The Kennedy Center will present the 27th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to Bill Maher.
The announcement comes one week after members of Trump’s administration said a report in the Atlantic, stating that Maher would be the recipient, was “fake news.”
“This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time.
“Literally FAKE NEWS,” White House Communications director Steven Cheung said.
On Thursday, the Kennedy Center confirmed Maher as the recipient for the ceremony set to take place June 28 at the arts institution. The program will premiere exclusively on Netflix, with the streaming date to be announced.
Public financial records for The Kennedy Center from fiscal 2024 underscore how the award is a driver of revenue, thanks to its corporate sponsorship and streaming deal with Netflix. The filings show that the Center recorded receipts of $5.2 million from The Mark Twain Prize.
The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recognizes individuals who have had an impact on American society in the same vein as Mark Twain.
Maher has hosted HBO’s Real Time for more than 20 years, after about a decade hosting Politically Incorrect on Comedy Central and ABC. He has received 42 Emmy nominations and won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer on the HBO Series VICE.
“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” said Roma Daravi, Vice President of Public Relations. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse – one politically incorrect joke at a time.”
“Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win,” Maher said “I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
Previous recipients of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize are Richard Pryor (1998), Jonathan Winters (1999), Carl Reiner (2000), Whoopi Goldberg (2001), Bob Newhart (2002), Lily Tomlin (2003), Lorne Michaels (2004), Steve Martin (2005), Neil Simon (2006), Billy Crystal (2007), George Carlin (2008), Bill Cosby (2009; rescinded in 2018), Tina Fey (2010), Will Ferrell (2011), Ellen DeGeneres (2012), Carol Burnett (2013), Jay Leno (2014), Eddie Murphy (2015), Bill Murray (2016), David Letterman (2017), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (2018), Dave Chappelle (2019), Jon Stewart (2022), Adam Sandler (2023), Kevin Hart (2024), and Conan O’Brien (2025).
