Bill Maher On Hasselbeck Feud: I Kid, Elisabeth!

Comedian opens up to David Letterman about his tension-filled appearance on The View

By Josh Grossberg Nov 16, 2011 5:02 PMTags

Bill Maher can't quite resist keeping a good feud going, especially when the object of his wisecracks is Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

During an appearance Tuesday night on The Late Show With David Letterman, the funnyman talked about the nasty spat he got into with the View cohost earlier that day when he turned up on the morning gabfest to plug his new book and Hasselbeck ambushed him about a joke he once made about her.

Needless to say, Maher had fond memories of the fireworks.

"You kind of walked into a deal there, huh?" Letterman asked him.

"I was abused. I felt like a teenage boy at Penn State," quipped Maher. "It's funny, I am never in the role of the victim...It was like, thank you, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, for making me look good!

"She had some bug up her ass," he added.

Hasselbeck turned heads when she asked Maher about a joke on his Feb. 4 episode of HBO's Real Time in which he offered up the following observation about the sexual assault of CBS News correspondent Lara Logan: "New rule: Now that Hosni Mubarak has released Lara Logan, he must put her intrepid hotness on a plane immediately. In exchange, we will send Elisabeth Hasselbeck."

A deeply offended Elisabeth subsequently hijacked the discussion by taking him to task for the joke, which she said "wasn't that funny."

Noting he does a comedy show, Maher countered that Hasselbeck's a public figure and therefore "fodder for comedians."

"I do draw the line, but I also live on the line," the comic clarified. "I do a different kind of show. I'm on HBO…what you have to know is, somebody has to be out on the ledge to know where the line is."

When Elisabeth continued pressing him on his comment "on behalf of all women," her fellow View cohosts defended Maher and tried to tamp down on the confrontation and soothe Hasselbeck's evidently hurt feelings. (Said Barbara Walters: "I went through years of Barbara Wa Wa and I survived").

On Letterman, Maher later tried to make nice.

"Look, I'm only kidding. I like her a lot. We have this relationship on TV where we hate each other," said the comedian.

"It's like big-time wrestling," cracked Letterman.

"Exactly. It makes the sex hotter," agreed Maher.

Somehow, we can't imagine Elisabeth feels the same way.