JD Vance is making another late-night stop this week—this time with Bill Maher, in a booking that will make him the first sitting vice president to appear on Real Time.
Vance’s appearance on Friday will also make him the second of Donald Trump’s vice presidents to sit down with Maher this month. Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared on Real Time on June 5, where he revisited Jan. 6 and said rioters who assaulted police “never should have been pardoned.”
The timing adds another layer of intrigue: Vance’s interview comes just two days before Maher is set to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center on Sunday, June 28—putting a sitting vice president on Real Time at the start of what amounts to a career-honor weekend for Maher.
The HBO host has been a frequent critic of Trump and Vance, but he also spent time in the president’s better graces last year after a White House dinner arranged by Kid Rock—an encounter Maher later described on Real Time as surprisingly cordial. Trump has since turned on Maher publicly again, though with a somewhat more backhanded form of contempt than he tends to direct at other late-night antagonists, recently calling him “slightly more talented” than Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert even as he dismissed him as a “highly overrated lightweight.”
Vance, the 50th vice president of the United States, will appear as he continues promoting his new memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. He is also the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.
The booking gives Vance another late-night platform following his full-hour appearance last week on Fox News’ Gutfeld!, where he joined Greg Gutfeld’s panel show to discuss Communion, faith, politics, and the news of the day.
Prior to his recent book-tour swing, Vance’s most notable late-night appearance came well before his political rise: a 2017 visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers, back when he was still best known as the author of Hillbilly Elegy and was publicly critical of Trump.
The panel portion of this week’s Real Time will feature Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic senator from Georgia and senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Larry Wilmore, the comedian, writer, and former host of The Nightly Show.
It’ll be a circle jerk of obnoxious jerks!