your father-in-law does that I don’t like and he has let me know.

LARA TRUMP: I’m sure he has.

BILL MAHER: Oh, yes. But you know, when I… But here’s the difference. I’ll tell you the difference. When I went there, I brought that. That is a page of 56 different… Just the mind of a man who could come up with those many off the top of his head. I know this is of course over many years.

LARA TRUMP: Of course.

BILL MAHER: But still, it’s just I couldn’t come up with that many variations if I tried.

LARA TRUMP: Very creative. He’s very creative.

BILL MAHER: Yeah. Mojo. Nervous, low life, dummy. So-called comedian. Not a smart guy. Better than Salmanex. Fired like a dog. Dumbass.

LARA TRUMP: I mean, is that your Donald Trump impression? Because I kind of like it.

BILL MAHER: It’s not that good. But the fact that he got… So he signed it.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Okay. So then we went in and you know, he was nice right away. You know, this again, this is what the left hated, that I would not lie and say that. You know, I said a crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV sometimes I think lives in the White House. But you know, and this is what many people have reported, but we went after the Oval Office and he showed me every inch of that White House.

LARA TRUMP: I must say he’s very proud.

BILL MAHER: Oh, very proud.

Trump’s Love for the White House

LARA TRUMP: First of all, he’s very proud to be in the White House and he appreciates the history there and what it all means so much.

BILL MAHER: Oh, boy.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah. I mean, he really does. For anyone who has any question whether or not he respects it… he respects it so much and he is still, for a guy who has Trump Tower, who has Mar-a-Lago, who has all of these amazing properties around the world, he is still awestruck, by the way.

BILL MAHER: You can tell.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Which is funny because when he first got there, the report, I don’t know if it was true, maybe, you know, was that he said “it’s a dump.” Oh my God.

LARA TRUMP: Of course not.

BILL MAHER: Never said that.

LARA TRUMP: No.

BILL MAHER: That certainly was in the press.

LARA TRUMP: Well, everything’s in the press.

BILL MAHER: No, no, no, absolutely not. But I’m just saying that’s… He was… And I thought, oh, well, you know what, the parts of the White House are small. Not the part he showed me. I didn’t realize that the living quarter section is such a big palace.

LARA TRUMP: Beautiful.

BILL MAHER: But I’ve been in… I had been in the other side, the working. And that is smaller than yours. It’s old. The rooms. And there was mice and lots of… I thought, well, this guy’s been, you know, surrounded. He’s always in luxury. I mean, now it looks like Saddam’s palace, for Christ’s sake.

LARA TRUMP: It’s very gilded. It’s very Don Trump. Yes, it’s very gilded.

BILL MAHER: Now, he does love gold.

Credit for Honesty

LARA TRUMP: But I… Can I tell you, I give you a lot of credit for going there because… And for, by the way, being honest about it, because I think that there is a lot of pressure on people, especially in your space and in the public eye, to immediately try to attack him. And for you to say yes, to go to a dinner there and for you to then say, “you know what? He’s not a total lunatic like everybody wants to report.” And to put this on it all. I think it’s… I think it’s great. I’m so happy you did that.

BILL MAHER: Never pulling a punch. The people… It’s so funny. He texted me a couple… I don’t think I’m telling tales out of school. I would not betray any private confidence I’ve had with him, but I don’t think this is very personal. But he texted me a few weeks ago, yelling at me for, you know, because, you know, I… You know, I say to my critics on the left, just, couldn’t you at least wait to see if I was seduced by this dinner?

Because I never was. I went right back to doing my job, which is calling him out on the stuff where I think he is very wrong. And there’s a long list of it. A lot of it is not basically the idea of addressing a problem, which I think he very often has good instincts to address. It’s how he’s doing it. We can talk about that or not if you want, but what the… And so I never stopped with that.

So he’s yelling at me about how, you know, he said, you know, “I guess you forgot our dinner,” and, you know, “you’ve been, you know, captured by the lunatic left.” And I said, I wrote back always, respectfully, “how can I forget about our dinner? The people who hate me for it never let me forget it.” I’m sure they do one f*ing day.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, I’m sure.

Finding Common Ground

BILL MAHER: Okay. So I could not have forgotten about it. But you know what? I’m not going to stop doing my job. And he gets it. At least from me, he does. Well, I think so. You know, it did not end. It was a bit of an exchange. It did not end nasty or I’m cutting you off.

And the difference is, since that dinner, not one public thing there. And also, I’ll tell you this, I’ve never said this publicly, but it’s true. We went into the little merch room after the Oval Office and he started yelling at me about the bit I did many years ago about the orangutan, because, you know, he was. And I did not say sorry because it was a satire in response to his demanding Obama’s birth certificate, which I thought was wrong and racist and not cool.

And, you know, he absolutely accepted that. And then I said, but you know what? I will also admit, not that one, but yes. Have I taken some cheap shots? I have, and that’s not necessary. And by the way, I’m kind of bored with it. You’ve been on the public stage here for 10 years more before he was run for president.

And since then, no jokes about his weight, no jokes about his hair, his makeup, his nothing. Melania, I have enough on my plate with the policy. I don’t have to go there. So I thought, like, you know, this is how people bridge.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: They, you make a little thing here. I make a little move this way. It doesn’t hurt me. It doesn’t hurt you. And I like it better. I like sticking to this. I’m not, I just, I forget who I was telling this to that day. My writers, you know, they were giving all these jokes about something was going on with his hand. And I said, the hand. Save yourself. I’m 70. That could be my hand tomorrow.

LARA TRUMP: It’s true. Absolutely.

BILL MAHER: I’m not making fun of physical deformities and that stuff.

LARA TRUMP: That was good for you.

BILL MAHER: It was fun for a minute and, you know, but like, yeah, I don’t need it. And if that would, if we can, like, do that on a bigger basis where people are talking and giving, you know, somebody has to give a little somewhere.

LARA TRUMP: Exactly. I agree.

BILL MAHER: Well, but your side doesn’t either.

LARA TRUMP: Well, I think our side has also been really beaten down in a lot of ways and unfairly represented and attacked in so many ways. And I think that people, I feel like we’re kind of coming to a place where it’s leveling a little bit.

But I think that, you know, for a lot of people in this country, they felt for a long time like they didn’t have a voice and they didn’t have, they couldn’t get on top of anything if you were conservative. And so I kind of feel like things are kind of balancing a little bit.

And you know what? I will give, I will say, people doing what you’ve done helps that so much. It really does help it so much. Because I think we need to remember at the end of the day, no—

BILL MAHER: One else is doing what that I’m doing.

LARA TRUMP: No, I agree with you.

BILL MAHER: Everybody else is in their f*ing ball.

LARA TRUMP: We need it.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, we do.

LARA TRUMP: More of it.

BILL MAHER: We do.

LARA TRUMP: I came here, Bill. I came here.

BILL MAHER: I appreciate it. And I always, and I always give the conservatives their props on that. Yeah, I say it almost every time a conservative is on the show or comes here. Yeah, you know, I mean, we’re, I’m—

LARA TRUMP: I’m willing to sit down and talk to anybody.

BILL MAHER: Ask any conservative. I, unfortunately, we can’t ask Charlie Kirk who was here.

LARA TRUMP: That’s right.

BILL MAHER: Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene was on Real Time. Either here or on the show. Ask any of them. They will always, Ted Cruz, they will always say, we had a good time. Yeah, we had a good time. You know, I ha— Now there are people who I wouldn’t have here. Like that little prick Nick Fuentes.

The Nick Fuentes Problem

LARA TRUMP: That is an unfortunate individual. And I hate that he gets associated so closely with, you know, the MAGA movement, with my father-in-law, with all of this stuff, because that we—

BILL MAHER: Should denounce him more forcefully.

LARA TRUMP: Well, I mean, maybe you’re right, but he is certainly not the, not the representative that I think any of us, I would hope.

BILL MAHER: The problem, one of the problems with your father-in-law is like if anybody likes him, he has a real hard time not liking them.

LARA TRUMP: That’s true.

BILL MAHER: I mean, and that has led him to some bad things that may be true. Which you know what I’m one of. I’m not the only liberal who said there’s enough to attack him for the thing about fine people on both sides. I mean, even Sam Harris, another liberal, has made the case. I’ve made like it’s not the full statement.

LARA TRUMP: Of course it’s not.

BILL MAHER: Don’t get him on that.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, I’ll go all day on that.

BILL MAHER: I know. And what that is is just this thing of him. Anybody who likes me, I can’t quite denounce. But this Fuentes prick like Trump is not Hitler. No, I mean, Larry David said I had dinner with Hitler because it was such a bullshit thing.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Trump is not Hitler. This Fuentes kid, that’s Hitler.

