(The Hill) — Bill Maher is acknowledging that the doom and gloom predictions he had about the economy being negatively impacted by President Trump’s tariff plan so far haven’t panned out.
“I remember I, along with probably most people, were saying at the beginning, by the Fourth of July… the economy was going to be tanked by then,” Maher said in a recent interview on his “Club Random” podcast with progressive political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen.
“And I was kind of like, well, that seems right to me,” Maher continued.
“But that didn’t happen,” the HBO “Real Time” host said of Trump’s trade strategy.
“Now, it could happen tomorrow. I’m just saying — that’s reality. So let’s work first from the reality of that, not from ‘I just hate Donald Trump,’ because that’s boring and doesn’t get us anywhere, and leads you to dishonesty” Maher said.
Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of other countries back in April, before a week later issuing a temporary pause on the hikes for most countries for three months. The “reciprocal” tariff rate is poised to take effect on August 1.
“The truth is, I don’t know what his strategy is,” Maher, a frequent Trump critic, said of the 47th president.
“But look, the stock market is at record highs. I know not everybody lives by the stock market, but I also drive around, I don’t see a country in a depression at all,” Maher said with a laugh.
“I see people out there just living their lives. And I would have thought — and I gotta own it — that the cut, that these tariffs were going to f—ing sink this economy by this time, and they didn’t,” he said.
“How do we deal with that fact? Because that’s the fact,” Maher said.
