Bill Maher gets into awkward spat with Megyn Kelly (2024)

Comedian and political commentator Bill Maher sparred with Megyn Kelly in an awkward spat over their opposing presidential election voting intentions, on her SiriusXM show

While a critic of incumbent President Joe Biden, TV personality Maher has stated he will nonetheless vote for the Democrat over his rival, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. He told Newsweek in March that he would vote for "Biden's head in a jar of blue liquid" rather than the former president.

Megyn and Maher clashed on Wednesday's show after she told him she plans to vote for the former president. This prompted Maher to raise the fact that, without any proof, Trump has baselessly claimed that his loss to Biden in 2020 was the result of election fraud.

"What could possibly be more fundamental to you or anyone, than you have to concede elections?" Maher asked Kelly. "And he hasn't conceded the last one. He's plainly not going to concede this one.

"He now has all of his sycophants around him parroting his party line, which is when asked, 'Will you abide by the election results?' 'Yes, if it's a free and fair election,' which is another way of saying, 'If we win.' You really think this is a place this country should be?"

"I'm not going to defend the election denialism. I'm not one of those people who believes that," Kelly started to respond, before Maher interjected: "Well, what's more important? What kind of country do we have if we—"

"How about my daughter not going into a locker room and seeing a man's penis?" Kelly cut in, referring to the ongoing debate over legislation surrounding gender identities.

"That's important, too," Maher said. "I'm taking about the difference between this and something fundamental, which is our democracy. The fact that you have to respect who wins an election, or else you don't have the kind of country we've always had before. I feel like we keep going around the rose bush about this, and we're not going to make any progress. So let's stop talking about it."

Footage of the interview has been shared on X, formerly Twitter, where as of press time it has gained more than 700,000 views, and the awkwardness was highlighted in comments. One tweet, by @TheChiefNerd said: "Let's Just Say, It Didn't Go Well." Newsweek has contacted representatives of Maher and Kelly via email for comment.

"You keep saying sort of I'm nuts because I don't see the difference between the elephant and the mouse and I'm telling you I identify them differently than you do," Kelly told Maher. "Hillary Clinton, of course, is the original election denier. I'm sure you voted for her in '16."

"Well, she's not an election denier," Maher countered, prompting Kelly to hit back: "She absolutely was the OG election denier."

"First of all, she came out before the sun had risen, to concede the election to Trump, Maher stated, to which Kelly responded: "And then spent the next four years saying he was illegitimate. He was an illegitimate president."

After Maher asked Kelly to tell him "exactly what" Clinton said, former Fox News host Kelly replied: "She said those exact words repeatedly."

"Illegitimate President"

During an appearance on CBS' Sunday Morning show in 2019, former Secretary of State Clinton said that Trump "knows he's an illegitimate president. I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories—he knows that—there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did."

Elsewhere in Maher's interview with Kelly, the comedian said that in this election cycle "you only get two choices. You get Donald Trump, a criminal election denier who is going to transform this country into an authoritarian place like we've never seen before. Or you get Joe Biden with all his flaws."

"Also a criminal," Kelly chimed in, before bringing up the classified documents that were found at Biden's private residence in Delaware and at his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., between November 2022 and January 2023.

Earlier this year, special counsel Robert Hur released a report into Biden's handling of the Obama-era documents, and in February, the inquiry concluded that criminal charges would not be warranted for the president.

Maher and Kelly compared the Biden investigation to the probe into Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to all 40 felony charges of failing to return classified materials to federal authorities after taking the documents from the White House. The documents were recovered when federal agents executed a raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022.

After questioning Kelly over the facts surrounding Biden and Trump's cases, Maher conceded: "Maybe you know more about that than I do... I always don't trust anything I hear until I vet it from the other side, because everybody sort of has their one-sided view of it. And narrative is more important than truth. I know this is the right-wing narrative."

"I'm not like that, Bill," Kelly responded. "I care about facts. I practiced law for 10 years. I want to get the cases right more than I want to get clicks. And I have a lot of lefties who watch me. So I'm not like that. All I can tell you is those are the facts."

As the interview wrapped up, the broadcasters agreed that airing their political differences was healthy.

"I appreciate you going toe-to-toe, because I think that's what people have to do," Maher told Kelly. "And sometimes, it does get to a point where you get exasperated with each other. But as I say at the end, America is a family. And the definition of a family is understanding that you're with people who you may not like but it doesn't come to violence."