Bill Maher tried to corner JD Vance on election denial—but the vice president wriggled straight out.
Maher pressed Vance on Friday’s episode of Real Time over the MAGAworld habit of crying fraud every time a Republican loses an election.
“Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes that an election can be: Either we win or they cheated,” Maher said.
“That s--t has to stop.”
Maher raised the issue after admitting his own vote could be “in play” in 2028 if Democrats continue moving toward what he described as Democratic socialism, anti-capitalism, hostility toward Israel, and “Jew-hating.”
“If this is where the Democratic Party is going… my vote is in play, OK?” Maher told Vance.
But the comedian said Republicans had their own deal-breaker.
“Trump can’t run again... so it’s either gonna be you or Rubio,” he said.
“And that means the person who has to stop it would be you or Marco. Can you tell me you will do that? Will you bring us back to the middle, at least on that, where we concede elections?”
Vance could not.
“OK, Bill, so this is where I’m probably gonna lose you here,” Vance replied.
Rather than give Maher a clean answer, Vance wrapped Trump’s repeated claims of election denial in a more respectable-sounding conspiracy theory.
“I don’t think that we should not concede elections, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” Vance said.
Vance said Trump’s “core argument” was about “problems that exist in 2020,” before trying to move the discussion away from vote counts in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other battleground states.
“The biggest criticism I had of the 2020 election is that you had technology companies that were quite literally censoring negative information about the left and promoting negative information about the right,” he added.
Maher tried to drag Vance back to earth.
“That was litigated,” Maher said, referencing Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News over false 2020 election claims.
Fox settled the case in 2023 for $787.5 million.
But Vance kept moving.
“No, I’m actually trying to make the more middle-ground argument here,” he said.
The vice president claimed the 2020 election was “rigged” in a “fundamental sense” because tech companies had “put their thumb on the scale in a way that completely obliterated the real open exchange of ideas.”
“Now, by the way, it didn’t happen in 2024, but it happened in 2020, and it was a problem,” Vance added.
Maher appeared to clock Vance’s real audience immediately.
“Well, you’re gonna get a big pat on the back when you go back to the White House,” he said.