LARA TRUMP: No, that’s, that there’s nothing. Nothing I will say that I’ve heard come out of his mouth that I think I agree with or many people who consider themselves MAGA. And quite frankly that the fact that he’s got a Trump flag up behind him shouldn’t say that, you know, we agree with him. That’s unfortunate. We need to get you a new lighter.

BILL MAHER: You know what happened around here?

LARA TRUMP: We got anybody with a lighter?

BILL MAHER: Someday somebody’s going to explain.

LARA TRUMP: Is this a sign you should stop smoking, though? No.

BILL MAHER: No, definitely not. Bite your tongue. Oh, my Zippo lighters, they’re so cool. And they never work unless I’m lucky.

LARA TRUMP: It could be a MAHA moment for you. Maybe. We want to make Bill healthy again.

BILL MAHER: I had RFK there too.

LARA TRUMP: See? What did he say about this smoking?

BILL MAHER: I don’t know. But at one point, he cried.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, my God.

BILL MAHER: Yeah. I think we were talking about his father’s. I mean, I wasn’t, I wasn’t trying to be Barbara Walters, but maybe you are.

LARA TRUMP: Deep down. Little did you know.

BILL MAHER: Maybe I am.

LARA TRUMP: Wow.

RFK Jr. and Health Policy

BILL MAHER: But no, he was. I mean, you know, I like Bobby. It’s another one. Where can I go along with all of it? No, of course not. Because some of it’s whack.

LARA TRUMP: But what do you not like that he’s doing well?

BILL MAHER: I mean, I’m someone who, again, has been a, for many years, way before you people got on the scene of being an anti people. An anti-vaxxer.

LARA TRUMP: Oh.

BILL MAHER: Even though—

LARA TRUMP: Were you accused of that?

BILL MAHER: Before a lot of this shit came along? That’s, that was their main thing against me.

LARA TRUMP: Really?

BILL MAHER: Yes. And I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I just said I would never get a flu shot because first of all, the flu is always shifting. That’s correct.

LARA TRUMP: You don’t even know what strain is out there. Neither do the people who manufacture the vaccine.

BILL MAHER: You’re getting the strain from the last one.

LARA TRUMP: Correct.

BILL MAHER: So it’s not. And I remember I got a flu shot once and immediately got the flu.

LARA TRUMP: I feel like everyone tells me that my mom told me that my mom was a nurse for forever, and she told me years ago, she was like, I don’t, I don’t, just don’t get the flu shot anymore because every time I’ve ever gotten it, I get the flu immediately after it.

BILL MAHER: Also, I believe that I should have to be, have the right to choose. I shouldn’t, this, the coercion that went on during COVID I was not down with that.

LARA TRUMP: Terrible.

BILL MAHER: Okay, so you can see why the left is very skeptical of me on that issue. I’m still not where RFK is. And where is he? I don’t know, because he’ll say one thing and then I’m like, look, I’m reading it out of your book. You know, like, do you say to him, you said, you know, all vaccines, you’re against all vaccines. That’s what you think? I said? Yeah, you wrote it. You know what I mean?

LARA TRUMP: But he, you know, but he can have his opinion. And then there’s, there’s public policy as well. And I think that for, for so many people who like look at the people who lost their jobs because they didn’t get the COVID vaccine, all the problems it caused, right there, there should be a space where we understand that you are not going to be forced into anything and you can decide for yourself.

And I think a lot of parents feel very strongly about that as well. But look, whether you’re talking about like the root causes of autism or the fact that he’s, he’s bringing transparency to a space like our food supply, I agree. I mean, oh my God, what are we feeding our kids? What are we eating out there?

BILL MAHER: I’ve been much more supportive of him than most, certainly from the liberal side.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Because I am on the page and have been for a very long time of much more holistic medicine than western medicine. I’ve been very critical of western medicine. I remember having Howard Dean. Do you remember him?

LARA TRUMP: Of course.

BILL MAHER: Okay. I remember having him.

LARA TRUMP: The shout that lost him, the whole—

BILL MAHER: Thing was that the stupidest was that.

LARA TRUMP: That’s exactly where my mind went.

BILL MAHER: That’s what I remember. That’s like the moment. You’re right.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: But I remember arguing with him about the, the pharmaceutical food industrial complex in this country and why we’re really sick. And so I’ve been on Bobby’s page.

LARA TRUMP: Okay. I like that.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, I like it too.

LARA TRUMP: So what are you doing? What do you do in your life?

BILL MAHER: But he’s also said things that I think are just crazy. I mean, he just goes to crazy places. I don’t think your father-in-law agrees with him on everything.

LARA TRUMP: Well, he doesn’t agree with anybody on everything. No two people think exactly alike. Right? Yeah. I think that there, it’s such a unique moment though, where we are actually seeing people who have the only skin they have in the game is for the American people.

I really feel like whether you’re talking about Bobby Kennedy, whether you’re talking about Donald Trump, they want transparency in a lot of these places where it feels like for a long time no one did, you know, the pharmaceutical industry and all of these people giving money and kickbacks and this, that and the other to essentially keep us sick instead of getting us more healthy.

BILL MAHER: I’m sorry, but I have, I can’t let this go ahead, do it. Oh, I’m going to.

LARA TRUMP: What do you want to have?

BILL MAHER: I’m going to.

LARA TRUMP: Yes.

The Crypto Controversy

BILL MAHER: You know, always with respect, but to be talking about always American people and no, I mean, the Trump family has gotten really rich this first year in the White House.

LARA TRUMP: And why is that?

BILL MAHER: Well, a lot of people would say because they’re doing things that people are not supposed to be in government who are in government doing. Like starting a crypto company where people can funnel money and we don’t know how it comes. I mean, it does look a lot like influence peddling. It really does. And their net worth has gone up a lot.

LARA TRUMP: You want to know why my family got into cryptocurrency? It was because we were debanked. Because whenever you take the ability away from people to utilize a bank in the way that has been done in perpetuity…

BILL MAHER: No bank would take your money?

LARA TRUMP: Well, look at what they did to the Trump Organization. Look what they did to my father-in-law. You know, my husband Eric runs the Trump Organization and pretty much overnight he had banks say, “You know what, we are unfortunately not going to be able to do business with you anymore.” These are banks that had been with the company for decades.

You are talking about thousands of employees who need a paycheck. You’re talking about utilities, you’re talking about buildings. The whole scope of things comes out of a bank and all of a sudden overnight you have to transfer all of that.

Eric and I, when we got our house in Florida, were basically told, “Yeah, we approved your mortgage. Oh, wait, we changed our mind. We’re not going to give you a mortgage.” The things that happened to our family were really outrageous.

BILL MAHER: And you couldn’t get a mortgage in 2021?

LARA TRUMP: Well, we had a mortgage and then all of a sudden it was denied.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, in Florida?

LARA TRUMP: Well, we were buying a house in Florida, but it was a big bank. If you read my husband’s book, “Under Siege,” this is one of the reasons he wrote this book. But it was moment after moment like that.

And we had a lot of friends who were starting to invest in the crypto space. Cryptocurrency is something that a lot of people like because you can’t be debanked because the government doesn’t have any ability to say, “You know what, we’re not going to allow you to get your money out.” It is basically autonomy for your money.

And so my husband started really investigating and getting into the crypto space. And that’s why our family got into it. It has absolutely nothing to do… And what person in government in our family has enriched themselves based off of this? The only people who are doing it are my husband and my mom.

BILL MAHER: And they made millions on crypto coins.

LARA TRUMP: They’ve made a lot of money for themselves. But my father-in-law introduced a couple coins. But I don’t know the specifics on coins. I can tell you the company that my husband and brother-in-law are involved in has absolutely nothing to do with the federal government.

BILL MAHER: Well, I mean, but people…

LARA TRUMP: I’m sure love to say that though.

Allegations of Favoritism

BILL MAHER: Well, and do reports on it. I mean, 60 Minutes did it last week about a pardon that was given to the Binance. Is that the guy, the Chinese gentleman? You must have seen this story. It does look, excuse me, like this administration more than any. Look, none of them are perfect.

LARA TRUMP: More than any?

BILL MAHER: Wait, wait, I haven’t said of what yet. More than any in this regard. Not that other administrations don’t have their soft spot for people who are loyal to them. This more than any I’ve ever seen and I’ve been covering this quite a long time looks like you get one treatment if you’re a friend of the president and one treatment if you don’t.

I mean, to go after someone for checking the wrong box on the mortgage application. I’m sure that there are people who are Republicans, good Republicans who have, if you went through their mortgage applications for the last 40 years, you would find a lot of them who checked the wrong box. The one that said, “Oh, you know what, I have two houses and I listed them both as a primary residence,” which everybody does, but they don’t go after those people. You see what I’m saying?

LARA TRUMP: Who are you referring to in this one?

BILL MAHER: Well, he’s going after two people now. We just found out this week. And I don’t even like this guy. Congressman Eric Swalwell had him on the show. I thought, wow, this guy is just way too hungry. Thirsty. I think the kids say thirsty.

