There’s an odd and iconic image — no doubt you’ve seen it — of Richard Nixon meeting Elvis Presley in the Oval Office. This wasn’t that.

Whereas The King and the would-be king had shared a mutual admiration, the relationship between Bill Maher and Donald Trump — if it can be called a relationship — was anything but cordial. Maher, an ardent lefty who has nonetheless been stricken with occasional bouts of common sense, has for years been one of Trump’s most foul-mouthed critics. So it was noteworthy when Kid Rock, a friend of both men, tried to bring them together.

During a recent episode of Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, he broke the news to comic Andrew Schulz: “Kid Rock was here a couple of weeks ago, and he said, ‘I want you to meet Trump.’ He said, ‘I’m gonna take you to the White House.’ So now we’re gonna do that.”

As for the flack that he’d no doubt catch for meeting Trump, Maher was dismissive: “There will be lots of people on the left who will be like, ‘How dare you talk to this man.’ … I’m not playing this game that you mean girls play. ‘Oh, you know what? You can’t sit at my lunch table because I’m just not talking to you.’ Not talking to you? You lost the election. Who the f*** do you think you have to talk to?”

He then added, “It’s an honor to be invited to the White House under any circumstances,” before making a point that he’d been making regularly for months:

You can not like Trump. You can hate him. But you can’t hate everybody who voted for him. … I don’t hate half the country, and I don’t wanna hate half the country. It’s just not where my mind ever wants to go for my own mental health.

But while Maher was committed, Trump seemed a bit less than enthusiastic, at least publicly, about Monday’s meeting. On Sunday, he Truthed:

I got a call from a very good guy, and friend of mine, Kid Rock, asking me whether or not it would be possible for me to meet, in the White House, with Bill Maher, a man who has been unjustifiably critical of anything, or anyone, TRUMP. I really didn’t like the idea much, and don’t like it much now, but thought it would be interesting. The problem is, no matter how much he likes your Favorite President, ME, he will publicly proclaim what a terrible guy I am, etc. … Who knows, though, maybe I’ll be proven wrong? In any event, I’m doing a favor for a friend. I look forward to meeting with Bill Maher, Kid Rock and, I believe, even the Legendary Dana White will be present. It might be fun or, it might not, but you will be the first to know!

This, to me, seems like he was working the refs. I get the sense that if there’s one thing Trump truly believes, it’s that he can find common ground with just about anyone in a face-to-face encounter.

Kid Rock is certainly a believer. “It could not have been better,” he said Tuesday in a “Fox & Friends” interview. He continued:

Everyone was so surprised, so, so pleasant. The most shocking thing to me was, you know, Bill’s obviously a very big liberal, very hard on the president. But he’s donated a lot of money to other politicians, you know, you’ve had Biden, Clinton, Obama [but] he had never been to the White House. And the president was so gracious. He took us up to the private residence. We saw the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Bedroom. … and we talked about things we had in common, like ending wokeness [and] securing the border. The president was asking him what he thought about policy going on with Iran and Israel and things. It blew my mind. I was very proud.

“Nothing happens,” he added, “if people don’t break bread together and meet face-to-face.”

Incidentally, in what was no doubt an attempt to lighten the mood, Kid Rock opted for patriotic kitsch at Monday night’s bread-breaking, wearing his 250th-anniversary “getting shot out of a cannon” uniform rather than, say, a T-shirt sporting the, ahem, unique logo of his Bombardier Challenger 600.

Maher, for his part, didn’t want to tip his hand about the meeting, but he did tease it in a post Tuesday: “Hey everybody, thank you for all the interest in my dinner with the president last night — I promise, all will be revealed on the next Real Timer on April 11. As it’s April 1 today, no one would believe what I said today anyway!”

All this reminds me of what a friend, a furniture executive, told me about a meeting he had with the pre-presidential Trump more than a dozen years ago. He came away convinced that the awful person we see caricatured in the media is nothing like the Donald Trump that a person meets face to face. He said Trump treats everyone graciously — from the executives he’s meeting with to the folks serving the water and appetizers. And he calls everyone by their name.

“He was into the details,” my friend summed up. “Which means little things matter to Trump.”

As for the big things, the big picture, this was Donald Trump building bridges, making inroads into the realm of the persuadable, and further marginalizing the Trump-deranged Left.

If nothing else, it was a fascinating cultural moment. And it’ll be interesting to see the reaction to Maher at this point. Will he be ostracized by polite company in Hollywood? Will his interaction with Trump change him at all? Will it defang him toward Trump in any way?

We’ll find out on April 11.