Bill Maher has slammed the “hypocrites” in the Trump administration for their “lame” excuses surrounding a racist video President Donald Trump shared to social media.
The video, which was posted to Trump’s Truth Social account on Thursday night, depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as apes in the jungle.
“Trump did a Roseanne,” Maher told his Real Time audience on Friday about the now-deleted video that Trump both claimed wasn’t posted by him and that it was, but that he didn’t watch it all the way through.
“The defense, I thought, from the administration, was rather lame. They said, “He did not mean to hit share. He meant to hit like,’” Maher quipped.
The libertarian-leaning late-night host, 70, was referencing the cancellation of fellow comic Roseanne Barr, who lost her revived sitcom Roseanne in 2018 after she posted a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a former Obama adviser.
Barr, 73, blamed the “joke” on her use of the sedative drug Ambien before deleting it and apologizing.
Trump, 79, has so far refused to apologize for the racist mockery, claiming that he “didn’t make a mistake,” but simply hadn’t watched the entire video when he sent it to his staff to post.
“I am, by the way, the least racist president you’ve had in a long time, as far as I’m concerned,” Trump told reporters on Friday evening.
The White House has, however, rejected any suggestion that the video itself is racist.
“Karoline Leavitt, she’s his very loyal press spokesperson, she said the president was just reposting a meme of him as the king of the jungle, with Democrats as characters from The Lion King, as world leaders do,” Maher said.
“Of course, there are two things a little wrong with this one: there are no apes in The Lion King. Two, if it’s a cartoon character, it’s OK? That’s a rule now?”
“So it’s OK if somebody made a cartoon of Elmer Fudd shooting Charlie Kirk, that would be OK, you f---ing hypocrites?”
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt said in a statement about the backlash to the video.
Maher referenced the statement, asking, “You know, like the lawsuit Trump has going over a joke he didn’t like at the Emmys?”
The perpetually online president lashed out at 2026 Emmy host Trevor Noah on Truth Social early Monday morning over a joke he made about Trump spending time on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
“Looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$,” Trump wrote.
“I’m beginning to think this country is a little sleazy,” Maher said.
