Bill Maher admitted he is “kind of jealous” of Donald Trump’s ability to sidestep red tape during Friday’s episode of Real Time.
The U.S. president drew scrutiny this week as demolition on the East Wing of the White House began so crews could make room for Trump’s new $250 million ballroom.
“As the guy who took three years to get my f***ing solar panels in, I’m kind of jealous,” the talk show host quipped.
“I’m kind of in awe because I live in L.A., where you need 13 permits to put a bird feeder on your deck,” Maher continued before joking: “He says he won’t stop until he finds those Epstein files.”
Sharing a photo of an excavator tearing through the East Wing, Maher said it should be filed under “metaphors that are almost too obvious.”
Trump promised in July that his ballroom construction wouldn’t “interfere with the current building.”
“It’ll be near it but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he told reporters at the time.
“So that was a lie,” fellow late night host Stephen Colbert pointed out on his talk show earlier this week.
Colbert went on to call Trump’s destruction of the White House “deeply unsettling” and joked, “We are not giving him the security deposit back.”
Elsewhere on Real Time Friday, Maher sparred with guest panelist Michael Steele over what the latter described as “the destruction of a symbol of this government.”
“You’re talking about the White House?" Maher asked. “Oh, it’s a building, Mike.”
“Okay, Bill, it’s a building maybe to you, but to a lot of Americans it’s not,” the MSNBC political analyst argued.
Maher responded: “Presidents do change the buildings. Nixon put in a bowling alley, Obama made the tennis court a basketball court. I can’t get this mad about everything, Mike, I just can’t.
“The symbolism is, he’s not leaving. That’s what bothers me about it. Who puts in a giant ballroom if you’re leaving?” he added.
On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote Monday: “Completely separate from the White House itself, the East Wing is being fully modernized as part of this process, and will be more beautiful than ever when it is complete!”
Trump also reminded followers that the project is being “privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”
Maher, often a sharp critic of Trump, unexpectedly met with the president after an invitation was brokered by their mutual friend Kid Rock in April. The host left the evening with a revised opinion, speaking glowingly of the commander-in-chief.
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