Bill Maher Admits Trump Had a Point About California Forest Management: ‘Just Because Trump Says It Doesn’t Mean It’s Automatically Wrong’

Bill Maher admitted that even though he made jokes about it at the time, President-elect Donald Trump had a point in his criticism of California’s forest management.

On Friday’s Real Time, billionaire and former Los Angeles gubernatorial candidate Rick Caruso joined Maher to discuss California’s response to expansive fires that have destroyed thousands of homes. During their discussion, Maher conceded that Trump had a point about “raking” vegetation during California wildfires in 2020.

“I remember when we had a fire when Trump was president, and he came in and he said, ‘you don’t rake, you’re not raking. And I did — we all did jokes about it. But, we’ve got to get over this thing,” Maher said. “Is he wrong, usually? Yeah. But I’m not going to — I remember when he took Ivermectin or something and then Ivermectin, which won the Nobel Prize, and it was like that became snake oil. No, just because Trump says it doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong. Did he have a point about that?”

“Of course he did,” Caruso said.

He called for California to take steps like burying power lines.

“The Palisades is going to remain in a fire zone,” Caruso said. “So don’t go build the same damn thing.”

Trump said during a 2020 rally that California fires were partly due to poor forest management by the state. He told them to “clean your floors.”

“They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up,” he said at the time.

Maher noted goats could be the answer to cleaning vegetation.

“You know what they did in Sacramento? Goats,” Maher said.

“Goats work,” Caruso responded.

“Fucking goats. You put them on the hillside and they eat the vegetation. And they’re cheap, they work cheap,” Maher said.

Watch above via HBO.