Bill Maher Confronts JD Vance Over Trump Iran Deal: ‘Why Is It Not Bullsh*t This Time?’

Comedian and pundit Bill Maher grilled Vice President JD Vance over President Donald Trump’s Iran deal, asking him how we know it’s not “bulsh*t.”

On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the interview guest was Vice President JD Vance, 50th vice president of the United States and author of the #1 New York Times bestselling book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” and the new memoir “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.”

The panel guests were Senator Raphael Warnock, Democratic senator from Georgia, senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and author of the new book “The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America”; and Larry Wilmore, comedian, writer, and guest star in the new HBO Original limited series “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America,” debuting Friday, June 26.

During the interview segment, Maher told Vance he was “rooting” for America but noted Trump’s previous failures and pressed him on claims that Iran’s nuclear program is “destroyed”:

BILL MAHER: But look, you’re negotiating for America. I’m rooting for America, so I want success here. But you know, you came out of these meetings, I heard sort of the same thing, I’ve heard a lot of talk about progress and that, I have heard it so many times before. Why is this different? Why isn’t it bullsh*t this time?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Well, I’d say the most important thing, Bill, is that the people who judge whether the oil is actually flowing, they judge this as a success, right? So if you look at oil right now, it’s back down to $73 a barrel, got up to $126 a barrel.

So there’s a signal that there’s something real going on here.

I think the second, Bill is whether we make the final deal, because you have to remember, this MOU is fundamentally. It says the straits are going to be open, the oil is going to flow. We’re seeing that happen already. It’s also a ceasefire, which, as you pointed out, is always going to a little messy when you’re dealing with the Iranians.

But if we make the final deal, then great. 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.

But I do think that what the president has done is asked us to do something that, frankly, nobody in 47 years of dealing with Iranians has done, which is …

Offer them an opportunity to fundamentally transform how they behave with the West. They’ve been the largest state sponsor of terrorism basically since they began as a nation, or at least as an Islamic Republic 47 years ago.

He’s saying, look, if they’re willing to change, we’re willing change too. If they’re not willing to changed, we still fundamentally have all the cards and I think that’s a good place for us to be.

BILL MAHER: But their program isn’t destroyed. Their nuclear program isn’t destroyed. I mean, I don’t know any of our objectives. And look, I said I…

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: What part is not destroyed?

BILL MAHER: Well, we didn’t get in there. The whole thing was we have to get in there and see, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing this. And we didn’t.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Well, let me say, first of all, so a nuclear program, and I’m hardly a nuclear scientist, I’m a lowly politician, but the thing that you have to destroy is their ability to enrich uranium, which has been destroyed. You have to…

BILL MAHER: How do we know that?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: …Destroy their ability. Well, because you need functioning centrifuges that can actually spin.

BILL MAHER: But what was all the talk about, we’ve got to get in there and we’ve gotta get the dust. Okay. And we didn’t get in, so how do we get the dust?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: So that’s actually a separate question. So there’s the highly enriched stockpile, which by the way was allowed to accumulate… Over 20 years of previous administrations. That enriched stockpile is something that we want to get. But Bill, if we never get it, and the president wants it and we are going to get it. But if we’ve never got it, it’s buried deep underground and they don’t have the ability to turn it into a nuclear weapon. So the program is functionally destroyed. We’re just talking about can we set them back even further through these negotiations.

BILL MAHER: I only have limited time with this, so I want to move on to other topics.

Watch above via HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

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