Bill Maher and Piers Morgan went toe-to-toe on tarrifs Friday night—that is, until the Real Time host abruptly cut off his colleague mid-sentence.
The panel, composed of Maher, Morgan, and Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, had been discussing Trump’s trade war and the potential for a protracted conflict with China when the HBO host tired of the topic.
“This is boring, like I said tariffs are,” he declared, talking over Morgan. “You guys are boring.”
Maher had already lamented the fact that Trump’s actions had forced him to devote so much time to tariffs, opining, “Did I ever think I was going to be talking about tariffs every day? I really didn’t, I did not see that coming up, and it’s f---ing boring. I don’t like tariffs.”
He went on to characterize Trump’s actions in recent weeks as an attempt to bring back an era in U.S. history that is “gone with the wind,” citing the president’s unlikely goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America.
He then opened up the discussion to the panelists as to whether Trump had a point about the global trade status quo putting the U.S. at a disadvantage.
Rogin and Morgan debated the efficacy of Trump’s dizzying approach to trade policy, with Morgan describing Trump as a man who “doesn’t play by the rules” and “trusts his gut, which is often right.”
Morgan, who is British, added that in a trade war between the U.S. and China, he would back the U.S.
After his interjection, Maher changed the subject to the Trump Administration’s draconian deportation regime—which has already swept up legal residents by mistake and included green card holders accused not of criminal conduct, but of holding the wrong ideas.
