NEWS'He Is Racist': Wayne Brady Calls Out Bill Maher in Scathing Rant
Comedian Wayne Brady blasted 'racist' Bill Maher in recent comments, reigniting a decades-old feud he has had with the HBO host.
May 8 2026, Published 10:42 a.m. ET
Emmy-winning comedian Wayne Brady explicitly called political commentator Bill Maher a racist during an interview on Tony Award-winning playwright, actor, and poet Sarah Jones' podcast, “America, Who Hurt You?”
Of the HBO host, Brady, who recently came out as pansexual, said, "He is racist, and I don't care," reigniting a feud that has lasted over a decade.
“Bill Maher can say that I have all these Black friends, dah, dah, dah,” the Let’s Make a Deal host said.
In 2010, Maher criticized President Barack Obama by saying he wished the president were more "gangsta" and less "Wayne Brady.”
Wayne Brady reignited his feud with Bill Maher.
“It took Dave Chappelle recently saying something. Then I told people the day that I said to Bill Maher after he was using that joke of saying, well, ‘I wish that President Obama was less Wayne Brady and more,’ I forget which gangster rapper or whatnot,” he said. “Even that, how dare you, as a white man, try to define this thing?”
In his December 2025 Netflix special, The Unstoppable, comedian Chappelle launched a scathing critique of Maher, calling him a "cracker-a--" and criticizing his "smug" commentary.
In a 2010 interview with CNN, Maher compared Obama to Brady, sparking a vitriolic feud.
“I thought when we elected the first Black president, as a comedian, I thought that two years in that I’d be making jokes about what a ‘gangsta’ he was,” Maher said. “And not that he’s President Wayne Brady, you know. I thought we were getting [incarcerated rap mogul] Suge Knight.”
The comedian argued that as a white man, Maher has no right to define what it means to be Black.
Brady snapped at the time that he would “gladly slap the s--- out of Bill Maher in front of Coco and Ebony and Fox, the three ladies of the night he has hired.”
The comedian argued that as a white man, Maher has no right to define what it means to be Black.
Brady accused Maher of believing that his "proximity" to Black people — specifically citing Maher's alleged history of dating Black women — gives him a "pass" to speak offensively about Black culture.
“There was a party way back in the day that I went to at the Playboy Mansion I was invited to, and there was Bill Maher with two sisters on his arm,” he said. “I’m never gonna be one to yuck your yum, but yuck.”
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Brady clarified that while he doesn't personally know Maher.
“Hmm. This is a cat who believes that his proximity and things you can use gives you the right to say what you want to say about another, people whose shoes you never walk in,” Brady said.
Brady clarified that while he doesn't personally know Maher, he finds his words "vitriolic" and harmful because they encourage reductive views of people.
Wayne Brady said Bill Maher isn't 'funny' to him.
“So I’ll say it out loud that I don’t hate Bill Maher. I don’t know him as a person like that, but what I do know is, I know his words,” he said. “So based on your words, I don’t like you as a human because you’re harmful to other people with the views that you espouse and the things that he said and the platform that he has.”
“He’s not funny anymore to me. It’s vitriolic because it just encourages the asinine behaviors and reactions in those whose default setting is to be reductive of people,” he concluded.
