{"id":330929,"date":"2025-10-25T06:16:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T06:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330929\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T06:16:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T06:16:12","slug":"bill-maher-calls-white-house-just-a-building-after-demo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330929\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Maher Calls White House “Just A Building” After Demo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs Donald Trump<\/a> stirs up more national outrage over his demolition of the White House<\/a>\u2018s East Wing<\/a>, one of his favorite dinner guests<\/a> is brushing off the controversy.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Friday\u2019s episode of Real Time<\/a>, Bill Maher<\/a> gave a flippant response when guest panelist Michael Steele mourned \u201cthe destruction of a symbol of this government\u201d after the Trump administration had the historic<\/a> <\/a>structure torn down<\/a> to make way for his ballroom.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re talking about the White House? Oh, it\u2019s a building, Mike. It\u2019s a building.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSteele argued that Trump \u201ctore it down without accountability,\u201d explaining, \u201cIt\u2019s a building, maybe to you, but to a lot of Americans, it\u2019s not. And I\u2019m gonna tell you, as a young kid growing up in D.C., when my daddy took me by that building, it meant something to me as a 10-year-old. It meant something to me to grow up in a town where everybody in this country came and protested, and cried and screamed and laughed. So, that building, for me, was my childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMaher rebutted, \u201cFirst of all, I agree. I said, he should have gotten the permits. But that\u2019s how he does things. I agree. But it is just a building \u2026 that part of the building wasn\u2019t always there. Presidents do change the buildings. Nixon put in a bowling alley, Obama made the tennis court a basketball court. I can\u2019t get this mad about everything, Mike, I just can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe facade of the East Wing of the White House is demolished by work crews on Oct. 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.(Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe symbolism is, he\u2019s not leaving. That\u2019s what bothers me about it. Who puts in a giant ballroom if you\u2019re leaving?\u201d he added. \u201cOK, but that\u2019s the issue, not the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPanelist Kate Bedingfield argued that the destruction is an example of Trump\u2019s behavior being \u201cimpulsive, reckless, driven by his own desire for self-agrandizement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf this was the only thing he had done on that front, then I would give you, \u2018it\u2019s just a building,’\u201d said Bedingfield. \u201cBut it\u2019s not. It\u2019s part of a manner of governing that\u2019s tearing at some of the institutional foundations in this country, and that\u2019s scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMaher later had to swallow his own words after his writers apparently didn\u2019t get the memo about his lack of concern for the White House demolition, joking on his \u2018New Rules\u2019 segment: \u201cNow that President Trump is redecorating the White House, building a ballroom and hosting brunches at his new rose garden club\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter an uncomfortable pause, Maher continued, \u201cHe has to start a new series called Queer Eye for the Authoritarian Guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPhotos taken on Thursday appeared to show that the Trump administration has not only torn down the East Wing<\/a>\u2014which was built in 1902 and renovated in 1942\u2014but the East Colonnade, which included a movie theater that has hosted screenings for decades.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe White House has defended the project, noting that it is being privately funded and that many presidents of the past have made alterations. The area is being cleared to make way for Trump\u2019s planned $300 million ballroom, with a list of corporate donors<\/a> including Comcast and Amazon providing funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Donald Trump stirs up more national outrage over his demolition of the White House\u2018s East Wing, one…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":330930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[69,171,112708,4088,173,67,132,68,5223],"class_list":{"0":"post-330929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-real-time","11":"tag-real-time-with-bill-maher","12":"tag-tv","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-white-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115433346533567204","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}