LARA TRUMP: The kids do say thirsty.

BILL MAHER: He’s thirsty. And just too, I mean, too left for me. California and so did I cry crocodile tears? No. But he and Letitia James, I think in New York, I mean we’re talking about checking the wrong box on a… If you’re going to do that, let’s go through everybody’s mortgage because I think you’ll find some people on your side who might have done that.

LARA TRUMP: Well, I can promise you this. Our family has been scrutinized, attacked, under a microscope, I would probably argue more than any family.

BILL MAHER: Well, of course, because your father-in-law is the president.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, but it’s not just that he’s the president, that he’s Donald Trump as the president. I mean they’ve gone after all of us in an aggressive way. They will go after everybody in an aggressive way.

BILL MAHER: You know, they didn’t go after Obama and Clinton in an aggressive way.

LARA TRUMP: Not like this though.

BILL MAHER: Oh please. Really?

LARA TRUMP: When did you see Clinton, Obama and Clinton’s residences, personal, private property raided by the FBI? When did they have indictments against them to put them in jail for the rest of their life? Everybody can agree were a little outrageous, Bill. Really?

BILL MAHER: I agree, don’t go into somebody’s bathroom. But also you shouldn’t probably be keeping files in your bathroom. But yes, that was over the top.

LARA TRUMP: It was a little over the top.

The 11,000 Votes Phone Call

BILL MAHER: Over the top, yeah. But if you’re asking why they didn’t go after Obama and Clinton for certain things, because Clinton and Obama never got on the phone and said, “I need you to find me 11,000 votes.” That is as close to a smoking gun as I can imagine or something that I would say, wait a second.

I do agree we should give presidents broad latitude. We don’t want to become those South American countries where you’re just always putting the last guy in jail. I agree, but that one, come on, you just can’t do that. You just can’t call up a state after an election’s over and say, “Look, you got to find me…” You can’t find votes. We vote, we tabulate them, we count them and then no one…

LARA TRUMP: Knows this better than I do because I was the co-chair of the RNC and I worked really hard on election integrity last year, Bill. I’ll say that. What did you think of Tulsi Gabbard’s report that came out about what Obama did, though, after the 2016 election?

BILL MAHER: What did he do? Oh, I know, yeah, yeah. He investigated.

The Russia Investigation

LARA TRUMP: He essentially made sure that Donald Trump was not only spied on, but also encouraged the Russia collusion hoax, which is written in textbooks around this country, that the reason that Donald Trump won the 2016 election was because Russia helped him win. Russia colluded with the Trump campaign.

Do you know the saddest part of all of that? To me, having worked as hard as we all did in that election and campaign, none of us knew anything about politics. We came in very green, very naive. There were so many staffers, people who really just believed in the cause, who were so hurt, had their lives destroyed because they had to lawyer up. They had to protect themselves and fight back and defend themselves from something that never even happened.

And those are real problems as well. And unfortunately, there really hasn’t been any sort of accountability for any of that. But it really tore our country apart. It really put a stain on so much of the first administration.

BILL MAHER: Yes. But again, it’s not like there wasn’t smoke there that would make people think maybe we should investigate if there’s a fire. I mean, I think it was your own husband who at one point said, “We get most of our financing from Russia.” It was either him or Don Jr. said that. There was a… It’s a quote from them.

LARA TRUMP: From the company. No, no one for the company or for the campaign.

BILL MAHER: This is before. This is back. They said this back in the early part of the century. You were never familiar with that? “We get most of our financing from Russia.”

LARA TRUMP: So when you’re talking about a company. But what happened during the campaign that made you think that there was some sort of collusion with Russia?

BILL MAHER: He said publicly, “Russia, if you’re listening.” I mean, you know, he said it out loud. I heard it. And then Russia did something the next day. They hacked the emails the next day. I mean, it was, you know, certainly… You’re right. It divided this country in a way that we’re never going to recover from.

LARA TRUMP: I mean, we were afraid to hang out with people we knew who were Russian because we’re like, did we collude with Russia? We didn’t even know it.

BILL MAHER: He said one of his first press conferences, “I don’t know anybody from Russia.” And then there’s, you knew everybody from Russia. “We’ve never had any meetings.” Turned out everybody had meetings with Russians. Everybody had meetings with Russia.

LARA TRUMP: But it also turned out that Hillary Clinton in an email also was very happy to have the FBI just kind of sprinkle some crumbs out to make it look like Donald Trump and the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. That’s also a problem.

BILL MAHER: Well, that’s politics. Of course you’re going to take… If a guy actually says out loud, “Russia, if you’re listening, please help me,” then you’re going to use that in the campaign. I don’t think that should be a big surprise.

The Mueller Report and Russia Collusion

LARA TRUMP: Tens of millions of dollars in the Mueller report later, and we know that Donald Trump and our campaign did not collude with Russia. Yet that was—

BILL MAHER: Well, that’s not exactly what the Mueller report said. They did not say that word. But he didn’t. Mueller made it, went out of his way to say, “I’m not, he’s innocent. I’m just saying I can’t prove it and I’m not going to. I wouldn’t take this case forward.” And that’s a lot because Mueller was sort of like, they picked like the kind of over the hill guy who had lost his fastball there.

LARA TRUMP: That could be true. But I can tell you with 100% certainty, Bill, there was zero collusion with Russia. We worked our asses off on that campaign. And when I tell you—

BILL MAHER: Well, both things could be true. You could have worked your asses off and there could have been. Listen, but Putin said he wanted—

LARA TRUMP: Oh, my God. He didn’t.

BILL MAHER: He said he wanted him to win. They asked him.

LARA TRUMP: No, that doesn’t mean we colluded with him. No, a lot of people—

BILL MAHER: That doesn’t mean you all met in a room and twirled your mustaches and flipped your black cape. It just means that some people know they have common interests. I mean, we do know that there were lots of Russians who were purposely putting stuff on the Internet that weren’t directly pro Trump always. They were just designed to foment anger in America.

They were just things to get people fighting because they knew that the more we had this impression that things were falling apart, it was probably going to be better for the insurgent candidate, by the way.

Foreign Interference and American Unity

LARA TRUMP: You know who else does that is China. They love to tear this country apart. They love to see us at each other’s throats, just in general. But that’s to enrich themselves. That’s to benefit China so they can usurp us as the power of the world.

BILL MAHER: One thing we totally agree on is I love America.

LARA TRUMP: Amen.

BILL MAHER: That’s my team.

LARA TRUMP: That’s my team, too.

BILL MAHER: I know. Yeah, I know.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And I don’t give any quarter to the leftists who just constantly downgrade America. It’s another reason why they hate me. I mean, this is what I said to them in your frontal, in the text. It’s like, you know, if I’m so captured by the lunatic left, why did they hate me too?

LARA TRUMP: God, does everyone hate you, Bill?

BILL MAHER: Everyone is not fair. Yes, exactly.

LARA TRUMP: You’re all right.

BILL MAHER: That’s how you know you’re doing the right thing.

LARA TRUMP: Maybe that’s true.

BILL MAHER: Maybe that’s true when they both have an issue with you.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: That’s also why the people who like me like me a lot.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

Media Bias and Independent Journalism

BILL MAHER: From both sides. And the people in the middle who just have had enough of people in their bubbles. You know, I find it very frustrating that I cannot get the full story anywhere in the old media. It’s very—I mean, I love the new free press. My girl, Bari Weiss has started that now she runs CBS. And, you know, you’re seeing a change there that’s more positive.

I mean, I’ve been very tough on the media. And do you like the biases? Isn’t—I cry no tears. We’re losing NPR and people.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah. Don’t cry any tears over that.

BILL MAHER: I don’t.

LARA TRUMP: No. I think that’s probably better.

BILL MAHER: I don’t know why you need the Kennedy Center.

LARA TRUMP: Do you like the independent journalists in the press room?

BILL MAHER: What does that mean? That means—

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, in the White House press room. Well, not mine, but, you know, maybe one day, Bill, we’ll all keep the Trump train running. Everyone would like that.

Political Ambitions and Family Priorities

BILL MAHER: Well, I know you were a very serious—you could have run for governor in North Carolina. Right.

LARA TRUMP: I was considering to run for Senate in North Carolina or Florida.

BILL MAHER: Right.

LARA TRUMP: Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio’s seat.

BILL MAHER: So why did you say, why did you deter?

LARA TRUMP: I got to be honest, it was one of the hardest decisions of my life. And it’s funny because my father-in-law told me after I decided—our family ultimately moved to Florida instead of North Carolina. We left, we made our home base Florida instead of New York in 2021, when I told you about the mortgage situation, and it was just a better fit for us. So, you know, we weren’t going to live in North Carolina.

