Cheryl Hines Calls Larry David’s Takedown of Bill Maher ‘Crazy’

Cheryl Hines recently faced serious grilling from the hosts of The View over her support of husband, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services/roadkill gourmet Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But now Hines’ promotional book tour has taken her to a far-friendlier locale: the booze and smoke-filled monument to boomer ennui that is Bill Maher’s basement.

Yes, Hines just popped by Club Random, the only YouTube show in which Bill Maher spends the length of a Marvel movie drunkenly interrupting celebrity guests and/or lecturing small children. 

Over the course of their whopping 2 hour and 27 minute conversation, the pair discussed topics ranging from the science of COVID vaccines, to Joe Biden’s foreign policy decisions, to Maher’s performance in the 1983 Mr. T vehicle D.C. Cab. 

And it wasn’t long before Hines’ former co-star, Larry David, came up.

Hines, of course, played Larry’s put-upon wife (and eventual ex-wife) Cheryl on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Last spring, David made headlines for lampooning Maher’s chummy dinner with Donald Trump in a satirical short story published by The New York Times. “Larry David: My Dinner with Adolf” found the Seinfeld co-creator parroting many of Maher’s inane talking points, but in the context of an unnamed narrator sharing a fictional dinner with the surprisingly charming Adolf Hitler in 1939.

“I got the same kind of shit you did when I went to dinner (with Trump), from your TV husband especially,” Maher told his guest. 

“That was crazy,” Hines agreed. “He came after you.”

“Once you play that Hitler card, first of all you lost me,” Maher added. “First of all, (coming) from a Jew, it’s so insulting to anyone who was actually affected by the Holocaust… Besides the fact that, you could have waited until you saw how I reacted after the dinner, which was: I never stopped criticizing him. I have the tapes to prove it.”

“The fact that you shared the same air was enough to make people crazy,” Hines argued. 

Of course, it’s perhaps worth noting that David’s piece was published a week after Bill Maher publicly reacted to the dinner on his show and praised the “gracious” and “measured” Trump. So the ensuing backlash had less to do with Maher sharing the same air as Trump, and more to do with him using his platform to defend a president whose most harmful policies have nothing to do with his ability to serve as an amiable dinner companion for the wealthy and famous.

Later, Maher admitted that never actually read David’s story. “But I got the gist of it,” he claimed. “I’m Hitler, or I’m having dinner with Hitler.” He then pointed out that Trump at least laughed during their dinner, even though he “never laughs in public,” inadvertently quoting the story he never bothered to read. 

“I realized I’d never seen him laugh before,” David’s narrator remarks. “Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard – the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler.”

Maher also suggested that he would be a “better” onscreen partner for Hines, saying that they should team-up to host a Live with Regis and Kathie Lee-esque morning show – which we’re guessing would air around one o’clock in the afternoon and be broadcast from Maher’s dank mancave.