{"id":558858,"date":"2025-11-09T07:04:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T07:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/558858\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T07:04:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T07:04:19","slug":"bill-maher-lets-rip-on-what-he-really-thinks-of-trumps-250m-white-house-renovations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/558858\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Maher lets rip on what he really thinks of Trump’s $250m White House renovations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Maher has said he does not ‘give a sh*t’ about President Trump’s White House<\/a>\u00a0ballroom renovation and called the media’s coverage of it one sided.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking on Friday’s episode of his HBO<\/a> talk show, Real Time, the TV host said: ‘And the ballroom? I don’t give a sh*t. I really don’t give a sh*t,’ as his guest, Democrat\u00a0Florida<\/a>\u00a0congressman Jared Moskowitz, looked at him with a concerned expression.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maher went on to criticize the media’s coverage as ‘always on one side or the other.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said: ‘When they first mentioned it,\u00a0it was all about, “Oh, my God, he\u2019s desecrating the White House.” Then I finally read, “Oh, well, they\u2019ve done sh*t to the White House before.”‘\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Real Time host went on to say, ‘its just a building, I think’ before highlighting that the current White House setup does not have a formal venue to host state dinners, using temporary outdoor constructions instead.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘They’re doing it in a tent,’ Maher said with an incredulous tone. ‘This is America!’<\/p>\n

The president himself has previously lamented the use of tents to host state dinners,\u00a0describing them as a ‘disaster’ when it rains and saying they are ‘more than a football field away from the main entrance.’<\/p>\n

Trump’s White House ballroom ambitions go back years. During the Obama administration, Trump cited the use of ‘little tents’ to host state dinners and offered to build a ballroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"On <\/p>\n

On Friday’s episode of Bill Maher’s HBO talk show, Real Time, the political commentator said he does not ‘give a sh*t’ about President Trump’s White House ballroom renovation<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The White House’s East Wing was demolished to make way for a privately funded $300 million ballroom<\/p>\n

During a 2016 campaign event in Ohio, the president said: ‘They turned it down. I was going to put up $100million to build a ballroom at the White House, because having a tent is not that good.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maher seemed to agree with the president’s point of view that a ballroom would be a worthwhile investment and pointed to the fact that it is being privately funded without subsidies from taxpayer money.<\/p>\n

Critics say that because funds are coming from a few dozen wealthy companies, organizations and individuals it risks the perception that they are buying favor with the president.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A list of those funding the $300 million project<\/a>\u00a0was released by the White House on October 23. The White House has said it is acting with transparency and consistently denied that there is any risk of impropriety.<\/p>\n

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reacted to the list by saying companies that donated may end up having ‘a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest, because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.’<\/p>\n

Maher’s comments on Friday were not the first time he discussed the ballroom on his show. Last month, the Real Talk host said he was concerned about the ‘symbolism’ of the renovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘The symbolism is he\u2019s not leaving,’ Maher said. ‘Who puts in a giant ballroom if you\u2019re leaving?’<\/p>\n

\"Trump's <\/p>\n

Trump’s White House ballroom ambitions go back years. The president offered to build a ballroom when Obama was in office, but he was turned down<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The White House released a list of ballroom donors on October 23. Here, Trump holds up an architectural rendering of the planned interior<\/p>\n

Maher was consistent in his assertion that the White House is ‘just a building’ in both episodes discussing the renovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In last month’s episode,\u00a0National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was a guest on the show and said: ‘We watched this week the destruction of a symbol of this government, of our democracy, of our pluralistic society.’<\/p>\n

Maher responded: ‘You\u2019re talking about the White House? Oh, it\u2019s a building, Mike.’<\/p>\n

But the host did agree with Steele’s assertion that Trump tore the East Wing down ‘without accountability.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘You know, he should have gotten the permits, but that’s how he does things,’ Maher said. ‘I agree, but it is just a building, first of all.’<\/p>\n

Maher went on to highlight that other presidents, from Nixon to Obama, made renovations to the White House and said: ‘I can’t get this mad about everything, Mike. I just can’t.’<\/p>\n

Trump is certainly not the first president to renovate the White House, but other projects such as Obama’s basketball court and Nixon’s bowling alley were far less grand in scale and did not cost hundreds of millions of dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The last renovation to the White House’s exterior in similar scope and size was in 1942, when FDR had the East Wing constructed. That is the section of the building that has been demolished to make way for the ballroom.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The demolition of the East Wing and construction of the ballroom is the largest renovation to the White House’s exterior since FDR had the East Wing built in 1942<\/p>\n

\"This <\/p>\n

This picture of the White House is from 1916-1919, before the East Wing and other large renovations to the building had taken place<\/p>\n

The wartime construction of the East Wing was controversial in its time, with Republicans calling it wasteful and accusing Roosevelt of ‘using the project to bolster his presidency’s image.’<\/p>\n

Since then, renovations to the White House have largely been contained to its interior. Some major ones under Obama and Truman also cost tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, but that money went to infrastructure improvements rather than dramatic changes to the historic building’s footprint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On October 21, the White House released a list of all the renovations which have taken place at the president’s residency since 1902 along with a statement that accused ‘unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies’ of manufacturing outrage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The announcement called the ballroom ‘a bold, necessary addition that echoes the storied history of improvements and additions from commanders-in-chief to keep the executive residence as a beacon of American excellence.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Maher has said he does not ‘give a sh*t’ about President Trump’s White House\u00a0ballroom renovation and called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[92,77,2452,6894,382,16,15,1018],"class_list":{"0":"post-558858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-media","11":"tag-obama","12":"tag-tv","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-white-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115518471193358493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}