And I said, this is not the time for that. And then Marco’s seat came up and I took it very seriously. I had many conversations with him and he was incredibly generous with his time and to explain everything to me and encourage me. And my father-in-law is the one who said to me, he was like, “You know, you’re the only person who could have walked into a Senate seat and the only person to turn it down.”

And I was like, “Oh, well, maybe there’ll be another chance, honey.” “There’ll never be another chance. That’s it. You’re done.” And then Marco Rubio’s seat came up and I was like, a lot of people were really, you know, heavily pushing me in that direction. And I mean, it would have been amazing. And I’ve never had a harder decision than that.

Or, you know, at the same time, I was in talks with Fox to have a show there and I ultimately decided because my kids are so young. Yeah, they were at the time 5 and 7. They’re now 6 and 8. And you know, they still want to hang out with me.

BILL MAHER: Yeah.

LARA TRUMP: And you don’t get all that, that much time with your kids. I think they say 80% of the time you spend with your children is up until they’re 16. And then after that, it’s basically that’s the 20% is after that and beyond. So they’re still in an age where they want to be around me. I think, you know, there’s no more important role I’ll ever have than that of mom. And so I ultimately decided because of my kids that this wasn’t the time for it.

BILL MAHER: Well, also, you know, apropos of our discussion a few minutes ago, no matter who you are, if you run—oh, you are volunteering to go through a gauntlet on both sides. They do it on, do it on both sides.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, look, Trump impression. I like that. That’s great. No, you’re right.

BILL MAHER: They do.

LARA TRUMP: You’re right.

BILL MAHER: You are. You were just, I mean, you saw what Michelle Obama said this week.

Michelle Obama and Women in Politics

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, I don’t totally agree with that.

BILL MAHER: I think America, I completely disagree with the president. Yeah, she’s—if people don’t know and we’re going to talk about, on my show Friday, I think, I mean, she said, you know, “Don’t even ask me to run for president because we’re not ready for it and we prove that and the country needs to grow up.”

And that is not my take on this. My take on this is—well, first of all, it’s not a scientific fact that the two women who the Democrats ran lost because they’re women, which is exactly what the premise of your comment is. We ran women and they didn’t win. Well, first of all, Hillary did win the popular vote.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, she did. But she didn’t become president.

BILL MAHER: I understand. Yeah, I understand. He pulled an inside straight and you can’t—he’s the luckiest alive. Okay. But he won fair and square. That’s our, that’s our system. But this idea that, you know, we just a priori say, “Well, they were women, they didn’t win, so we’re not ready for a woman.”

I mean, I remember, excuse me, when a lot of people said we weren’t ready for a black president and somebody—I can’t remember who it was. Maybe Michelle could help me with that escaping me.

LARA TRUMP: Maybe Michelle Obama knows.

BILL MAHER: Maybe she knows could. You know, a guy said, “That’s what people say. And I’m going to prove them wrong. I’m going to be the guy that America does say.” Oh, yeah. So I do think there could be a woman President. 100%. Yes, I do.

LARA TRUMP: And I actually, as a woman, I hate the idea that anything is centered around being a woman. What I would love is for a woman to run for president and literally, Bill, never talk about the fact that she’s a woman because guess what? Who cares? You either have ideas and policies that matter and that are going to be effective and you prove that you’re a good leader and people are going to vote for you. But to say the problem, I think—

Gender and Cultural Attitudes

BILL MAHER: Well, that’s a nice theory in fairyland, but in reality, people are tribal and they certainly—I mean, look, Michelle Obama was not right to say that. But it’s also true that I’m not going to name names, but there are certain cultures, shall we say, that are still quite macho. Shall we say that?

LARA TRUMP: May you. Shall you can.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, okay, sure. I mean, you know, the dude is visiting the White House this week. I mean, the women there are not—we would not call them in our society equal citizens.

LARA TRUMP: I also don’t—

BILL MAHER: Their view of women is quite different.

LARA TRUMP: Correct. The good news is we live in America.

BILL MAHER: Yes, we do. But not everyone who does live in America—there are still a lot of knuckle draggers.

LARA TRUMP: That’s true.

BILL MAHER: Who—and I’m not just talking about the MAGA white people crowd. Wink, wink. There’s lots of—when it comes to macho and not thinking women should be president and I mean, there’s lots of cultures. I’m not naming names.

LARA TRUMP: I agree with you.

BILL MAHER: But they run the gamut, shall we say?

LARA TRUMP: But I don’t think—I still don’t think that it is—I think we are at a time in our country where people, people are ready for that.

BILL MAHER: One of the things we have to correct in America is people should not have to feel bad about living in any part of the country where their politics isn’t a majority. And that works both ways.

LARA TRUMP: I agree.

The Snobby Liberal Problem

BILL MAHER: Like, you didn’t feel comfortable there and that’s wrong. And look, I never stop ragging on liberals and woke people, not liberals. I’m a liberal. These people are different for just being f*ing snobs. This is the “I won’t eat with you at Thanksgiving” people. This is the no contact thing.

But, you know, lots of liberals wouldn’t be comfortable at a NASCAR rally either. I mean, there are places where. Yeah, but I will say, and this is something I’m going to say Friday night, the liberals are worse about this. I will admit it. And we have to look in the mirror on that one. We are just worse at the snobby thing at the “I don’t know any conservatives who don’t at least talk” right. You know. Now maybe that’s because you won. Maybe that’s because it’s easy.

LARA TRUMP: There was a time where we didn’t.

BILL MAHER: And you still came.

LARA TRUMP: It’s growth. There was a time we did.

BILL MAHER: They’re happy warriors. I remember that term when I was a kid. Like, that was somebody who was like. And that’s what Republicans usually are. They’re happy warriors. They come there, they. And I, you see, I don’t pull my punches. They take their shots like a man.

Dean Phillips at a Trump Rally

LARA TRUMP: Yeah. You know, did you ever see Dean Phillips talk about going to a Trump rally?

BILL MAHER: Dean Phillips? You mean the guy who challenged Obama?

LARA TRUMP: The. Dean Phillips is the guy who tried to primary Joe Biden challenge.

BILL MAHER: Yeah. Right.

LARA TRUMP: He wanted to run.

BILL MAHER: Yeah.

LARA TRUMP: In 20 this past election.

BILL MAHER: He runs my pot store now.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, fantastic.

BILL MAHER: Can you believe that?

LARA TRUMP: I love that.

BILL MAHER: Small world.

LARA TRUMP: So he was trying to run, you know, as a Democrat for president in 2024. And he was out doing some sort of campaign stop and he says right across the street there was a Trump rally. He’s like, “You know what? I’m just going to go over and check this out.”

And he went over and he said, “You know what? It was very different than I anticipated. I told people who I was. I told people I was a Democrat. And people were like, well, come on in and check it out.”

And he said it was actually so different than anticipated because it’s advertised as some sort of a good old boys angry group of people who. “You don’t come in here. No, we don’t like your kind.” That’s not at all what it is. And I think you’re right. I think, generally speaking, I think conservatives try to be more open and, you know, just generally more open, which is.

BILL MAHER: I heard they were serving escargot at that rally.

LARA TRUMP: I don’t think so.

BILL MAHER: No, not that far.

LARA TRUMP: Not that one.

BILL MAHER: Not that far.

LARA TRUMP: No.

BILL MAHER: But still. Yeah. No, I mean, again, it’s a lot easier to be magnanimous when you control everything.

Bridging the Divide

LARA TRUMP: Well, but can I ask you, what do you think we do to get the people who are the no contact people?

BILL MAHER: Great question. That’s it.

LARA TRUMP: Because to me, it almost should be that we have to have someone in a leadership position to kind of start directing this.

BILL MAHER: Here’s what.

LARA TRUMP: My husband was just calling me. Oh, sorry.

BILL MAHER: It’s okay.

LARA TRUMP: I’ll call him back.

BILL MAHER: It’s not the Secret Service.

LARA TRUMP: We’re fine. Okay, I’ll call him back. Eric Trump.

BILL MAHER: I’ll call you back. You have to go.

LARA TRUMP: No, I’m good.

BILL MAHER: You’re good?

LARA TRUMP: I’m good.

BILL MAHER: I’m enjoying it. I would love to.

LARA TRUMP: I would love to hear what your, what you think. Okay.

BILL MAHER: And I got a great, a great answer for you.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Don’t do things like call a woman piggy.

LARA TRUMP: Do we know that happened?

BILL MAHER: I saw it on tape.

LARA TRUMP: Or did you say McGee? Here’s also, by the way, but Donald Trump is an equal opportunity offender. He also said that he gave Netanyahu a lot of crap whenever he thought that he wasn’t doing things right. He said he doesn’t know what the.

BILL MAHER: He has to do with piggies.

LARA TRUMP: I’m just saying, in general. He also. How about Joe Biden called somebody a line, a pony face, dog soldier or whatever. Dog face, pony soldier, whatever he said. It goes both ways.

