Comedian Bill Maher on Friday alluded to the notion that President Trump could seek a third term after the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a massive ballroom.
Maher told his panelists on HBO’s “Real Time,” former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele and former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield, that “I can’t get this mad about everything.”
Steele pushed back on what the symbolism of the demolition means. Maher replied, “The symbolism is he’s not leaving. That’s what bothers me about it. Who puts in a giant ballroom if you’re leaving?”
Maher later accused of Trump of being “drunk with power.”
He commented on the East Wing demolition at other points in the show, referencing former President Nixon installing a bowling alley in the White House and former President Obama turning the tennis court into a basketball court.
As for Trump’s renovations, Maher joked that the president would not stop the demolition “until he finds the [Jeffrey] Epstein files.”
White House officials have said the reportedly 90,000-square-foot privately funded ballroom will be completed before Trump’s second term ends in 2029.
Maher’s commentary follows controversial comments made this week by former White House adviser Steve Bannon. In an interview with The Economist released Thursday, Bannon said there was a “plan” to get around the two-term limit set in the 22nd Amendment.
“Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” he said.
Bannon did not elaborate but said at “the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is.” When editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes pushed back about “the coherence of the things you just told me” when Bannon said Trump needs another term.
“If the American people, with the mechanisms we have, put Trump back in office, are the American people tearing up the Constitution?” Bannon replied. “Would the American people be going against the spirit of the Constitution, ma’am?”
Minton Beddoes said yes and that the outcome is a “populist justification for a quasi-dictatorship.” Bannon disagreed and said Trump has made compromises on domestic and foreign issues.
While Trump has joked about running for a third term before, even on the campaign trail before his loss in 2020, he said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in August that he will “probably not” run in 2028.
“I’d like to run,” Trump said. “I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had.”
But in March, Trump said he was “not joking” about the chance to run for a third term.
“We’re in the high 70s in many polls, in the real polls, and you see that,” he told NBC News’s Kristen Welker at the time. “And, and you know, we’re very popular. And you know, a lot of people would like me to do that. But, I mean, I basically tell them, we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”
The 22nd Amendment prohibits presidents from seeking a third term. The amendment was ratified in 1951, years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt secured an unprecedented fourth term.
To repeal the amendment, Trump would need support from two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate or a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures. The amendment would also require approval from three-quarters of state legislatures.
