The lesson for Maher was clear -- that dialogue is better than monologue, and that demonization kills dialogue. Here's the whole clip again, for those who missed it:

Most of this is res ipsa loquitur, as I wrote at the time, as Maher does a fine job of explaining himself -- as one would expect. Even so, Maher ended up tangling with Josh Rogin later in the same show over the supposed risk of being co-opted by Trump. Maher angrily rebuked Rogin for the assumption that dialogue meant that ideological capture, as though Maher was some kind of simpleton who didn't have any intellectual power or agency.

If Rogin's politely expressed concerns irritated Maher, just imagine what Maher will think when he reads Larry David's essay at the NYT. David -- the creator behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm -- offers a humorless 'satire' in which David goes full Godwin's Law by making Trump into Hitler. And I mean that literally, as the title of the essay makes clear -- "My Dinner With Adolf":

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.

Two weeks later, I found myself on the front steps of the Old Chancellery and was led into an opulent living room, where a few of the Führer’s most vocal supporters had gathered: Himmler, Göring, Leni Riefenstahl and the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII. We talked about some of the beautiful art on the walls that had been taken from the homes of Jews. But our conversation ended abruptly when we heard loud footsteps coming down the hallway. Everyone stiffened as Hitler entered the room.

He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly, it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents, and it was accompanied by a slap on my back. 

And David shivs Maher -- reportedly a friend, at least until now -- with this nasty conclusion:

“I must say, mein Führer, I’m so thankful I came. Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.” And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night.

Sheesh. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

So where to start with this ahistorical nonsense? Let's start first with the decision by the New York Times to publish this attack piece. It's not as if the Gray Lady has a policy of publishing all submissions; they fired then-Op-Ed editor James Bennet for running a column by Sen. Tom Cotton on potential federal responses to riots in multiple cities. They routinely run columns submitted by actual despots and tyrannies, publishing "luminaries" like Vladimir Putin and Iranian mullah mouthpiece Javad Zarif, just to mention a few. If there are parallels to Nazi regimes, it might be the one attempting to finish Hitler's mission by destroying the Jews in Israel. 

Add to that the leftist conceit adopted by David that they are fighting Hitler all over again with their La Résistance 2.0 against Trump. This is of a piece with the idea that pushing for biological-male intrusion into women's spaces is the moral equivalent of the 1940s-1960s Civil Rights Movement. They are radicals in desperate need of a narrative that justifies their radicalism, which creates pressure for more and more extremist claims.

Unfortunately for David and the rest of the nutcase Left, Trump is not Adolf Hitler, and he's not even a Vladimir Putin. Trump is taking some radical action to change the status quo, but it's in the opposite direction -- to destroy the federal bureaucratic state and reduce federal authority. Those were not notable goals of Hitler or the Nazis, as anyone who seriously studies either would know immediately. However, the federal bureaucratic state enforces the progressive agenda, which is why David's freaking out over Trump's actions to demolish it. 

And of course, Hitler didn't demand that universities and colleges put an end to anti-Semitic campaigns on their campuses. Just the opposite, in fact. And it also apparently requires reminding David and others that Hitler didn't actually make a habit of inviting his critics and opponents to dinner. Hitler mainly invited them to die in the streets at the hands of the SA before 1933, and to die in camps at the hands of the SS after that. 

David appears only well-educated enough to apply the lessons of the book Everyone I Dislike Is Hitler. It's the stupidest, least-compelling argument in politics. It's even dumber than accusing your opponents of being racists because they won't support your political agenda. Mike Godwin coined his eponymous 'law' to point out the intellectual stupidity of those who indulge in reductio ad Hitlerum, and what it says about their positions. 

That's what Maher warned about in this monologue, and why he accepted Trump's invitation. In order to debate issues and policies rationally, we need to dialogue with our opponents. That doesn't mean agreeing with them, but giving them a fair hearing and debating reality rather than straw men cooked up by morons who have nothing to add in the first place. 

What will Maher have to say about this on Friday? I don't usually tune into Real Time, but I may make some time Friday night to see the answer.