President Donald Trump sought redemption by dining with two men unafraid to challenge his views and criticize his policies.
Thursday’s White House dinner offered him another chance to face critics directly and defend his record face-to-face. However, the details that emerged afterward revealed more than Trump shared publicly.
“It was a great dinner, it was a very informative dinner,” Trump told reporters on Friday about his dinner with “Smart people.”
Back in 2025, Trump said, “Smart people don’t like me.” But it looks like he made an exception for Thursday’s dinner, which covered a variety of topics.
This time, he insisted his guests “like Trump,” gave them a tour of his unfinished ballroom, the Oval Office, the Rose Garden and his new helipad. But the details he skipped didn’t stay under wraps for long.
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The dinner’s biggest revelations came from beyond his own retelling. His guests of honor were Bill Maher, Stephen A. Smith and Kid Rock.
“Stephen A. is great. Bill Maher — I will tell you what. He likes me a lot more than people understand, and I actually like him. It was a good dinner,” Trump told reporters.
On his “Club Random” podcast Monday, Maher revealed that Trump texted him a second dinner invitation.
The POTUS once rolled out the White House welcome mat for his and Maher’s first sitdown in February. Trump called their visit “quick, easy” but “a total waste of time.” He later branded Maher a ”jerk” and a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” and complained that his show had returned to “Very boring, ANTI TRUMP” commentary.
The president promised he would not say “bad things about [Maher] like I did the last time.”
Maher has yet to share full details of what took place, prompting the public to take clues from the other two guests.
Smith gave a full recap of his White House visit on his “Straight Shooter with Stephen A.” YouTube show. He said he got a call that Trump gave Maher the green light to bring anyone he wanted and he “immediately accepted that invitation.”
He wanted to say some things “face-to-face, man-to-man” to Trump, before listing ways they have supported each other the years.
Smith recalled Trump’s appearance on his ESPN show during the run of “The Apprentice” show. He also discussed helping the real estate tycoon navigate NFL owners’ resistance to his 2014 bid to buy the Buffalo Bills.
The unfiltered talk show host alleges Trump told him at the time, that he would “run for president if they didn’t let him get the team.”
Other topics of discussion at dinner included HBCU funding, the Iran war and the 2020 election, “which he still does not acknowledge as a loss.”
“But the biggest thing that he deserves credit for and Bill Maher deserves credit for is that they were going at it for hours on things they disagreed about,” added Smith.
But there were other moments of tension, and Trump was ready for it all.
“We were there for over four hours in the White House and Donald Trump did not run from any questions. He answered every single question,” Smith claimed. “He was very very defiant with any criticism that came in his direction, any disagreement.”
“When I say we were there for over four hours, it was because of him. He wouldn’t let us leave,” Smith admitted.
The “First Take” host and Winston-Salem State University graduate felt it was his duty to speak for the Black men and women suffering from unemployment. He then broke out into his own impression of Trump.
“Listening to Trump, [go] I love the blacks. I love Black people. OK? I’m always here. Look at what I’ve done with my administration. Look at what Sleepy Joe has done. They all talk. They all talk. They haven’t done what I’ve done.’ It’s what he says,” Smith reveals.
The sports anchor claims he had no idea Kid Rock was coming but he would have attended anyway, regardless of people calling artist a racist over things he has said.
Then Smith shifted gears to deny claims he is a liberal, as Rock called him on “Fox & Friends” Friday.
“I don’t consider myself a liberal. I consider myself a conservative. I’m a registered independent.” he stated. “I say that all the time because I don’t trust either side.”‘
Kid Rock said they had dinner and drinks before he left at 11 p.m., despite being on his seventh beer. “This is probably the first time I’ve ever left a party early,” he said.
After hearing both sides, social media blasted Kid Rock as an “insane” trucker and Smith as a “sellout.”
“I tweeted earlier he was gonna try to spin it this way his a— wasn’t talking about none of that mess he in there yucking it up an drinking wine,” said one person. Another wrote, “And I bet Smith is patting himself on the back right damn now over that pointless conversation with the Cheeto man.”
A few wondered, “Trump called Stephen Smith low iq…..now all of a sudden he’s smart????”
Critics compared the trio to “wretched group,” adding that “Steven a Smith is a pure opportunist – which ever way the wind blows at the moment – the someone says you stink – and he reverses course. True chameleon.”
Stephen A Smith confirms that he attended Bill Maher’s recent meeting with Donald Trump at the White House https://t.co/F6cOm652db
— 2Cool2Blog (@2Cool2Blog) October 17, 2026