BILL MAHER: I’m just saying a personal level.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Here I am working on this editorial for Friday all about how it’s mostly liberals and then who have to, like, get over yourselves.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Eat with your family. Even the ones who are Trump voters. Okay.

LARA TRUMP: Even. Even the Trump voters.

Being an Adult About Politics

BILL MAHER: Even the Trump voters. It just makes my job more difficult when during this week he says to a woman, “piggy.” I mean, even you must admit this is just not cool. Not necessary.

And look, I’m still going to do it, and I’m going to say yes, because you know what? Adults do. Adults understand that people are going to do certain things that we really hate. And you think you’re a better person than me because you hate him more for calling the woman piggy. I hate it, too. Okay?

But I’m an adult and I understand people have their flaws. And he’s the President of the United States. You can’t not talk to him. There are certain people you just have to talk to your spouse after you have a bad fight. Yeah, who hasn’t? I have never been married, but I’ve been in serious relationships. I know the feeling after a really bad fight where you’re like, “I just don’t want to talk to you.”

But you don’t. And your boss, who you hate, and your relatives at Thanksgiving and the President of the United States, there are people you just have to talk to. And not talking and going no contact doesn’t make you a purist. It makes you a brat.

LARA TRUMP: I agree with that.

BILL MAHER: Even when he says piggy, but does he have to do that?

LARA TRUMP: Get in there and say something. Oh my God, Bill, let me tell you something. I know, I know this will be just a crazy thing to say, but Donald Trump is not perfect. There’s. I know, oh my God. He’s not perfect, but he does a lot of things that I think are great. And I think that overall you got to take some of the good with the bad.

BILL MAHER: I mean, we’re kind of saying the same thing. Yeah, well, you certainly can’t just cut people off. I mean, Biden tried to cut off the guy who’s at the White House now. And what happened one year later, this bump. Because you can’t cut off Saudi Arabia either.

I understand why he wanted to cut him off. Because that guy cut off a guy’s head. So it was like, “You know what? That’s not cool. We’re not going to talk to you.” Except, oh, wait, you have the oil and you’re the counterweight to Iran. We have to talk to you.

You have to talk to people. I know it would be great to be able to live in your bubble. And you know, that’s one of our society’s big problems too, is that people are too isolated on their phones.

Raising Kids Without Screens

LARA TRUMP: Oh my God, I freaking hate it.

BILL MAHER: Your kids have phoned you?

LARA TRUMP: Absolutely not. And can I tell you something that amazing that happened. My kids are little. They’re 6 and 8. Hell no.

BILL MAHER: 6 and 8 year olds have phones.

LARA TRUMP: Not mine. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell.

BILL MAHER: You they do here.

LARA TRUMP: Well, I think it’s nuts. I hate these things in so many different ways. And I think they’re horrible. They’re a necessity this day and age. I get it.

But Eric and I, we have like one iPad in our house and we would let our kids, if they got their homework done, were done with sports at the end of day, all the things. We get 15 minutes on the iPad a day. And about two and a half or three months ago now, our son got in trouble and we were like, “Guess what? You both lost the iPad. And we’re taking it away for two weeks.”

And we noticed in those two weeks that there was like a very positive change in both of our kids. And so Eric and I were like, “We’re just never giving the iPad back.”

BILL MAHER: Great.

LARA TRUMP: Do you know what my kids do? They read books. I swear to you, that’s awesome. It is the craziest thing. I mean, Florida lends itself, and I’m sure California is the same way, to a lifestyle that is very outdoor based. And my kids are always moving and always doing things, but when they get free time, when I flew with them, you know, we went to New York last weekend. That’s what they did. They brought a book.

BILL MAHER: When they get old enough, they should read the book I had out last year. Oh, yeah.

LARA TRUMP: Do you like.

BILL MAHER: You’d like it too.

LARA TRUMP: Would I?

BILL MAHER: Yeah. I mean, you’d especially like half of it.

LARA TRUMP: Okay.

BILL MAHER: But it’s fair and it’s funny.

LARA TRUMP: All right.

BILL MAHER: And you, you know, you would. I’ll give it to you before we leave.

LARA TRUMP: I love it.

The Crisis of Modern Childhood

BILL MAHER: Yeah. Because, you know, kids, I think they want to be challenged more than they are 100%. I mean, it’s not just the. It’s easy to blame the. And that certainly plays a big part, but it’s also just the attitude of parents. I mean, my parents just didn’t do it this way.

I mean, I had Scott Galloway on last week, who is the guy who more than anybody has been identifying that the people in crisis the most. Not that women aren’t suffering too, but are men and boys are totally in crisis. And one reason is because they’re isolated, you know, and, you know, that comes as much from the technology, I think, as from parents just indulging them too much and pussifying the kids.

I mean, I was a free, totally a free range child. I mean, I used to talk about in my act how like I would come home from school at 3 o’clock, I would fly up to my room, get into my play clothes, fly out the door. And my mother never once said, “Where are you going?”

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Because I would be like, “Where am I going? What the f* is it to you?”

LARA TRUMP: Going out to play? I’m in the play club.

BILL MAHER: I’ll do whatever I do between three and six. And you do whatever you do. What were you doing? I was playing. I was going out.

LARA TRUMP: You were out and about.

BILL MAHER: I was going near the crick.

LARA TRUMP: See, but that’s what kids are supposed to play.

BILL MAHER: I was playing soldier. I was collecting acorns. Yes, I was throwing acorns.

LARA TRUMP: I love that. I would love for more, more kids to give back to that. And that’s something else that my kids do. Eric and I also never let them, when we would go out to dinner, have any sort of a phone, like. And they would, they’d ask us, “Can we have your phones?”

Because you go to a restaurant today, look around at all the parents who have their kids on these phones. Let me tell you, yes, it takes a lot more effort to be a parent than to hand them this thing. Be a parent and tell your kid no.

And you know what my kids do? They’ll bring a football and they’ll go out behind the restaurant and they’ll throw the football around or they’ll draw or they’ll play something. They do make believe in the corner. They figure out stuff to do because that’s what kids do.

It’s actually horrifying to me to think about what this upcoming generation of kids is going to be like because the studies show you that their brain is damaged in so many different ways from what they’re watching, from the dopamine and all the receptors in their mind flooding them whenever they watch these videos on YouTube and do all this crap on these phones. It’s terrible for them.

The Parking Lot Story

BILL MAHER: I told this story once on my show and it’s the kind of thing that has made the woke hate me and your side like me because I just keep it real about this sh*t. I keep it real about this. But it’s a true story.

LARA TRUMP: Okay?

BILL MAHER: I was in a parking lot, like, you know, like at Whole Foods or something. And there was this, I just saw this. I was parked at Caddy corner to where this was happening. And this is, this mother was being yelled at by her, like 4-year-old was just screaming at the mother and the mother was apologizing to the kid.

And the guy, you know, and I’m watching this and the guy is watching this and you know, he, the car that they were in front of had a Hillary bumper sticker on it. And he, and he looked at me and he went, “that’s why I can’t vote for these people.”

And I was like, you know, politics is not all about policy. It’s about, people are not that hip to the actual minutiae of policy very often.

LARA TRUMP: That’s true.

BILL MAHER: It’s just like, it’s a feeling.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And the feeling was, I mean, it just encapsulated a lot to me why the Democrats keep losing to a guy who, as you say, is not exactly perfect.

LARA TRUMP: Not perfect all the time. No, no, no.

BILL MAHER: And just like I can’t let these type, I know exactly what he meant. Yeah. All of it. All of this anti-common sense. I never.

LARA TRUMP: Problem.

BILL MAHER: I never met an idea that was, that was counterintuitive that I didn’t love.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: You know, there you go. Here, this doesn’t really make sense. What do you think of it?

LARA TRUMP: Yeah. Let’s put this as our platform.

BILL MAHER: Hamas is the good guys.

LARA TRUMP: There you go. Who wouldn’t want to.

BILL MAHER: Men can have babies.

LARA TRUMP: Let’s do it. Yes. Let’s be for criminals. Let’s do it.

BILL MAHER: Well, that’s more complicated.

LARA TRUMP: Well, let’s be for criminals.

Immigration Enforcement Debate

BILL MAHER: By the way, that’s one of the reasons the natives are restless on your side, even your people, because they voted for, let’s get the criminals out of the country. And what they got was no, let’s, let’s find people who’ve been working here for 10 years and go to Home Depot and get them. That’s, we don’t like that. So what I’ll say if I don’t get invited back? You tell them people don’t like that.

LARA TRUMP: I think you’d be invited back.

BILL MAHER: I hope so. I would go back in a minute.

LARA TRUMP: Well, I think you’ll get the invite back.

BILL MAHER: My point tomorrow, Friday night, is that we need more people like me.

LARA TRUMP: Yes, I agree.

BILL MAHER: And the thing is he would do it. It’s they who will do it.

