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“Real Time” host Bill Maher sounded the alarm on the “symbolism” behind President Donald Trump’s renovations to the White House and revealed what “bothers” him about the demolition of the East Wing.
“The symbolism is he’s not leaving,” the late-night host told his panel on Friday. “Who puts in a giant ballroom if you’re leaving?”
On Friday, the East Wing, where guests and tourists entered for events, was demolished.
Trump’s plan to construct a 90,000-square-foot ballroom is estimated to cost $300 million, which he says is privately funded by himself, several major tech companies and “many generous patriots.”
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Democratic leaders and liberal media figures condemned President Donald Trump breaking ground on the White House ballroom construction project this week. (Andrew Harnik/Getty)
Although Maher objected to Trump’s demolition, he sparred with former RNC chairman Michael Steele over whether the White House is “just a building.”
“We watched this week the destruction of a symbol of this government,” Steele lamented. “Of our democracy, of our pluralistic society.”
“You’re talking about the White House?” Maher countered. “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.
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Steele went on to call the White House his “childhood,” describing what it meant to him as he grew up in Washington, D.C.
“I’m going to 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,” he continued.
The White House said President Donald Trump would directly reveal a name for the upcoming White House ballroom. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“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,” Steele said. “And I was a part of that. So that building, to me, was my childhood.”
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Steele then said that Trump tore the East Wing down “without accountability.” The late-night host said he agreed with Steele on that.
“You know, he should have gotten the permits, but that’s how he does things,” Maher contended. “I agree, but it is just a building, first of all.”
“That part of the building wasn’t always there,” he continued. “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.”
Photo of the White House during President Truman’s renovations. (Harry S. Truman Library Presidential Library and Museum/NARA)
Steele’s fellow panelist, former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield, weighed in on the dispute.
“If this was the only impulsive, reckless, you know driven by his own desire for self-aggrandizement, if this was only the only thing he had done on that front, then I would give you it’s just a building,” Bedingfield conceded.
“But it’s not. It’s part of a manner of governing that is tearing at some of the foundations, the institutional foundations in this country,” she argued. “And that’s scary.”
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Similar to his panelists, the late-night host warned that Trump is “drunk with power” at another point in the show.
“What could President Trump not do?” Maher asked.
