Bill Maher Tells NPR That ‘Genius’ Trump Is Making Them Look Foolish

Real Time host Bill Maher said he doesn’t care about things like President Donald Trump‘s new ballroom or Reflecting Pool renovations because these are all tactics meant to distract from what’s important.

Speaking with NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Wednesday’s (July 15) episode of the Newsmakers podcast, Maher noted how news organizations such as NPR were falling for Trump’s ploy to create “distractions” for the media to report on and discuss rather than the bigger issues.

Maher labeled the president’s proposed 250-foot-tall arch in Washington, D.C., as “meaningless.” He told Inskeep, “These are the things I don’t care about. This is his genius getting you to care about…”

Inskeep interrupted to ask, “I shouldn’t care about that arch or whatever?”

“F*** no,” Maher responded. “Absolutely not. Not the arch, not the pool, not the ballroom. This is all meaningless stuff. Steve Bannon famously said, ‘The way we win is we flood the zone with s***,’ and you’re eating the s***. You don’t have to.”

The Club Random podcast host said it matters more to “care about what’s important,” listing things such as “the politicization of the Justice Department, DOGE, ICE, corruption, you know, lots of things.”

“And even stuff where it was not a bad idea, but they screwed up the execution like the Iran war,” he continued. “I mean, DOGE, ICE, all these things that they could have done better and they just can’t help themselves.”

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Maher went on to say, “This is a country where people get drunk with power when they get in. Happens to the Democrats to a degree, too. And they always go too far and then the other side gets elected and then we just live in this world where everybody’s just always undoing what the other one has just done.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Inskeep asked Maher about his controversial White House dinner with Trump last year. Despite having what was described as a friendly meeting, Maher revealed that Trump soon returned to attacking him when Real Time resumed criticizing him.

“There was a time when he would yell at me by text,” Maher said, recalling a specific message in which Trump told him, “‘I thought you were better than you used to be. You’re still a lunatic.'”

Inskeep also asked about Maher supposedly telling the president, “You’re scaring people,” during the White House meet-up. Maher said he couldn’t recall exactly what Trump said in response, “But it wasn’t, ‘I’m going to stop.'”