What To Know
- Bill Maher told Vice President JD Vance that his vote is “in play” for the 2028 election.
- Maher pressed Vance to commit to accepting legitimate election results, but Vance deflected.
- Vance maintained that technology companies unfairly influenced the 2020 election.
Bill Maher just told Vice President JD Vance that his “vote is in play” for the 2028 presidential election, but with one “dealbreaker.”
On the Friday, June 26 episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, Vance, 41, was a guest. Maher, 70, didn’t shy away from difficult questions. However, the stand-up comedian didn’t have much luck in prompting the VP to answer many of them directly.
“If this is where the Democratic Party is going, with the Democratic Socialist — this obsession with Israel, with the Jew-hating, with they don’t believe in capitalism, no prisons — if this is where they’re going, my vote is in play,” Maher told Vance. “It actually always has been.”
After pointing out that President Donald Trump, 80, can’t run again following his second term, Maher speculated, “So it’s either going to be you or [Marco] Rubio.”
The late-night host added, “Here’s my dealbreaker for your side: Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes that an election can be, either we win, or they cheated. That s*** has to stop. And that means the person who has to stop it will be you or Marco. Can you tell me you will do that?” Can you tell me you will do that? Will you bring us back to the middle, at least on that, where we concede elections?”
“OK, Bill, so this is where I’m probably gonna lose you here,” Vance responded.
“Look, I don’t think that we should not concede elections, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” he explained, before explaining Trump’s “core argument” about “problems that existed in 2020.” Vance continued, “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.”
The VP then claimed, “The sense in which I think the 2020 election was rigged, I’m sorry, is that you had technology companies that were putting their thumb on a 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.”
To that, Maher quipped, “Well, you’re gonna get a big pat on the back when you go back to the White House.”
Real Time With Bill Maher, Fridays at 10/9c, HBO