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Comedian Roasts Obama’s Presidential Library As ‘Alien’ Monolith 

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Bill Maher
Photo Credit: Angela George, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Bill Maher took one look at Barack Obama’s new presidential center and saw less civic monument than sci-fi skyline.

On Friday’s “Real Time,” Maher turned a panel chat with Rep. Ro Khanna and Jonathan Martin into a roast of the newly opened Chicago campus.

“It looks like something aliens built in Dubai,” Maher remarked.

The Chicago campus opened last week with a major ceremony, but its towering gray centerpiece quickly became the visual punchline.

Maher’s complaint quickly moved beyond architecture.

“It cost $850 million,” he added later. “I don’t understand why progressives like this. Couldn’t that, you know, money be better spent on something else. Who’s going to go to this?”

Khanna pushed back by framing the project as a monument to a historic presidency.

“At a time that Elon Musk is talking about sending people to Mars, you’re telling me that spending up to a billion dollars, $1 billion, on commemorating the first and only African-American who’s ever been president isn’t worth it?” Khanna said.

The Obama Center jab was only one part of Maher’s broader irritation with the left.

The “Real Time” host also turned his fire on Democrats he accused of acting embarrassed by patriotism until campaign season forces them to rediscover it.

As the country nears its 250th birthday, Maher warned liberals not to let Trump become the excuse for surrendering the flag.

“Everybody has to start getting a little more excited for America’s birthday,” Maher said. “Our big 250 is coming up. It’s on July 4th for the kids in our public school. And I think that’s a pretty big deal.”

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Maher conceded the current occupant of the White House complicated the mood.

“Problem is, there’s kind of a stink on it because you-know-who is president right now,” he added, before noting concerns that Trump would make the anniversary about himself. “So the left half of the country fears he’ll make the anniversary about him — of course he will.”

Maher said that still was not a reason for Democrats to sit out the country’s birthday.

“This is about America. He isn’t America. He’s a temporary caretaker of America, America’s employee. And the message should be that America isn’t actually his and that no one’s side gets to own being psyched about the country,” Maher argued.

Then he mocked the idea of treating the national celebration like an unwanted high school party invitation.

“So I’m not down with this attitude of ‘Well, we’re having a party, but if Trump’s going, I’m not.’ That’s so high school it should be in the Epstein files,” he added. “Go to the party; it’s a big celebration. You probably won’t run into him. This country’s 3.8M square miles, and that’s without Greenland.”

The line drew laughs from the studio audience, but Maher kept pressing the point.

Maher also suggested Democrats had overplayed some of their darkest Trump predictions, including warnings about whether he would leave office after his 2020 defeat.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris also became part of the monologue.

He then used Harris’ 2024 “take back the flag” pitch as an example of patriotism Democrats remember too late.

“The message that most threatens authoritarians isn’t America sucks. It’s America is ours too. Every election year, Democrats seem to remember patriotism for about an hour at their convention when they’re trying to win back swing voters. The whole message of Kamala’s speech in 2024 was take back the flag. That’s why she talked about America like a pageant contestant,” Maher said.

“Hard to believe she lost, huh? Well, you can’t take back the flag in an hour if the rest of the time you treat patriotism as something vaguely embarrassing.”

Trump, meanwhile, has been planning a July 4 Washington rally he has billed as “spectacular,” complete with music and military flyovers.

The anniversary rollout also features a record-breaking fireworks display and a 16-day “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall.

The spectacle politics had already begun with last weekend’s South Lawn UFC event, held on Trump’s 80th birthday before more than 4,000 attendees.

Maher had mocked that spectacle in an earlier monologue.

“Our redneck president is turning 80, and to celebrate there is a UFC fight on the lawn,” the comedian said.

“So the emperor is holding gladiator games on his birthday,” he continued. “Nothing to see here. I wouldn’t think about it too much. Don’t worry about it.”

He also used Trump’s Knicks appearance with granddaughter Kai as another joke about public spectacle backfiring.

“And at the Knicks game he went to, he brought his granddaughter, Kai, and this is unfortunate, then of course when they showed him on the cam, the whole crowd booed, and it was a very tender moment when he said to her, ‘I’m sorry they’re booing you, honey,’” Maher joked.

The host’s Trump criticism did not stop at culture-war spectacle.

Maher also mocked the president’s Iran agreement, accusing Trump of sliding from demands for “unconditional surrender” to a far softer memorandum of understanding.

“We got everything we wanted except for everything we asked for,” Maher said.

The comedian questioned Trump’s reputation as a master negotiator.

“Where’s the big dealmaker? What happened to ‘The Art of the Deal?'” Maher said. “This is his big close? I got news for you. The emperor has no clothes.”

He argued the administration was celebrating something that was not even binding enough to be treated as a major agreement.

“First of all, it’s not a deal. It’s a memorandum of understanding,” Maher added. “It’s about as legally binding as the sign in the break room that says, ‘Please clean microwave.'”

To Maher, the shift from military swagger to paperwork was the punchline.

“We started with unconditional surrender, Operation Epic Fury, and now it’s memorandum of understanding,” Maher said. “Last thing that got hosed this bad was my dog.”

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