Comedian and pundit Bill Maher mocked opponents of President Donald Trump’s ballroom, calling them “stupid” and chalking the outrage up to “hate” — while also agreeing the venue is needed.

On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the interview guest was Sen. John Fetterman, Democratic senator from Pennsylvania and author of the book “Unfettered.”

The panel guests were Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Republican congressman who represents Texas’s 2^nd district and host of the podcast “Hold These Truths with Dan Crenshaw”; and Donna Brazile, Democratic political strategist and ABC News contributor.

During the interview segment, Fetterman gave the ballroom as an example of an opposition that’s “running on f*ck Trump,” and Maher called it a “stupid” litmus test for “hate” — and said America needs the ballroom:

SENATOR JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): I know how to pay the bills as a Democrat right now, and my colleagues and people that are running, whether for the Senate or the House, they are literally running on f*ck Trump. I mean, that’s literally, they have campaign commercials, that. And it’s absurd. And we are getting to that point, and I refuse to engage in that extreme, those terms. And we have to find a better way forward.

And now I’ve been punished to try to find value in certain views. Now, like for the ballroom, you know, we’ve talked about that. I don’t care about the ballroom. I don’t either.

BILL MAHER: I don’t either, it’s so stupid. It’s such a Rorschach test of whether you just hate, because first of all, like we saw with the assassination attempt a couple of weeks ago, America probably does need…

You know what the problem is? I said it to you the other day on the podcast, which I think is on next week. It’s the word ballroom. It sounds good, ballroom. Sounds like, you know, Fops are pirouetting around.

And if they called it the State Dinner National Center, it would be different. But this is America. And we don’t want people sitting in tents to have dinner.

SENATOR JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): It’s just, you know, I was two tables away at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. I’ve witnessed this.

BILL MAHER: Two tables from the killing?

SENATOR JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): Yeah.

BILL MAHER: From the attempt, you mean?

SENATOR JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): Yeah, and that’s, I had to see that, I’m like the entire line of succession was right there and realized that we’ve put, there’s real danger there. We got really lucky there for a lot of reasons.

So now we need to have a more secure, more secure to do these kinds of events, but I don’t care about, you know, just build it. I mean, he won’t even be president if it’s even finished.

Watch above via HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

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