LARA TRUMP: That’s right.

BILL MAHER: He likes conversation.

LARA TRUMP: Yes.

BILL MAHER: He was glad, I think that night to have someone who wasn’t just an ass kisser.

LARA TRUMP: He listen. Donald Trump asks opinions of everyone around him.

BILL MAHER: Right.

LARA TRUMP: And he’s always listening. He’s always open to whatever people have to say. But to go back to what you just said there, I hear it and there’s nothing that feels good about seeing people who had good intentions, generally speaking, leaving our country in this manner.

However, we either have rules or we don’t. We either have laws or we don’t. And I think what the goal has been of this administration, and they’ve said it too, is that they are targeting the worst of the worst. They are targeting the gang members, the criminals, the drug dealers, the human traffickers, which, by the way, 300,000 children went missing under Joe Biden’s tenure as president coming over that southern border. Do you know this?

This administration and the ICE agents out there have found 25,000 of these kids and had them, most of them reunited with their families. There is good coming out of this, but you have been people who think that there’s some easy fix to this or wrong. And it’s very unfortunate.

We should have had the laws enforced. You can’t just come here illegally. And whenever they’re doing these raids and they’re getting the bad guys, sometimes, yes, there are other people who are collateral damage. And I’m not saying they’re bad people, but they did break the law to come here. And unfortunately, we either have rules or we don’t.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, that’s not the way to handle it. I mean, even that’s unfortunately.

LARA TRUMP: I mean, it’s the nature of the beast, though. Joe Biden let tens of millions of people come over this, the border illegally, and somebody has to be the bad guy to get him out.

BILL MAHER: And no one is defending that. Yeah, but once it happened, once it was a fait accompli, especially people who have been here for a long time. And again, even people on your side don’t love this, this tackling people at their workplaces and the idea that Americans would take these jobs. First of all, that’s not true. So it’s going to hurt the economy.

But also you could just say, and look, even Bernie Sanders and Pritzker in Illinois have given Trump credit for, Bernie said, look, he did it, he closed the border. We always said it needed congressional approval and it didn’t. It can be done.

But you know what? Obama deported a lot of people too. He just didn’t do it by being an asshole, by being a thug, by being, by being masked, by tackling people, by being cruel in a way that not sending them to other countries to like, basically consign them to this kind of hell of the worst kind of prisons in the world.

Yes, maybe you shouldn’t be in this country if you don’t belong in this country legally, but you also shouldn’t get that as the punishment. So we just went, it’s like everything goes too far. Doge went too far.

DOGE and Government Efficiency

LARA TRUMP: Doge go too far. You didn’t like Doge. You didn’t like cutting the fat off the federal government. What did you like?

BILL MAHER: I do like cutting the fat off the federal, but not the way they did it. Just by, come on, man. I mean, there were people who died who did not have to. They were getting aid. They just cut it off, like immediately. They let food rot rather than have it go out to people because that would, I mean, it was just so unnecessary and it was so unthoughtful.

You could have, like, done a very careful study as soon as you got into office. It took months. It would take months. It is the federal government. And found out where the fat was, which has been done by other administrations, and then went about cutting that where it, no, that’s not what they did. I’ve got a chainsaw. I’ve got a sledgehammer. Let’s just break sh*t.

LARA TRUMP: Well, some, sometimes I will say this. You’re never going to please everybody and you’re never going to do something where everybody says, this is fantastic because that’s the nature of all of it. Right. However, this is a president who does look at things differently. And you can criticize things like that, but you also have to acknowledge so much of the good I think that has been done by him as well. The fact that he was criticized initially over the Middle East. Okay, well, wait. The tariffs, everybody.

BILL MAHER: And I gave him, this is endless credit for that.

Tariffs as Leverage

LARA TRUMP: Okay, so the tariffs not only have brought in almost $200 billion of money into our country, but I think around $195 million. But they have also been leveraged in order to get trade agreements.

BILL MAHER: That’s why he’s giving out a $2,000 tariff check, which they said will cost more.

LARA TRUMP: We have eight wars around the world that have been settled. And whether we’re talking about India or Pakistan, we’re talking about Cambodia and Thailand, they say the reason that we decided to settle these skirmishes and these conflicts was because of the tariffs.

BILL MAHER: Yes.

LARA TRUMP: And we have trade agreements because of the tariffs.

BILL MAHER: I talked about that on my show recently.

LARA TRUMP: So you have to acknowledge that he has been able to do some miraculous things because the way he goes about things and because his mind works very differently, I think, than anyone else we’ve ever had as president. There’s no doubt about it.

BILL MAHER: There is truth to that. There’s also truth that I said this. Tariffs work as a cudgel. He has used them as a cudgel. Okay. But he’s also using them illegally. It’s very plain that Congress is, who gets to decide about tariffs. It is a tax. Okay, so he is taking a.

LARA TRUMP: The Supreme Court is going to decide on that.

BILL MAHER: Yes, they are. And I don’t think they’re going to decide your way.

LARA TRUMP: Interesting.

BILL MAHER: I don’t. Well, we’ll see.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, we’ll see.

BILL MAHER: We’ll see what happens. We’ll.

LARA TRUMP: We’ll see. I don’t know. Could go either way. We’ll see what happens.

BILL MAHER: I always love when he says that. I mean, he does say things all the time, which, like, sometimes unintentionally, but, like, like, this guy is not boring.

LARA TRUMP: No. My God, he’s the greatest. It’s so fun. I think it’s so fun. I love it. I’m just happy to be alive right now. Forget my proximity to Donald Trump.

BILL MAHER: You’re not in a prison in El Salvador, so it’s all.

LARA TRUMP: I also didn’t break the law and.

BILL MAHER: Bring drugs and human trafficking and, you wouldn’t have just.

LARA TRUMP: No.

BILL MAHER: Okay. Most of the people they have rounded up did not have criminal records. Most even.

LARA TRUMP: Yes. No. 80% of the people that they have rounded and deported have had criminal records. I would see 70 to 80%.

BILL MAHER: Want to bet? Sure.

LARA TRUMP: What are we betting?

BILL MAHER: Like, what, what’s super valuable to you?

LARA TRUMP: Oh, my God. I, everything. My health, my wellness. You want to go for a run? You want a better run on it?

BILL MAHER: Yeah. You’re a big wellness. Me, too.

LARA TRUMP: Are you?

BILL MAHER: Well, I’m 70.

LARA TRUMP: What are you doing?

BILL MAHER: I don’t, I don’t like, you look decrepit. Do I?

LARA TRUMP: You walked in here pretty steadily. Yeah, I feel good about where you’re going with that boy.

BILL MAHER: The bar is low.

LARA TRUMP: My earring falling off, Bill steadily.

BILL MAHER: Oh, no, we’re taking our hoops off.

LARA TRUMP: No, hoops are always staying on.

BILL MAHER: No, don’t think it’s that. People. We’re not where the hoops come off. That’s what, like, you know, Lauren Boebert’s going to be here in a minute throwing lights.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, my God. There we go. He’s back. We got him back, folks. I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to get this earring in. I got it. No, I didn’t. God.

BILL MAHER: Now, why did it, did I make that fall out? I apologize.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, no, I think you did.

BILL MAHER: That’s a, I’m a bad, I’m a bad man, Laura.

LARA TRUMP: No, I’m a bad.

BILL MAHER: Exactly.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, you’re right.

BILL MAHER: I’m all right.

LARA TRUMP: No matter what they say. I think you’re all right.

BILL MAHER: Exactly. That’s my motto.

LARA TRUMP: I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

Future Political Prospects

BILL MAHER: I assumed you knew or else you wouldn’t have come.

LARA TRUMP: No, I knew.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, you seem.

LARA TRUMP: Can I tell you, I would have come, you know, regardless, because I don’t, I’m always happy to converse with people, but you’ve been very reasonable. I think about a lot of things.

BILL MAHER: I am extremely reasonable. So even when we argue, you know I’m right about a lot of stuff. I know you can’t say it because you’re going to run for governor and president. That’s cool. You’re, by the way, you’re very good at what you are undoubtedly destined for. I mean, when the kids grow up or something. You’re right. This is the wrong time. Everything in life is timing, right?

LARA TRUMP: So it’s so important.

BILL MAHER: It’s everything.

LARA TRUMP: Look at Donald Trump. Pete Toyd was running for president since what, like 2000?

The Trump Legacy

BILL MAHER: Even before that.

LARA TRUMP: Well, he was asked about it before.

BILL MAHER: Even in the 80s.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah. Oprah asked him very famously, would you ever consider running for president? He said, only if things got so bad that I felt the country needed me and I had no other choice.

BILL MAHER: You know how long Donald Trump has been famous? Let me tell you something. I did a movie back when, in the 80s, when I was first out in Hollywood, and a young comedian doing the Tonight show. Never stopped being a comedian. But, you know, you always wanted to get on a sitcom, which I did. And I was doing movies. We have some of the stupid posters. I guess we don’t have any here where you can see, but, you know, dumb movies.

