In a recent episode of his "Club Random" podcast, leftist comedian Bill Maher had film director Oliver Stone on as a guest. During the discussion, Stone essentially suggested that the 2020 election could have been stolen.
Here’s how it came up. At one point in the discussion, they were discussing the COVID vaccines and the pandemic, and Stone argued that Biden was being authoritarian with his vaccine mandates.
“That's one form of it,” Maher replied. "I would say the form that Trump is threatening us with is even worse."
“Which is what?” Stone asked.
"Well, I mean, he doesn’t concede elections, you know, the elections only count if we win theory of government. Come on, you know, Trump has he still has not conceded the election. He has not conceded. He does not honor that,” Maher explained.
Now, it’s convenient that Maher didn’t acknowledge that Hillary Clinton still claims, falsely, that the 2016 election was stolen from her, but I digress. Stone’s reply to Maher took the conversation to a whole new level.
"I mean, do you know for a fact that he lost?” Stone asked. "I'm just curious."
Maher was clearly flabbergasted. Stone was being genuine with his question, and conceded not knowing all the facts, but Maher was quick to dismiss Stone.
“Is there a conspiracy theory you don't believe?” Maher asked him.
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Stone clearly didn’t didn’t care for that.
"Oh, come on, don’t,” Stone replied. "You know I'm intelligent." He conceded again that he’s “not an expert on the election,” so Maher offered a thumbnail sketch of what happened, which was one-sided, of course. Maher claimed that Trump’s allegations of voter fraud were essentially laughed out of court, even though the court cases were largely rejected on issues of standing, not on the merit of the claims, most of which went uninvestigated.
The discussion eventually shifted to the 2000 election—another election that Democrats claim was stolen. Stone asked Maher, "So what do you think happened in 2000 in Florida?"
And Maher launched into the usual left-wing conspiracy theories. "Well, they stopped the vote,” he claimed. “The candidate's brother was the governor,” he began, before arguing that there could have been “shenanigans” in that election.
It’s funny how it’s okay to question the 2000 election and the 2016 election, but not the 2020 election.
Stone, for his part, wasn’t convinced by any argument that Maher made. He continued, "Well, I don't know the facts. And I think I would trust the accountants more than the politicians. And I'd like to know what the accountants, the guys who ... know the most about votes, who do the Electoral Commission's, you know. I can't take Biden's word for it on anything."
“It’s not his word,” Maher exclaimed. "It's the Electoral Commission. It's Trump's own election security guy who said this was the most fair, well-run election that we've had ever."
One place that did investigate the vote was Arizona—where an audit discovered that 53,305 ballots were impacted by various irregularities, more than five times the state-certified margin of victory for Joe Biden. The media refused to take the audit seriously. And Stone didn’t seem to buy Maher’s talking point either.
“Really?” Stone asked, unamused.
“Yes!” Maher replied.
“I don't know about that."
It was quite the exchange. As someone who has actually lauded Maher’s recent comments against wokeism and radicals within his own party, I find it unfortunate that he couldn’t buoy his own criticism of Trump for not accepting the results of the election by criticizing Hillary for continuing to say the 2016 election was stolen from her, or John Kerry for saying the 2004 election was stolen from him.
You can watch that portion of the interview below:
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