Bill Maher roasted Donald Trump after the president shared a racist video online depicting the Obamas as apes, connecting the offensive blunder to television star Roseanne Barr's similar comment that canceled her show.
The comedian addressed the controversy during his opening monologue on Friday's broadcast of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO.
'Trump did a Roseanne,' Maher said.
The president shared a video on Truth Social late on Thursday night that included a wildly offensive artificial intelligence image of Michelle and Barack Obama superimposed on apes.
Referring to black people as apes has a long history of racism, dating back to eugenics and the Jim Crow era.
Barr came under fire for using the racist trope in 2018 after she responded to an X thread that claimed Obama and his former advisor, Valerie Jarrett, spied on French presidential candidates.
'Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby,' Barr wrote in a since-deleted post.
The comedian apologized for the racist remark, and the spinoff of her sitcom, Roseanne, was subsequently canceled.
Trump hasn't publicly apologized for the video he shared on Truth Social, but various public figures across the aisle, including those who had previously been vocal supporters of the president, condemned the post.
Maher refused to show the video on his show, but acknowledged the offensive content and called the White House's defense 'rather lame.'
'They said "he did not mean to hit share, he meant to hit like,"' the comedian added.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was quick to come to Trump's defense after the video circulated, claiming that the clip was from a video depicting the president as King of the Jungle and other politicians as animals.
'This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,' she said.
'Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.'
Maher shot back at Leavitt's explanation: 'There are two things a little wrong with this - there are no apes in the Lion King. And two, if it's a cartoon character, that's okay? That's a rule now?'
The comedian continued: 'So it's okay if somebody made a cartoon of Elmer Fudd shooting Charlie Kirk, that would be okay?'
Maher compared Trump's video to a racist post that comedian Roseanna Barr shared in 2018 that resulted in the cancelation of her show.
Maher then slammed the Trump administration as 'hypocrites.' The comedian noted that even though Trump passed off his racist post as a joke, he's still suing Trevor Noah for a joke made during the Emmys.
While hosting the award show, Noah joked that every artist wanted to win Song of the Year 'almost as much as Trump wants Greenland,' adding: 'which makes sense because Epstein's island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.'
Trump took his outrage online once again, calling Noah a 'poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an MC' and threatening a lawsuit over the joke.
Maher ended his monologue by calling the US a 'sleazy' country.
The comedian has now joined a slew of others who have criticized the president for promoting a racist trope.
Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate and a longtime ally to Trump, wrote on X: 'Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House.'
Utah Senator John Custis, another member of the GOP, called the clip 'blatantly racist and inexcusable.'
'It should never have been posted or left published for so long,' he added.
Barr replied to an X thread in 2018, writing: 'Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.' The post was a racist remark towards President Barack Obama and his advisor Valerie Jarrett, who is black and was born in Iran. The two are pictured during a meeting in 2016
Republican Senator Tim Scott, an ally to Trump's, wrote online that the president's video was 'the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House.' He's pictured walking to the Senate Chamber in January
'Disgusting behavior by the President,' California Governor Gavin Newsom's press office wrote on X. 'Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.'
A White House insider previously told the Daily Mail that the clip was posted by mistake and was accidentally included in a screen recording of a different video about election fraud.
'It's an obvious screen recording and the boomer who posted it on X didn't trim off the excess when the next reel started to auto play,' the Trump official shared.
'The aide didn't notice that one second portion at the end of the video and it was never seen by the president.'
Trump told reporters on Friday night that he didn't want the whole video before it was shared online and maintained that he didn't do anything wrong.
'What I saw in the beginning was really strong. It was about fraudulent elections. Anytime I see that stuff and it's credible, you put it up. I didn't do it. This was done by someone else. It was a re-truth but that was a very strong truth,' he said.