I did DC Cab and I did a movie in 1990 called Pizza Man and it had all these look-alikes from the era and the ending was Donald Trump. Donald Trump? No, a lookalike.

LARA TRUMP: Oh.

BILL MAHER: But I’m just saying, he was so famous. This is 1990.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Then in 1998, I did a pilot for Fox as a producer. My friend Jimmy and I, we invented reality television, but we f*ed it up and so somebody else got to it first. But we invented this show where it was a scene, but you got regular people to be the guest stars in the scene. Working with famous actors.

LARA TRUMP: Okay.

BILL MAHER: And one of the sketches was right after Titanic came out, and it was about the building was sinking. A building was sinking, and people are—

LARA TRUMP: Just in there and they have to deal with it.

BILL MAHER: And the owner of the building.

LARA TRUMP: Please don’t make this happen.

BILL MAHER: In the sketch, the owner of the building was Donald Dump.

LARA TRUMP: Wow.

BILL MAHER: That’s how long he’s been famous.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Sued me in 2013.

LARA TRUMP: That’s all you got in on the front end, Bill. You know what I mean? That’s great.

BILL MAHER: I’m just saying he’s been famous for a long time.

LARA TRUMP: He sure has.

BILL MAHER: And then the Apprentice era, and you know—

Life in the Trump Family

LARA TRUMP: Which is why it was really wild when I came into a family like this. And I had—I came from a very normal background, by the way. I grew up in a middle class family in North Carolina. And all of this has been very interesting to be a part of. So it’s been a ride.

And I’m still, I honestly mean this, my proximity to my father-in-law is one thing, but even if I were not part of this family and as close to him and all of it as I am, it’s just such a fascinating time to be alive. You know, all of it. I think it’s really amazing.

BILL MAHER: It’s definitely not dull.

LARA TRUMP: It’s not dull at all. No, no.

BILL MAHER: I mean look, HBO is going to announce tomorrow another two year hitch for me on top of next year. So I’ll be, you know, well, I don’t know, three years from now, will we even have TV or my network could get sold. I mean they’re talking about that a lot.

I figure if it’s to Paramount, I think those are Jews, I should be good there. But I heard today it might be Comcast and that could be Saudi money. You know, we’re on good terms now, Bill, because I’ve always kept it real about Islam which is another reason why the left hates me. See, because you know, they’re on the page of America cringe, Hamas awesome.

LARA TRUMP: It’s wild.

Middle East Policy

BILL MAHER: And I am not there. But the one thing that I am 100% full on is the Middle East thing. Just first of all just backing Israel. Let’s not pretend that all cultures, although they’re different, they’re the same. No, Israel is our culture. We value life, we give women full rights, stuff like that. We’re going to go with the culture that we recognize and we think is the right one. You do you.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And then just the way he supported Israel’s solving of the problem that they were slowly being surrounded by proxies of Iran. And just like Michael Corleone in the last reel of the Godfather, he took out all the enemies, settled all family business, Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis and then Iran itself, we’re going to do this.

So I mean I give them full—and then to get the war to end and also to get maybe the Arabs to finally we’re getting closer. Well, I read in the paper today that MBS is here to announce that he’s going to help with Gaza, that Saudi Arabia is going to move in.

LARA TRUMP: There some of the rebuilding. I don’t know the answer to that, but it makes a lot of sense and that’s one of the things that I think has been very unique about this president is that he is—look, as a businessman, I think he had this incredible ability not only to negotiate with people, but to have foresight into what needed to happen and how to forge relationships, to make good moves.

And I would say that that could be a very positive thing for that section of the world. They need some investment. They need somebody to come in who’s going to help rebuild. And that would be great. I don’t have any insight here, but because I’m not part of—

BILL MAHER: Do they ever—do you ever get privy to something before the world knows it?

LARA TRUMP: Not really, no. No.

BILL MAHER: You can think of one time.

LARA TRUMP: I’m trying to think of anything.

BILL MAHER: Okay.

LARA TRUMP: No, I’ll tell you. Actually, we were with my father-in-law during the first administration and it was—it must have been Thanksgiving. Was it Thanksgiving? He flew over and he went to see the troops over in the Middle East. I’m trying to remember where he went. But he didn’t even tell any of us that he was going.

BILL MAHER: They never do.

LARA TRUMP: No, I mean, stuff like that.

BILL MAHER: That’s for security.

LARA TRUMP: And then the next morning he was just gone. And then we realized he was all the way overseas.

BILL MAHER: It was very cool, but they always keep a secret. You don’t want to tell the terrorists you’re coming.

LARA TRUMP: Well, that’s true. That is accurate. But he didn’t even tell our family, who had just had dinner together, any of us, that he was even going anywhere.

BILL MAHER: Right.

LARA TRUMP: But no, not usually.

Life at Mar-a-Lago

BILL MAHER: I mean, listen, do you do Thanksgiving at the White House?

LARA TRUMP: We usually have done Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago.

BILL MAHER: At Mar-a-Lago, yeah. Of course.

LARA TRUMP: Although this year we’re going to go to North Carolina with my family and we’ll be in Florida for a while.

BILL MAHER: And you live in that orbit now? I mean, that physical—

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, we’re in South Florida, so—

BILL MAHER: I mean, I keep reading that this is a whole world. Oh, what does that mean? Beyond—what do you mean?

LARA TRUMP: It’s quite a scene.

BILL MAHER: You mean Mar-a-Lago meaning—

LARA TRUMP: Yes. Yeah. Well, yeah.

BILL MAHER: You keep saying these—oh, yeah. Well, what? Spill the tea. What is it? What do you mean? I would like it.

LARA TRUMP: I think you would find it very interesting, actually.

BILL MAHER: Never been married.

LARA TRUMP: There’s a lot of material there. Bill, come on over.

BILL MAHER: How many successful never been married guys usually have to put up with their old, their kids and their third wives that they just dumped? I’m clean. Free agent, ladies and gentlemen.

LARA TRUMP: We got him. He’s ready to go. Mar-a-Lago is amazing. First of all, you have Donald Trump on the patio. And he’s out there for—I mean, anywhere from two hours to four hours. He’ll be out on this patio. He’s fully in charge of the music. And he’ll raise it so loud that people can’t even talk anymore because it’s a song he really wants to hear, like a Pavarotti or Phantom of the Opera or one of these really hits him.

BILL MAHER: That’s what he likes.

LARA TRUMP: He likes all kinds of stuff. His eclectic music taste is really fabulous.

BILL MAHER: I know he loves YMCA.

LARA TRUMP: He certainly does look like the Village People. There it is. Okay. Bill Maher doing the Trump dance. I like it.

BILL MAHER: I like 20 times I rolled this and said it looks like he’s jerking off two guys at once. So, I love your mind went there.

LARA TRUMP: You don’t do it anymore?

BILL MAHER: That one I did. I just got bored of. I mean, you can only do—I only do the same gag so many times.

LARA TRUMP: But it is. It’s fascinating out there. And then it’s really the center of—it feels like the center of everything.

BILL MAHER: I mean, the way they write the articles about it. But of course, I can’t trust the articles.

LARA TRUMP: It’ll get you there. Next stop, the $18 million Mar-a-Lago Club, ladies and gentlemen. That’s right. You can give us your assessment of the value.

BILL MAHER: You know what? That’s true. I mean, I’ve been to the White House. That would be the—if I’m going to have dinner again. That would be—I would love to see it.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: I mean, it is kind of like seeing the court of Louis XIV.

LARA TRUMP: It’s a little like that.

BILL MAHER: At the height of his corruption.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, well, it’s a little—

BILL MAHER: It’s a—I defended the ballroom.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, good. Well, that’s nice.

The White House Ballroom Controversy

BILL MAHER: Totally. See, that’s the kind of thing. I mean, I just can’t stand it that you cannot get the full story from anybody. And by the way, they—and when I say they, I mean the usual suspects. And you know who you are, because you’re f*ing liars—will take this thing and your people will just take the parts that make me look like what they write that make me look like what they want to look like.

And my people will do the opposite. Of course, I’ll get it from both sides because my people will show me being nice to you to show, look at that ahole, he’s nice to a Republican.

LARA TRUMP: You should have burned me at the stake when I was at your people.

BILL MAHER: Will show none of the parts where I was critiquing Trump on the things I think he needs to be—nothing about all that’ll go and it’ll just because nobody’s honest.

LARA TRUMP: So you like the ballroom.

BILL MAHER: But I—because first I read, you know, he knocked—I’m knocking the White House down. It’s not good. You know, I had Michael Steele on and he was like, my father took me to the White House and I saw it and say, oh, geez, I didn’t know this was so emotional for people.

