{"id":2623,"date":"2026-05-23T17:40:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T14:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/oswalt-blasts-mahers-trump-strategy-zero-respect\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T17:40:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T14:40:58","slug":"oswalt-blasts-mahers-trump-strategy-zero-respect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/oswalt-blasts-mahers-trump-strategy-zero-respect\/","title":{"rendered":"Oswalt Blasts Maher&#8217;s Trump Strategy: &#8220;Zero Respect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Comedian Patton Oswalt has criticized Bill Maher&#8217;s strategy of seeking common ground with President Donald Trump, arguing that the approach is fundamentally flawed.<\/strong> According to New York Post, Oswalt made his remarks during an appearance on The Dean Obeidallah Show on Thursday, where he commented on Maher&#8217;s widely publicized White House dinner with Trump and the HBO host&#8217;s subsequent defense of engaging across political divides.<\/p>\n<p>Obeidallah framed the discussion by pointing to Maher as a cautionary example of appeasement backfiring. <em>&#8220;You can&#8217;t win with him,&#8221;<\/em> the host observed, noting that despite Maher&#8217;s initial diplomatic overtures, Trump eventually turned against him anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Oswalt agreed with this assessment, contending that Trump fundamentally loses respect for those who attempt to placate him. <em>&#8220;You can&#8217;t do that with him,&#8221;<\/em> the comedian stated, suggesting Maher&#8217;s well-intentioned efforts to build rapport were destined to fail.<\/p>\n<h2>The Defiance Strategy Works Better<\/h2>\n<p>Oswalt then drew a pointed contrast between Maher&#8217;s conciliatory approach and the tactics employed by late-night figures <strong>Stephen Colbert<\/strong> and <strong>Jimmy Kimmel<\/strong>, both of whom have maintained consistent criticism of Trump throughout his political career. Oswalt argued that their unwillingness to compromise has paradoxically proven more effective.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By defying Trump, Colbert and Kimmel\u2014yeah, Trump hates them but he hates them because they don&#8217;t love him. He wants them to love him,&#8221; Oswalt explained. &#8220;And then the minute they love him, he has zero respect for them because deep down he hates himself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The comedian suggested that principled consistency represents the only viable approach when dealing with Trump, and warned that business dealings with the president typically end in financial ruin. &#8220;Anyone that does business with him, you get destroyed,&#8221; he asserted.<\/p>\n<p>Maher has publicly defended his decision to dine with Trump despite pushback from viewers who questioned whether the meeting signaled a softening of his critical stance toward the president.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right\"><em>With information from <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New York Post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comedian Patton Oswalt criticized Bill Maher&#8217;s strategy of seeking common ground with President Donald Trump, arguing that defiance by late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel proves more effective than appeasement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":2622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[2407,2408,196,2410,2406,2409,278],"nfg_topic":[137],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-bill-maher","tag-comedy","tag-donald-trump","tag-hbo","tag-patton-oswalt","tag-political-criticism","tag-usa","nfg_topic-culture-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"nfg_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nfg_topic?post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}