Comedian and HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher has a message for his Hollywood peers: they’re “losers.”

Mr. Maher, in a New York Times interview published Sunday ahead of his show’s Jan. 20 return from hiatus, said he is worried that President-elect Donald Trump would use the coercive power of the federal government to enact revenge on enemies, but added that celebrities do themselves no favors by loitering in a self-congratulatory “bubble.”

“We’re the losers now, so it behooves us to break out of that bubble more,” Mr. Maher told The Times.

The comedian addressed actress Meryl Streep’s anti-Trump Golden Globe acceptance speech Jan. 8.

“It’s very insular, just the liberals talking to themselves, which they are very good at doing,” Mr. Maher said.

Former President George W. Bush was also discussed, albeit in a more positive light than Mr. Trump.

“I never, ever, ever felt worried — it never crossed my mind — that George Bush would do something crazy, even though I knew he hated me. He never sued me for a joke,” Mr. Maher said.

Mr. Trump briefly filed a $5 million lawsuit in February 2013 against the comedian after he appeared on NBC’s “Tonight Show” and made a lewd comment about the billionaire’s mother. Mr. Maher, referring to Mr. Trump’s lengthy quest to track down President Obama’s birth certificate, joked that if he saw a birth certificate that proved the Republican was not the “spawn” of an orangutan then he would donate $5 million to charity.

The lawsuit was withdrawn in April 2013.

“No one knows what this man is capable of,” Mr. Maher told the newspaper. “It is a very troubling idea that the FBI is politicized. When the internal police department is politicized, that’s a place I don’t want to be on the wrong side of — I mean, that’s fascism.”

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