And then I started to read the other side and it’s like, oh, okay, first of all, lots of people have changed the White House. Second of all, it’s just a f*ing building. You know what? It’s a building. And also something they never put in the left press. We are America. They shouldn’t be having state dinners under a tent. It’s not a big deal.

So what? They knocked down an office wing and put up something for state dinners, which in the 21st century, you probably don’t need the office wing. Or you could put them somewhere else or put them in the—what’s the building across the street that’s like the blah, blah, blah, Executive Eisenhower Executive office.

LARA TRUMP: But they’re still going to have those offices. They’re just building them, they’re rebuilding them above where the kind of segue is into the ballroom. Here’s the thing. Who better to build a ballroom than Donald Trump? Honestly, when you come to Mar-a-Lago, Bill, I will personally take you down to the Mar-a-Lago Ballroom.

BILL MAHER: Oh, he showed—

LARA TRUMP: The president doesn’t do it himself.

On Letting Things Go

BILL MAHER: Remember we walked there and he was telling me about what’s happening. Yeah, it’s like the guy with—we should have had the hard hats on, you know, like this is the site where it’s going to happen. You know, it’s like, okay, look, no, it does not rise to that level of importance to me.

That’s what I’m saying. It’s like there are things he does that I am very, very engaged with that are important. And there are things that I’ve told my audience, treat it like a cloud, let it just pass, because it doesn’t matter. And you can’t get upset about everything I said before. He won the last time. I’m not going to let him get my mind this time. And it shouldn’t.

Your whole personality should not be about how you feel about Donald Trump or any president. It shouldn’t be your whole life, and I won’t let it be that good for you. Yes, absolutely. And I tell people this. I tell people this. Yeah. And it’s funny little synchronicity we have on the show Friday night. Mel Robbins. Do you know who that is?

LARA TRUMP: I do know Mel Robbins.

BILL MAHER: I’m sure you know, I’ve known her.

LARA TRUMP: For a long time, actually.

BILL MAHER: Oh, you actually know her?

LARA TRUMP: I met her, gosh, probably 15 years ago with Eric in New York.

BILL MAHER: Oh, wow.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Well, you were an early adapter. Because honestly, I’m just starting to know who she is. And I mean, to say that’s a phenomenon is an understatement. The level of that book of hers, and you know, the point of it is “let them.” That’s what she says. That’s the title.

And it’s about—it’s sort of very eerily apropos to this. It’s like, don’t let people control your mind completely. I mean, and so ballrooms. No. Does not rise to the—it is not on the “I give a shit” list. And I actually think again, yes, America, pretty big country. We’re kind of a successful band.

LARA TRUMP: We’re pretty good.

BILL MAHER: You know, I think we should have—when we have state dinners and shit, I don’t think it should be on the grass. I do think there should be a floor. Call me crazy, but again, don’t give a shit the amount of money. It’s not even public money. Even if it was, you couldn’t find it in a rounding era. And like, there’s so much bigger fish to fry that I have with him. Well, like, we’re getting—

LARA TRUMP: Giving the ballroom a good nod, respectfully. There you go.

BILL MAHER: You know, as long as you keep it on that level.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

On Marjorie Taylor Greene

BILL MAHER: You know, and I got to say, the Republicans, they do take a punch. They don’t get bent out of shape because I think secretly they know I’m right, but I know they can’t say it. Marjorie Taylor Greene was on. I know she’s a bad—she’s now on the shit list.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, I’ve got no bones to pick with Marjorie Taylor Greene. No personal issue with her.

BILL MAHER: You would not believe how many people got in touch with me like, that weekend and said, wow, you know, liberal people like, wow, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I kind of liked her.

LARA TRUMP: Oh.

BILL MAHER: You know, because she was very, you know, it’s—my line is always, everybody’s a monster till you talk to them. That’s true.

LARA TRUMP: And I agree with that for pretty much everyone, Bill. I love it. I think that’s a great way to go. Yeah, I appreciate that.

BILL MAHER: I think it’s the only way to be. Because the other way lies madness and civil war and, you know, this idea that each side can own the other side. I mean, certainly that’s something both of them are guilty of. They don’t want to compromise or come to any sort of middle. They want to own. They think, no, I want to destroy them. See, if I destroy them, then we don’t have to compromise.

Finding Common Ground

LARA TRUMP: I actually think that it would be great if we got back to a place where we had just more—and I do think this actually exists out there. We have more in common than we do different. And we acknowledge that and that we had two political parties. I mean, the two party system is not perfect, but that we had two major political parties in this country that agreed on a lot more. And I think deep down we really do.

BILL MAHER: I think the people do. I don’t know about the parties.

LARA TRUMP: Well, that’s right, because the parties get—

BILL MAHER: Sent by the fringe wings. Well, yeah, you know, I mean, it’s very hard to win a—it’s easier to win a general than a primary.

LARA TRUMP: That is true.

BILL MAHER: You get primaried and, you know, I mean, Trump says he’s going to primary Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, like, we got to find someone to the right of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

LARA TRUMP: Are you in charge of that? You’re going to work on that?

BILL MAHER: See, now I’m Marjorie Taylor Greene’s friend. See?

LARA TRUMP: God, what’s wrong with you, Bill?

BILL MAHER: And lots of people said, you know, they like her too.

LARA TRUMP: It’s amazing.

Aliens, Demons, and Letting Things Go

BILL MAHER: And you know what I loved is that in the overtime segment, somebody asked about the—have you been reading about the comet that is heading toward Earth that could be an alien spaceship?

LARA TRUMP: No.

BILL MAHER: No. Is that right? Oh, yeah. What? Yeah, they’re writing about it quite a bit.

LARA TRUMP: Oh, I missed this one.

BILL MAHER: Yeah.

LARA TRUMP: Better to not know what had happened.

BILL MAHER: There’s, you know, it’s supposed to come within 170 million miles of earth on December 19th. Some people have said that it, they think it’s acting differently than a comet, so it must be a spaceship. So it could be the aliens ending all life as we know it.

LARA TRUMP: Well, I believe they’re out there.

BILL MAHER: But Marjorie said, when I, when it came up that somebody in the, some people in the Defense Department said, no, it’s actually not probably aliens. What it probably is is demons or fallen angels.

LARA TRUMP: Oh.

BILL MAHER: And Marjorie was like, right on. She said I’m a Christian conservative. That’s what we believe. Demons and angels. And I was like, you know what? I think that’s nuts. But I don’t hate you for saying, yeah, that’s—again, you can come to Thanksgiving even though it’s crazy to me. You think I’m crazy in some ways. And we just have to, like, let that go.

LARA TRUMP: There’s a lot to talk about.

BILL MAHER: Let that go.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah, let go.

BILL MAHER: Isn’t that the secret of marriage? You have to, like, let it go.

LARA TRUMP: Sometimes you do have to let it go.

BILL MAHER: Let it go.

LARA TRUMP: You have to sometimes love the other person enough to put yourself to the side and just say, okay, we’re just for the betterment of all of us, for the greater good. Let’s all just put it aside. And we can all do that.

BILL MAHER: We can. But it’s very hard when you have a fight with someone when you’re that close, because that means you’re also that much more vulnerable because they know everything about you and blah, blah, blah. It’s so hard if you think they’re fundamentally wrong about something. Like, why can’t you see it?

LARA TRUMP: Why can’t you see?

BILL MAHER: Right? Yeah, you’ve had that feeling.

LARA TRUMP: Not with Eric Trump. He’s perfect. But I know other people who have, Bill.

BILL MAHER: Okay.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

Closing Thoughts

BILL MAHER: Well, I can’t thank you enough. Thank you for doing this when I’m sure there are people who said you shouldn’t meet with that bad man.

LARA TRUMP: Actually, no one said that to me. Can I be honest? Everyone I told that I was going to come here, they were like, that’s so freaking cool.

BILL MAHER: Oh, that’s great. Yeah, that’s great.

LARA TRUMP: I’m happy to do it. Thank you for having me.

BILL MAHER: Tell you. Thanks for being open that my people.

LARA TRUMP: I’ll tell my people, huh? Want peace.

BILL MAHER: We want.

LARA TRUMP: We do want peace.

BILL MAHER: Because, you know, my people talk a lot, but you guys have all the guns. We do. And all the Supreme Court seats and all the, you know, we want peace with dignity.

LARA TRUMP: We want peace, too. All right, well, we can agree on that.

BILL MAHER: Say hi to everyone in the family. I will tell your father-in-law. Just doing my job.

LARA TRUMP: We’ll see you at Mar-a-Lago.

BILL MAHER: Okay.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Happy Thanksgiving.

LARA TRUMP: Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving.

BILL MAHER: Club Random.

LARA TRUMP: Thanks.

BILL MAHER: That wasn’t so bad.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah. I have a signed book for you from Eric.

BILL MAHER: Oh, great.

LARA TRUMP: Yeah. Okay.

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