#dinnerwithtrump “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David skewered comedian Bill Maher’s recent meal with President Donald Trump in a satirical essay in The New York Times this week. The title: “My Dinner With Adolf.”

In the essay, published Monday, David wrote from the perspective of a “vocal critic” of Hitler who is invited to dinner with the dictator and finds him to be surprisingly warm and personable.

“Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning,” David wrote in the six-paragraph essay. 

“Two hours later, the dinner was over, and the Führer escorted me to the door. ‘I am so glad to have met you. I hope I’m no longer the monster you thought I was.’ ‘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.’

David’s characterization of the imaginary dinner mirrored language Maher used in describing his real-life meeting with Trump on March 31. In his opening monologue of the April 11 episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the 69-year-old comedian said that “the guy I met” was not the same as the public-facing Trump, describing the president as “gracious and measured.”

David did not refer to Maher or Trump by name, but Patrick Healy, the Times’ deputy opinion editor, made the satirical connection explicit in a short message to readers Monday that accompanied the essay. Healy wrote that he “understood Larry’s intent in writing this piece.”