Comedian Bill Maher poked fun at President Trump’s use of dolls to illustrate the need for families to avoid overconsumption as the administration navigates an uneven economic climate fueled by his trade war.
“He’s obsessed with how many dolls we get to have,” Maher said Friday on an episode of his “Real Time” show, adding later, “What is it with the dolls?”
“Three times, three times in the last week now, three times he has defended his tariffs talking about dolls,” he told the panel, according to a clip shared by Mediaite.
Questions around the impact of the Trump administration’s latest tariff rollout on U.S. consumers has prompted the White House to switch up its messaging. The president and his allies have argued that families must be prepared to sacrifice during what he’s floated as a transition period.
As retailers have expressed concerns about how the sweeping import taxes will affect the prices of their products and any impact on the supply chain, Trump suggested children would be OK with fewer toys — a sentiment Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller later defended.
“You know, someone said, ‘Oh, the shelves, they’re going to be open.’ Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” the president said last week.
Maher leaned into the rhetoric, noting that the president changed up the number of dolls in recent days.
“First off, ‘maybe children will have to have two dolls’ and then a couple of days later he said ‘They’re gonna have three or four dolls,’ he said. “And then he bumped it up the next day, five dolls.”
“Yes, that’s our deal-maker-in-chief,” the comedian quipped. “Losing an imaginary negotiation with children.”
The TV host isn’t the only one to question the administration’s strategy. Senate Republicans have also pressed the president to tone down the doll talk.
Some have even suggested the comments are counterproductive and could risk Trump coming off as insensitive at a time when consumer confidence is seemingly already at a five-year low.
“Everything that we need to do needs to be instructed by people who experienced scarcity, and that’s clearly the words of somebody that’s never experienced scarcity,” one Senate Republican told The Hill earlier this week.
“It’s not really sensitive to the circumstances of people that are struggling every day,” they added.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
