Bill Maher has grown tired of the excessive fuss over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., claiming President Donald Trump’s obsession with the historic landmark is hurting his approval ratings.
On the latest episode of his HBO talk show, Real Time with Bill Maher, he was joined by guests Vice President JD Vance, Democratic Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock and comic Larry Wilmore, who guest stars in Larry David’s newest comedy series, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.
In his opening monologue, Maher began by noting that America’s 250th anniversary is fast approaching.
“And you know what? Today it opened, Supergirl, perfect for the Fourth of July. Yeah, big superhero, another superhero movie opened this week, but what’s going on in Washington? Deadpool,” he quipped, playing on the title of the superhero films starring Ryan Reynolds.
“Oh, we’ve killed the reflecting pool. I’m tired of hearing about the goddamn reflecting pool, I’ve got to say,” Maher went on. “I don’t really give a s*** about the reflecting pool. And I love America, but I’ve gotta admit, we’re the only place you could make a pool improve by pissing in it.”
After Trump accused “lunatic liberals” of harming the renovation project, Maher quipped: “But you know, the problem is now, there are dead ducks in the pool, or possibly murdered by Antifa. I don’t know.”
Insisting that the pool is “dragging down the president’s approval ratings,” Maher added: “It’s like a little in the low 30s now in the country and among independents, 25 percent and 0 percent with ducks.”
Later in the episode, Maher speculated that Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be the Republican Party’s 2028 presidential nominee.
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Confronting Vance over Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, Maher told the vice president that he must put a stop to the baseless allegations.
“Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes an election can be: either we win, or they cheated. That s*** has to stop,” Maher said to Vance.
“And that means the person who has to stop it would be you or Marco. Can you tell me you will do that? Will you bring us back to the middle, at least on that, where we can concede elections, where it’s not either one of those two options?”
Vance agreed with the host that his party should be able to concede elections; however, he defended the president’s “core argument” about “problems that existed in 2020.”
“The biggest criticism I had of the 2020 election is that you had technology companies that were quite literally censoring negative information about the left and promoting negative information about the right,” Vance claimed.
“So, in a fundamental sense, like, if the First Amendment says that we have a free and open debate and then the American people judge based on that free and open debate, the sense in which I think the election in 2020 was rigged,” he continued.
“I’m sorry, is that you had technology companies that were putting their thumb on the scale in a way that completely obliterated the real open exchange of ideas. By the way, it didn’t happen in 2024, but it happened in 2020, and it was a problem.”
“Well, you’re gonna get a big pat on the back when you go back to the White House,” Maher retorted.
