Bill Maher said all he could think about during the Real Time episode on Friday, June 6, was “the Trump/Elon thing” — i.e. the escalating feud between President Donald Trump and former DOGE head Elon Musk.
“When you think about it, the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world, it’s like Godzilla versus King Kong if Godzilla was on ketamine and King Kong had a combover,” Maher said on the HBO show Friday. “I mean, these guys were so close. It was like Brangelina or Bennifer. No, you know that. Elon and Trump — they had their own couple name: Elump.”
Maher recapped the drama so far. After stepping back from his post leading the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk criticized Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, calling it a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill” and a “disgusting abomination.” Trump then said Musk had the so-called “Trump derangement syndrome,” and Musk said Trump’s tariffs will cause an economic recession. Trump said that Musk was angry “because we took the EV mandate,” and Musk said that without him, Trump “would have lost the election.”
“And then the s*** got real,” Maher said. “Trump said, ‘Well, you know what? Mars is a s***hole planet.’ And Elon said, ‘Oh my god, you are not the same man I used to heil.’ Now, for those keeping a score at home and who watch the show for the news, I made the last two up, but it’s very hard to tell which are the ones that I made up. Just the last two; the other ones are real.”
Maher added that the feud has “gotten even nastier” with Musk’s allegation — in a now-offline X post — that Trump is mentioned in files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and that that is the reason the Epstein files haven’t fully released to the public.
“And now this is just a war that is going back and forth and back and forth, and the stakes are so high because the winner faces Blake Lively,” Maher said, referring to Lively’s legal battle against It Ends With Us costar and director Justin Baldoni.
Real Time With Bill Maher, Fridays, 10/9c, HBO