By Marlow Stern
Plus IconMarlow Stern
Chief Correspondent
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HBO On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance paid a visit to the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California and, as is his wont, put his foot squarely in his mouth.
The “Hillbilly Elegy” author, who compared President Trump to Hitler before serving as his running mate, took it upon himself to defend Nixon’s legacy and downplay his corruption.
“I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance —but I think deservedly so,” Vance said of Nixon. “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
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The context was clear: Watergate would only be a 12-hour news story these days because it pales in comparison to the rampant corruption of the Trump administration.
Vance sat down with Bill Maher the following evening for an interview on “Real Time” to promote his new book “Communion” about his faith, thereby becoming the first sitting vice president to appear on the HBO show. And the two kicked off their conversation talking about Vance’s ongoing negotiations with Iran, which appear to be going nowhere.
“You’re negotiating for America. I’m rooting for America… Why is this different? Why isn’t it bullshit this time?” asked Maher.
According to Vance, his negotiations have been successful because oil is “down to 73 dollars a barrel” and their “nuclear program is destroyed,” adding, “If they’re willing to change, we’re willing to change too; if they’re not willing to change, we still fundamentally have all the cards and I think that’s a good place to be.”
“But their nuclear program isn’t destroyed,” Maher replied.
“What part of it is not destroyed?” questioned Vance. “The thing that you have to destroy is their ability to enrich uranium, which has been destroyed.”
“How do we know that?” shot back Maher. “All the time it was, we gotta get in there and we gotta get the dust. And we didn’t get in there, so how do we get the dust?”
The vice president reiterated that the program was “functionally destroyed” without citing any evidence to support it.
Maher’s next topic, or attempt at broaching one, was to try to get Vance to admit that the Trump administration’s ICE enforcement went too far.
“ICE, all that shit. Too rough. Too mean. Too unnecessary,” offered Maher. “I’m not asking you to apologize… I’m just saying, you’d go a long way toward getting people who [have] just completely shut the door to you and your administration if you guys would just own that — that you guys went too far. You went too far, and you should own that like you owned ‘childless cat ladies.’”
Vance obfuscated, saying, “You can’t do a law enforcement operation like that without having some situations that are recorded like that… I don’t think there was an easy way to do this.”
Maher then confessed to Vance that he could vote for the next Republican candidate over a democratic socialist if the right would at least begin conceding losses in elections instead of crying foul play every time, a la Trump.
“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,” Maher told Vance. “It’s either going to be you or Rubio. 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 shit 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?”
He could not.
“OK, Bill, so this is where I’m probably going to lose ya here,” offered Vance. “I don’t think we should not concede elections, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on… 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.” (And yet, right-leaning Facebook pages reportedly earned more engagement than left-leaning ones during the 2020 election.)
Maher fired back: “Well, you’re going to get a big pat on the back when you go back to the White House.”
Throughout their interview, Maher seemed outmatched, with Vance talking circles around him. And, for someone who spends every Friday night railing against the Trump administration, he treated its vice president with kid gloves.
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