Bill Maher says Jimmy Kimmel is ‘very mad at me’

Bill Maher revealed Monday that his friendship with Jimmy Kimmel may be forever shattered. During an episode of his Club Random podcast featuring Kimmel’s former collaborator, 61-year-old podcaster Adam Carolla, the 70-year-old host of HBO’s Real Time claimed that a joke he made about Kimmel’s wife, Molly McNeary, led the late-night host to give him the cold shoulder. ‘Jimmy Kimmel, you know, he’s very mad at me and I know you’re close to him,’ Maher said, referring to Carolla’s stint co-hosting the Comedy Central series The Man Show with Kimmel from 1999 to 2004. ‘I hope you tell him that I’m sorry that it got bent out of shape,’ Maher continued. ‘I don’t think I did anything wrong. We can have disagreements. I mean, you and I don’t agree on everything, look at this clash now, and yet we’re cool.’ The Daily Mail has reached out to Kimmel’s representatives for comment.

The comedian noted that he often clashes with Kimmel’s politics, which are now further to the left than Maher’s views, though he praised Kimmel, 58, for being ‘one of the nicest guys.’ ‘This is the difference between the right and the left. It bugs me so much,’ Maher complained. ‘My tribe is supposed to be the left, but these are the people who just can’t talk to you unless you’re exactly there, whereas the Republicans, they always [expletive] come to my show.’ Maher declared that he doesn’t ‘just buy into the left-wing bull[expletive]’ though he also claimed that he ‘never stop[s] making fun of the right-wing bull[expletive]’ either. ‘If that’s not good enough for you, then I think you’re the [expletive]hole, and I don’t think Jimmy is an [expletive]hole,’ Maher said. He reiterated that Kimmel ‘is a great guy,’ but said it ‘bugs’ him that, ‘because of what the latest thing was, that, you know, we may never talk again.’ Carolla agreed and said, ‘You guys should be thick as thieves and on the same page.’

Maher’s beef with Kimmel appears to have been set off by comments Kimmel’s wife, Molly McNeary, made when she and her husband appeared together on the We Can Do Hard Thingspodcast in November. During the appearance, she admitted that she had cut out members of her extended family due to their support for Trump. ‘It hurts me so much because of the personal relationship I now have where my husband is out there fighting this man,’ said McNeary, 47. ‘To me, them voting for Trump is them not voting for my husband and me and our family,’ she explained. ‘And I, unfortunately, have kind of lost relationships with people in my family because of it.’ Maher went on to respond to her comments on Real Time. ‘She says she’s lost relationships with relatives because she wrote them an email before the election with ten reasons why they shouldn’t vote for Trump, and some still didn’t obey, so you know. Ultimatums. Ten reasons? I can think of 100,’ he said, via Page Six. ‘But I would never present it to someone as an ultimatum,’ Maher stated. ‘Ultimatums don’t make people rethink their politics. They make them rethink you.’

In December, Maher revealed that Kimmel was perturbed by his criticism of McNeary. ‘I was as kid-gloved as I could [be],’ Maher claimed at the time. ‘And I see they’re mad at me. Uh, I’m sorry. I mean, I was being, again, as respectful as I could, but I don’t agree with that point of view. And since she went public with it, it wasn’t out of school for me to go public with it,’ he continued. ‘I love Jimmy. I’ve always have. I don’t know him that well, but he’s a great guy. I hope we’re friends forever, but I don’t know.’ Maher’s original target, McNeary is a close collaborator with her husband and serves as the co-head writer and executive producer of his show Jimmy Kimmel Live! The two married in 2013 and share two children: Jane, 11, and Billy, eight. Kimmel also has two adult children from his first marriage: Katie, 34, and Kevin, 32. Kimmel and McNeary’s issues with Trump are not just political, but personal, as his son Billy suffers from a congenital heart condition, tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia, which was discovered just hours after his birth in April 2017. Billy had to undergo surgery at just three days old, but it was a success, even though he required several more surgeries over subsequent years to continue to correct the condition.

At the time, Trump and Republicans in the Senate were pushing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which prevents insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. In tearful statements on his show, Kimmel spoke out against the effort, as a family in his position might have found it impossible to get health insurance for a child with the same condition as his son, making it nearly impossible for all but the most wealthy families to pay for the surgeries. Carolla, who espouses conservative views, previously appeared to defend Kimmel on his podcast in September, after Kimmel was suspended from his talk show over comments he made about the response of conservatives to the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. 

He also seemed to defend maintaining relationships with friends whose politics conflict with his own. Carolla reiterated that he and Kimmel were still friends at the time, though he emphasized that he thought Kimmel’s comments referencing Kirk were ‘wrong.’ He said that — unlike other right-wing figures who criticize Kimmel for his liberal views and statements — he knows Kimmel personally, so he’s not a ‘caricature’ to him. ‘I know Jimmy is a human and I know how good he is and I know how decent he is, and we disagree politically, but who cares?’ Carolla said at the time, via The Hollywood Reporter. ‘We disagree on pizza toppings as well, but it doesn’t mean we don’t talk.’