Bill Maher maintains that meeting with Donald Trump was a valid journalistic effort to communicate with the other side rather than an act of hypocrisy.

“I was offered a chance to actually sit down for an extended period of time in a private setting with the one person who has dominated all of our lives, whether you like him or not, for the last 10 years. That's just not deniable. I took it. I I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't take it.”