Bill Maher Walks Back Initial Outrage At Trump Mass Firings: ‘You’re Losing $521 Billion – How Good Are You?’

HBO’s Bill Maher walked back his initial outrage at President Donald Trump’s firing of more than a dozen inspectors general last month after he said they oversaw billions in wasteful spending.

Maher said he saw an astounding number of waste not from Elon Musk’s DOGE but from the Government Accountability Office, which made him reassess his initial shock.

The host said he had not quite decided if firing the watchdogs was the correct move. But the numbers from the nonpartisan office were enough to make him question why the now-terminated IGs ever had their jobs to begin with.

“I mean, Musk said career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress,” Maher said while addressing Friday night’s panel. “Is that true?” He added:

I don’t know, because he says things that aren’t true all the time and doesn’t care. Or retweets something that is plainly, easily, provably not true. So I don’t know. But I do know this because this comes from the Government Accountability Office. That’s not the Trump administration. The federal government loses an estimated $233 to $521 billion annually to fraud. So when Trump fired –º the first thing he did was fired all the inspectors general. And I thought, well, that’s not good. That’s their job to watchdog stuff. But if you’re losing $521 billion a year, how good are you Watchdogging?

Maher’s live studio audience applauded the statement.

He concluded, “I’m not saying we should have fired them,” but said the revelation of wasteful spending from the  Government Accountability Office was enough for him to give Trump’s mass firings a second look.

Watch above via Real Time with Bill Maher.