It's like that time Pinocchio became a real boy: The news that was labeled “fake” last week is real today, according to the Kennedy Center, and Bill Maher will actually be the 27th person to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
The White House heavily criticized the Atlantic's reporting (followed by failure to report) last week that Maher was next in line for the 2026 award that Conan O'Brien won last year and Kevin Hart picked up the year before. The Twain honor has been bestowed on comics almost annually since 1998 by the Kennedy Center, a “worn, broken and dilapidated” building that President Trump gave his own name to in December and which plans to close for two years of renovations starting July 4; hence the response from White House critics.
“Literally FAKE NEWS,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said on his official X account, reacting Friday to the Atlantic story. Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement to the publication: “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT receive this award.”
But People reported Thursday that while the Atlantic news was considered “false” at the time, according to a White House official, the situation had “evolved” in the six days since.
You say tomato, I say to-mah-to? In any case, Bill will keep the Twain, which was previously received by comedy luminaries such as Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Dave Chappelle.
Maher had no response on social media, perhaps reserving his reaction for the next episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher” premiering Friday on HBO or his upcoming “Club Random” podcast. But he did issue a dryly amused statement Thursday in a Kennedy Center news release, saying, “Thank you to the Mark Twain people: They just explained the award to me and apparently it's like an Emmy, except I win.”
(Maher's show has been nominated for Emmys 22 times, from 2004 to 2024, including 13 nominations for variety series and the rest for writing, directing and personal acting. It has won exactly zero of those times. Even Susan Lucci only had to wait 18 Daytime Emmy nominations before finally winning on the 19th, and lost two more.)
The comic's statement continued: “I would just like to say that it is truly humbling that something has the name of a man who has been banned from as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has honored some of the greatest minds in comedy,” Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations at the Kennedy Center, said in her own statement. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse, one politically incorrect joke at a time.”
Maher, a self-described liberal with no love for the Republican Party, found himself in strange territory of new respect among conservatives in recent years after he began criticizing far-left ideology as ruthlessly as he criticized the far right. Then, last spring, he accepted an invitation to dine with Trump at the White House and many heads exploded.
“Okay, as you know, 12 days ago I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner hosted by my friend Kid Rock because we share the belief that there has to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away,” Maher, who lives on the West Coast, said on the April 11, 2025 episode of “Real Time.”
“And first let me say to all the people who treated this like it's some kind of summit meeting: You're ridiculous. Like I'm going to sign a treaty or something. I have… I have no power. I'm a… comedian, and he's the most powerful leader in the world. I'm not the leader of anything except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there has to be a better way to run this country than to hate each other every minute.”
Maher said he brought with him to the dinner a list of nearly five dozen epithets the president had hurled at him over the years, with the intention of asking Trump to sign them for him. What the president did. And after sharing a few anecdotes from the visit, including some snappy repartee, Maher told his audience that Trump was “much more self-aware than he lets on in public.”
“I never felt like I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk to Donald Trump. That's how it happened. Make of it what you will.”
The Mark Twain Prize will be presented to Maher at a gala scheduled for June 28, and Netflix will stream the event at a later date, yet to be determined.
