On Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance visited the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California and, as usual, dug his heels in.
The author of “Hillbilly Elegy” likened President Trump to Hitler before running for vice president, but he has taken it upon himself to defend President Nixon’s accomplishments and downplay his corruption.
“I think his historical legacy is undergoing a bit of a resurgence, and I think that’s to be expected,” Vance said of Nixon. “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Similarly, the idea that Watergate would cost the presidency is crazy.”
The background was clear. Watergate would be nothing more than a 12-hour news story these days because it pales in comparison to the rampant corruption of the Trump administration.
That night, Vance became the first sitting vice president to appear on HBO’s show, doing an interview with Bill Maher on Real Time to promote his new book about his faith, “Communion.” The two then struck up a conversation, with Vance talking about ongoing negotiations with Iran, which don’t seem to be going anywhere.
“You’re negotiating for America. I’m rooting for America… Why is this different? Why isn’t it bullshit this time?” Maher asked.
Vance said his negotiations were successful because oil prices “dropped to $73 a barrel” and their “nuclear program was destroyed,” adding, “If they’re willing to change, we’re willing to change. Even if they don’t want to change, we still basically hold all the cards and I think that’s a good place to be.”
“But their nuclear program has not been destroyed,” Maher replied.
“Where is the part that hasn’t been destroyed?” Vance asked. “What we have to destroy is the uranium enrichment capacity that has already been destroyed.”
“How do you know that?” shot Maher back. “We had to go in there and dust it off, because it always does. And we didn’t go in there, so how do we get the dust out?”
The vice president reiterated that the program was “functionally destroyed,” without citing any evidence to support that claim.
Mr. Maher’s next topic, or attempt to bring it up, was to get Mr. Vance to admit that the Trump administration’s ICE enforcement was overreaching.
“ICE, this is shit. It’s too violent. It’s too mean. It’s too unnecessary,” Maher offered. “I’m not asking you to apologize… What I’m saying is that if you guys just owned it, you’d go to great lengths to get people who (have) completely shut their doors on you and your administration, you guys have gone too far. You’ve gone too far, and you should own it like you own ‘childless cat lady.'”
Vance paused, saying, “You can’t do law enforcement operations like that without some of the circumstances documented that way…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 instead of a democratic socialist if the right at least started admitting defeat in the election instead of crying foul every time like Trump did.
“If this is where the Democratic Party is going…if this obsession with Israel, hating Jews, they don’t believe in capitalism, they don’t believe in prisons is where they’re going, then my vote counts,” Maher told Vance. “It’s either you or Rubio. This is my deal-breaker for your side. Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes of the election. Either we win or they cheated. That shit has to stop. And that means it’s going to be you or Marco who has to stop it. Will you say you’ll do it?”
He couldn’t do that.
“Okay, Bill, so we’re going to lose you here,” Vance offered. “I don’t think we shouldn’t concede in elections, but I don’t think that’s what’s actually happening…The biggest criticism I felt about the 2020 election is that there were tech companies literally censoring negative information about the left and promoting negative information about the right.” (Yet, during the 2020 election, right-wing Facebook pages reportedly received more engagement than left-wing pages).
Mr. Maher shot back: “Well, I’m sure you’ll get a big pat on the back when you get back to the White House.”
During the interview, Maher seemed outnumbered and Vance was talking in circles around him. And for someone who spends every Friday night railing against the Trump administration, he treated the vice president with kid gloves.
