By Katherine Tinsley
12:56pm PDT, Apr 21, 2025
_
"I just feel like [Donald Trump] picked a fight with the wrong bully," Bill Maher said on the April 18 episode of Real Time With Bill Maher.
"They really f****** hated me for [saying] that," he continued. "I was, like, really history's greatest monster: 'This man is rooting for a recession.' And I was saying it's the only way Trump's going to be unpopular."
_
Donald Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods have reached a rate of 145%. The additional tax has caused tension between the U.S. and China and fueled concerns with American consumers.
"Of course, I'm just rooting [for a recession]. I can't make it actually happen. [Critics] didn't seem to understand that. I'm not a genie, but I'm rooting for one again," Bill Maher said.
_
According to Bill Maher, Donald Trump is insisting China "needs to make a deal with us" and that "we don't need to make a deal with them."
"I think that's completely a** backwards," Maher stressed. "Look, I'm always for America… I want us to win, but this is just the reality of what China is."
"They're not going to buy planes from Boeing anymore," he said, referencing how Trump's economic vision has impacted various American companies. "I imagine that would ripple through the economy. That's kind of a big sector."
_
China is an industrialized nation, and many American products are made and sourced in the country.
"We make none of this here, except we have one place here in California: Mountain Pass. They have a rare earth mine there. It takes out of the ground in one year what China does in a day," Bill Maher said.
