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If President Trump invited you to the White House, would you go? This is the question US hacks and other media personalities have been asking themselves since the inauguration, an American version of that self-flattering British perennial: when Buckingham Palace calls, will you be buying a fascinator to accept the OBE? In both cases, no matter how pluckily anti-establishment an individual may have been to that point, the answer is often a resounding: you bet!
First, the rationalisations. In the US context, respect for the “office of the president”, for which there is no British equivalent that doesn’t prompt sniggering, is taken seriously enough that if the president calls, you don’t turn him down. There’s the standard argument in favour of engagement over boycott as a more constructive path to account-holding. And there is, for hacks, the perfectly reasonable rationale of pursuing the story. Of course, you’re going to say yes if Trump calls. How could you not?
The question is what happens next – and it’s a tricky one, isn’t it? One minute you’re hurtling towards Washington DC on the Acela Express train fully intending to speak truth to power, the next you’ve tripped on the rug and somehow become Albert Speer. It isn’t known what Bill Maher, the comedian, talkshow host and, until recently, fierce critic of Trump, thought he was up to last month when he accepted an invitation to dine with the president. But after the event, he treated us to a love letter to a man he found to be full of “good humour”, “generous”, “without animus”, as well as “gracious and measured” – almost as if successful politicians have the ability to turn on the charm. “Just for starters,” said Maher, “he laughs!” Like Garbo!
Trump chose his target well, promoting the encounter as a robust piece of engagement with a foe – “a man who has been unjustifiably critical of anything, or anyone, TRUMP”, posted the president before the meeting – when in fact Maher’s been a creepy little men’s rights guy dispensing fat jokes and gags for some time that turn on the punchline “retarded”. He’s not Stephen Colbert or even Bill Burr, and it’s significant that Trump hasn’t, for example, taken up Jon Stewart’s offer to publicly debate him. Instead, this meeting, apparently “brokered” by Kid Rock, was another example of Trump’s ability to spot an easy mark. “That’s how it went down, make of it what you will,” said Maher whimsically, and what people have made of it is that Bill Maher’s an idiot.
Maher is only the starkest example of a general softening since January of the cultural resistance to Trump. Remember when George Clooney wrote his stirring little op-ed for the New York Times urging his fellow Americans to ditch Joe Biden? No follow-up piece since then, from George, or much in the way of public protest from any of the other celebrities who stumped for Kamala Harris. Clooney did show up this week on Gayle King’s CBS show, but that was to promote something, namely the “huge responsibility” of his new Broadway play about Edward R Murrow. Clooney, a man whose charm you imagine even Maher might find himself able to see through, responded to Trump’s mockery – “a second-rate movie ‘star’ and failed political pundit” – with the words, “My job is not to please the president of the United States. My job is to try and tell the truth”, before King moved the subject on to the colour of his hair.
Anyway, back to Maher, who got his comeuppance. Whatever you do in life you really don’t want Larry David writing a satirical piece about you in the New York Times that includes the line: “Göring, with his mouth full, asked what was so funny, and Hitler said, ‘I was just telling him about the time my dog had diarrhea in the Reichstag’.” And it remains the case that pushback against Trump can be hard to get right.
I say, let’s hear it for Rosie O’Donnell for making good on her threat to move countries if Trump got elected: she is now living in Ireland. Likewise for Ellen DeGeneres, who moved to the Cotswolds, while we must assume that Cher, Sharon Stone, Miley Cyrus and Whoopi Goldberg are still waiting on a third quote from movers – but the three Yale professors who moved to Canada for the same reason have copped some flak for leaving the fight. You can’t win, perhaps. But watching Maher this week, there are better ways of losing.
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Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
