“Real Time” host Bill Maher slammed what he called the left’s “exclusionary attitude” when it came to the Kennedy Center before President Trump’s takeover of the iconic D.C. arts venue.
During his “Overtime” segment on YouTube, Maher read a submitted question from a viewer asking for the panel’s reaction to the decision made by “Hamilton” producers Jeffrey Seller and Lin-Manuel Miranda to cancel shows that were scheduled for 2026 in response to Trump’s overhaul of the Kennedy Center board last month.
While liberal critics, including Sellers and Miranda, accused Trump of politicizing the Kennedy Center, Maher suggested it was already politicized.
“I will say this in defense of the other side on this one, because I watched the Kennedy Center Honors this year. It was in December. It’s always in December. I always watch it. And this year they honored Francis Ford Coppola and the Grateful Dead,” Maher said Friday.
“Maybe I’m wrong, because I didn’t do an exhaustive study, but I was… watching the show, I did not see one person in the audience or one person on the stage who you would think voted for Donald Trump. This is the last month of the Biden administration, and having just lost the election, I just thought, ‘You know what? Invite Ted Cruz,’” Maher continued.
He added, “If this is supposed to be America, and we’re all together, and you just lost, invite some of the people who you wouldn’t suspect to be there. I’m sure Ted Cruz or somebody like that likes Francis Ford Coppola, everybody likes ‘The Godfather.’ I’m sure there are some Republicans who are Grateful Dead fans. And it’s just like, ‘No.’ The mean girls were like, ‘No, it’s our last time. And this is what you get.’”
“And now, you know, Kevin Sorbo will be winning the next Kennedy Center Honors,” he quipped.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
“The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin responded by saying the arts “obviously skew left of center” and suggesting the reaction to Trump’s Kennedy Center actions was “overboard” and that the beltway media’s fixation on it shows how journalists have become “so out of touch with the middle of this country.”
“It’s just a bad attitude,” Maher said.
Fellow panelist, former Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mt., however, was puzzled by Maher’s complaint.
“So what you’re saying is there were no Republicans in the audience?” Tester asked.
“I didn’t see anybody throughout the whole show who I thought, ‘Oh, this is a person who voted for Trump,’” Maher responded.
“I just felt when they cut to the audience, it was just the usual suspects and like, okay, I get it. You’re right. It does skew left, but just – that’s what they do. What really bugs me about the left, that exclusionary attitude. And like – but you just lost. You don’t have the juice to pull that off anymore!”
“I’ve only been to it in person twice in 18 years, but the truth is, both times that I went there, once about three years ago, there were a lot of Republicans in the audience during the Biden administration,” Tester said.
“Okay, maybe they just didn’t show them,” Maher sarcastically shot back.
The producers of “Hamilton,” which previously had a stint at the Kennedy Center in 2018 during the first Trump administration, told The New York Times that Trump’s recent actions crossed the line.
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“This latest action by Trump means it’s not the Kennedy Center as we knew it,” Miranda and Seller told the Times in a joint statement.
“The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re just not going to be part of it.”
Ric Grenell, Trump’s special missions envoy who Trump also tapped to be the Kennedy Center’s interim executive director, took aim at the “Hamilton” producers for pulling their shows without having any conversation with him.
“Seller and @Lin_Manuel first went to the New York Times before they came to the Kennedy Center with their announcement that they can’t be in the same room with Republicans,” Grenell wrote on X.
“This is a publicity stunt that will backfire.”
“The Arts are for everyone – not just for the people who Lin likes and agrees with. The American people need to know that @Lin_Manuel is intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically. It’s clear he and Sellers don’t want Republicans going to their shows,” Grenell added.
