Bill Maher on Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Blowup: “The Real Housewives of the White House”
Bill Maher has an idea for a new show: “The Real Housewives of the White House.”
The Real Time host opened the latest episode of the HBO show by sharing his reaction to the “shouting match” that took place earlier Friday between President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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“What else is going on? Not much. Nothing comes to mind,” Maher quipped to laughter from the audience. “Oh, in World War 3 news, we’re on the other side now.”
The three leaders got into a tense back and forth during a meeting in the Oval Office, which ultimately led to Zelensky being asked to leave the White House. While Trump, Vance and Zelensky initially met before signing a minerals deal (which never got signed) that Trump said would have moved Ukraine closer to ending its war with Russia, according to the Associated Press, Trump ended up berating Zelensky the last 10 minutes of the meeting.
“You’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have,” Trump told Zelensky at one point. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that Zelensky’s main objective going into the meeting was to press Trump not to abandon his country and to warn against moving too close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Before showing a clip of the heated engagement on Real Time, Maher prefaced, “It devolved into this shouting match, which I’m sure Trump thinks is good TV.” After, that’s when the comedian declared it “The Real Housewives of the White House.”
Later in the show, Maher sat down with guests Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff and mayor of Chicago, and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, to get their perspective on the fiery meeting.
“You know, it’s funny, but it’s really tragic to see the president of the United States and the vice president bully, berate, demean, cajole somebody who depends on the United States for its survival,” Zakaria said. “More than that, over the last 100 years the United States, whether it’s supported Britain at the right moment, whether it’s supported the allies in World War I, it was always clear morally, politically whose side we were on. We were on the side of the victim of aggression. We were on the side of the democracies. We were against the dictators. We were against the aggressors.”
He continued, “And to see this bizarre moral reversion… I mean it was absolutely clear in that listening to Trump, he’s much more comfortable and sympathetic with Vladimir Putin.”
Emanuel backed up Zakaria’s comments, adding, “This will not work with the American people.”
“For a long time our foreign policy has been basically internationalist versus isolationist. That’s kind of been the structure. Now, we have a foreign policy of either principles or predatory,” he continued. “And I don’t think the American people who think of themselves are gonna want to see themselves as we want those minerals for this price, we’re gonna take Greenland for this, we’re gonna take that. That is not where the American people have a self-image and especially not the way it’s being done and conducted this way.”
Chrystia Freeland, the former Canadian Finance Minister and Liberal leadership candidate, was also a guest on the latest episode of Real Time.
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