Bill Maher used part of his August 28, 2026, show to take back a claim he had made about President Donald Trump’s endorsement record, and he was blunt about the reason: the 80-year-old president had texted him personally to challenge it. Maher, 70, is the comedian behind HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
The line had run seven days earlier, on his August 21 broadcast. Quoting himself a week later, Maher told his audience he had said: “Trump used to win all his endorsements. Now he’s winning almost none of them. None of them.” One viewer was in no mood to let that stand.
On air, Maher said a viewer had taken serious offense at the remark and had contacted him directly — then took little time to identify that viewer as the president. Text messages pass between the two, Maher said, and the arrangement suits him, since he would rather have communication. Charts and a pile of information came back from Trump, according to Maher, whose earlier promise had been to say so on the air should his own claim not survive scrutiny.
It did not hold up. Maher concluded the president was right. “He’s right. I did overstate it. That wasn’t true. Overstated,” Maher said. His follow-up question, carrying a vulgarity the network bleeped in transcripts, was whether being one about everything was really so hard to give up.
The Numbers Behind the Retraction
The figures Maher read out came from Trump’s own accounting. Of the 260 candidates the president has endorsed this election cycle, primary voters have beaten only nine — a 97 percent success rate. Maher granted the point, telling his audience that Trump’s endorsements are still very powerful.
Broader counts land in much the same range. Ballotpedia counted 313 primary endorsements this cycle and calculated a 96 percent success rate. Trump, in an August 30 post on Truth Social, claimed a “99 percent SUCCESS Rate on Endorsements,” a perfect record in Senate primaries and 98 percent in House races, and called it “the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics.”
Maher did not give up the larger argument. His subject, he said, was the trend line, which he sees heading downward, and a run of lost governorships supplied his example. Republican primary voters this season rejected 10 Trump-endorsed candidates for statewide office or Congress, according to a CNN analysis that drew on endorsements compiled by Ballotpedia — “equal to the number who lost in 2018, 2020 and 2024 primaries combined.” Gubernatorial primaries accounted for five of the 10, House seats for four, and an attorney general race for one.
He worked both columns of the ledger as well. Some of his defeats, Trump contends by Maher’s account, come from loyally backing candidates who were doomed anyway, and Maher said part of that is true, something he does not doubt. The president still inflates the figure, Maher argued, by choosing easy winners, among them incumbents and contenders facing little or no opposition.
The Wins in South Carolina and Oklahoma
Two recent races served as Maher’s evidence that Trump’s political muscle remains intact where it counts. Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, 62, won the Republican Senate nomination in South Carolina by 52.3 percent to 47.7 percent over Rep. Ralph Norman in an August 25 runoff. Her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, had died, and Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to the vacant seat in July; an endorsement from Trump followed the same day, and a Myrtle Beach rally he headlined for her came on August 21. In November she faces Democrat Annie Andrews. Maher called her a “know-nothing sister,” then allowed that a star is what Trump remains when he turns up in a place like that, with voters coming out for him.
Oklahoma delivered a similar result: Mike Mazzei, the president’s pick, narrowly took the Republican nomination for governor in a runoff on that same August 25 date. He and state Attorney General Gentner Drummond had finished within a point of each other in a nine-candidate June primary. Wrapping up his revised stance, Maher said the full picture is more complicated than his original line allowed — but that, yes, he had overstated it. The correction came during a roundtable with the journalist Molly Jong-Fast and Rep. Byron Donalds, the Florida congressman who is his party’s nominee for governor there.
Trump Escalates With NBC
The president is waging a wider campaign against journalists who describe his endorsement record as anything short of dominant, and Maher’s apology marks one front of it. NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker said, during an August 30 appearance on NBC’s Washington station promoting that morning’s program, that he has “had some mixed results” on primary endorsements. Trump said she “will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.” Writing on Truth Social, he labeled the remark a “purposeful inaccuracy” and wrote that he hoped Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr “will take this Threat to our Country very seriously.” He filed nothing: no complaint, docket or proceeding against Welker or NBC exists. An NBC News spokesperson backed her — “Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her” — and she has moderated the program since September 2023. Carr answered on September 6, saying the president “is over the target” and that the commission is “looking at a lot of actions,” floating guidance warning broadcasters against airing “fake polls,” but announcing no action against the network.
The relationship between the two men has been volatile for years. Maher drew criticism over a private dinner with Trump at the White House on March 31, 2025, arranged by Kid Rock and also attended by Dana White; afterward he described the president as gracious and measured. Jabs have flown on social media and television on and off since, with Maher alternating between praise and ridicule before eventually raising a white flag on the feud. On June 28, he accepted the 27th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor during a ceremony at Washington’s Kennedy Center.
Concessions aside, Maher kept the last word. He had granted the math, defended the open line to the president and delivered his correction on the air as promised. Then he ended the segment with a one-line request aimed squarely at the White House: “Now, stop texting.”
