Bill Maher to get Mark Twain Prize in final Kennedy Center event before 2-year Trump closure

Bill Maher will receive this year’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, in what organizers say will be the final event at the Kennedy Center after President Trump announced it would be shuttered for two years for renovations.

The HBO “Real Time” host will receive the award at a June 28 gala that will be premiere on Netflix, the Kennedy Center announced on Thursday. 

“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations, said in a statement.

“For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse — one politically incorrect joke at a time,” Daravi said.

The announcement came after the White House initially denied a report last week that Maher was poised to receive the top comedy award.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had called the report in The Atlantic “fake news,” saying, “Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.”

“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 in a statement.

“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,” Maher, 70, said. 

Maher, a frequent and longtime critic of President Trump, praised him as “gracious and measured” after meeting with the commander in chief at a........

© The Hill