Vance declines Maher's request to stop disputing US election results

Vice President JD Vance sat for an interview on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" that aired Friday, June 26, in which he declined the host's request that he commit to conceding future elections and defended his account of the 2020 race. Vance taped the conversation at CBS Television City in Los Angeles to promote his new memoir, "Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith," which covers his 2019 conversion to Catholicism, Deadline reported.

The interview ran alongside a panel that included Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and comedian Larry Wilmore, according to Mediaite.

The election exchange

Maher pressed Vance to break with the practice of disputing election losses. "Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes that an election can be: Either we win or they cheated. That s--t has to stop," Maher said, telling Vance that he or Secretary of State Marco Rubio would have to be the one to end it, according to TheWrap. Maher then asked, "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 did not accept that framing. "I don't think that we should not concede elections, but I don't think that's what's going on," he said. "If you go back to the president's core argument, he was making an argument about problems that existed in 2020," per TheWrap.

He tied his 2020 objection to the conduct of technology companies. "The biggest criticism I had at 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," Vance said, arguing the platforms had put "their thumb on the scale." TheWrap reported that Maher said the answer would earn Vance "a big pat on the back" in Washington, and that he did not appear persuaded.

Iran

The two opened on the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, which Vance helped negotiate and which was under strain as the interview aired amid renewed strikes. Maher questioned whether it would hold. "Why is this different? Why isn't it bullsh-t this time?" he asked, according to a transcript published by Mediaite.

Vance pointed to oil markets and the terms of the agreement. "If you look at oil right now, it's back down to $73 a barrel, got up to $126 a barrel," he said, adding that the memorandum of understanding keeps the Strait of Hormuz open and functions as a ceasefire. "If we don't make the deal, their nuclear program is still destroyed. They're still much weaker as a country. So my attitude is, America wins either way."

Maher disputed the claim that Iran's nuclear program had been eliminated. "Their nuclear program isn't destroyed," he said, and pressed, "How do we know that?" Vance said the program was "functionally destroyed" because Iran's ability to enrich uranium had been knocked out. He acknowledged a separate question over a highly enriched stockpile, which he said remained buried underground and beyond Iran's ability to weaponize.

Hours before taping, Vance addressed the flare-up on X: "Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence."

Maher on his 2028 vote

Maher used the interview to say his vote in the 2028 presidential election was open. "If this is where the Democratic Party is going... 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," he said, in quotes reported by both TheWrap and Salon. Maher said he had usually concluded that the Democrat was the better choice and voted that way, but that he did not decide by party: "I don't make my decision by who was an R or a D."

Trump is term-limited and cannot run again in 2028. Maher named Vance and Rubio as Republicans he would consider, conditioned on the party dropping fraud claims after election losses, Salon reported.

Reception

Coverage divided over whether Maher had pushed Vance hard enough. Variety wrote that Maher "got played" by Vance and noted his comment about a possible 2028 Republican vote. Salon said Vance was "roundly mocked" over Iran and immigration during the sit-down, but that it did not stop Maher from weighing a Republican vote. Maher later responded to critics who said he had gone easy on the vice president, Fox News reported.