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Part of: January 6 & the Trump Relationship

Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

Bill Maher: Nancy Mace "looks to me like a traitor for the corner office"

In the closing 'New Rule: The Big Liars' editorial of his August 6, 2021 Real Time, Bill Maher used Nancy Mace as his prime example of a politician who abandoned principle for the perks of office. Maher noted that after January 6 she gave a dozen interviews in a single day condemning Trump, then went quiet and voted to remove Liz Cheney for making the same case. His verdict: a lot of people think she is a patriot, but she looks to him 'like a traitor for the corner office.' Mace has since been a Real Time panel guest three times, defending her turn toward Trump to Maher's face.

Bill Maher ·

Bill Maher delivers his 'New Rule: The Big Liars' editorial on Real Time with Bill Maher, August 6, 2021 (HBO)
Photo: Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO). Source

Reported and delivered by Bill Maher on Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO), from the closing "New Rule" editorial of the August 6, 2021 broadcast, titled "The Big Liars."

"A lot of people in America think she's a patriot, but she looks to me like a traitor for the corner office. She supported an insurrection for the likes."

Bill Maher, Real Time "New Rule: The Big Liars," August 6, 2021

Who is Bill Maher

Bill Maher is a comedian and political commentator who has hosted HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher since 2003, after nine years hosting Politically Incorrect on Comedy Central and then ABC. Born January 20, 1956, in New York City and a Cornell graduate, he closes almost every Real Time with a direct-to-camera editorial he calls a "New Rule," an extended monologue that functions as the show's op-ed page. Maher resists a strict party label, describes himself as an old-school liberal with libertarian instincts, and is a frequent critic of both parties. The "New Rule: The Big Liars" segment below is one of those closing editorials, and it is where his most-quoted line about Nancy Mace originates.

"The Big Liars": what the whole editorial argues

The August 6, 2021 New Rule was not about Nancy Mace by itself. Maher framed the entire monologue around a question he said he had asked himself since January 6: how do Republican officeholders keep repeating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen?

"Sticking with the lie that an impeccably run election was really stolen, what makes them do that? What is so great that it can make you, the big patriot with the flag pin on your lapel, sell out your country on its most fundamental principle?"

Bill Maher, "New Rule: The Big Liars," August 6, 2021

His answer, and the metaphor that gives this catalog entry its title, was the perks of the job:

"And the answer is the title, the office, the staff, the good table, all that attention, and being the big cheese around the office."

Maher argued that "unremarkable people can get a remarkable life in Congress," running through Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Devin Nunes, and Chip Roy as examples of members drawing "175 grand a year, free medical, great pension, with half the year off" for jobs they are unqualified to hold. The one thing an officeholder must keep, he said, is the voters, so if the base believes the lies, the member repeats them:

"If your district is full of people who think the election was rigged, or vaccines have microchips in them, or Democrats eat babies, you have to agree and then repeat it in Congress. And they do."

Then he named Mace, not as one of the "unremarkable" ones, but as the case study of a capable member who caved anyway.

The Nancy Mace passage, verbatim

"Nancy Mace is a new House member from South Carolina, the first woman to graduate from The Citadel. After January 6th, she was outraged and stood up to her party, giving a dozen interviews in a single day condemning Trump. Now, she won't even talk about it. She voted to oust Liz Cheney for making the exact same case she herself had made. A lot of people in America think she's a patriot, but she looks to me like a traitor for the corner office. She supported an insurrection for the likes."

Bill Maher, "New Rule: The Big Liars," August 6, 2021

Maher's timeline tracks the public record. In the days after January 6, 2021, Mace publicly condemned Trump and blamed him for the Capitol riot in a run of national interviews. On May 12, 2021, House Republicans voted to remove Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership post as conference chair for continuing to say the 2020 election was not stolen and that Trump bore responsibility for January 6, the same position Mace herself had voiced in January. Maher's charge is that Mace made Cheney's case first and then helped push Cheney out. The characterization ("a traitor for the corner office") is Maher's opinion, offered on his show; Mace has consistently defended her record and her later support for Trump.

The cut: Bill Maher on Nancy Mace (vertical short)

The Nancy Mace portion of the editorial, cut to a vertical short (about 53 seconds) for the record. Source: Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO, August 6, 2021. Clip presented for commentary and criticism.

Watch the full editorial

The complete "New Rule: The Big Liars" editorial runs about eight minutes on the official Real Time with Bill Maher channel. The Nancy Mace passage begins around the 7:00 mark.

Watch on YouTube: Real Time with Bill Maher, "New Rule: The Big Liars" (HBO)

The line lived on

Maher collected and revised more than a decade of his New Rules editorials for his 2024 Simon & Schuster book, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You, which reworks many of the aired monologues. The primary source for the Mace passage remains the broadcast itself, and on the air, on August 6, 2021, the word he used was "traitor."

Maher and Mace, face to face

The 2021 editorial was delivered at Mace in absentia. In the years that followed she came on Real Time in person three times, and Maher kept pressing her on the same reversal.

She debuted on the panel in January 2023 alongside former Attorney General Bill Barr and writer Andrew Sullivan, describing herself as "fiscally conservative, socially moderate" and "a caucus of one." She returned in March 2024 with former Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Ro Khanna, and it was there that Maher confronted her directly about her turn on Trump. As reported by The Daily Beast and Fox News from that March 15, 2024 broadcast:

MAHER: "But you did switch on Trump. I mean, after Jan. 6. I could read you the quotes. You were very hard on him."

MACE: "I was very hard. I didn't like it."

MAHER: "That's not where you are now."

MACE: "Well, we've had three years of Joe Biden."

MAHER: "Would you have done what Mike Pence did that made Trump so angry?"

MACE: "I certified the Electoral College in every single state. I mean, that was the right thing to do, the constitutional thing to do. And I would do it again, 100 percent."

She came back a third time in September 2025 with Michael Smerconish, an appearance Maher opened by thanking her because, in his framing, "the Republicans show up" while many Democrats decline his invitations. Across all three sittings Mace defended her record in her own words; this catalog entry reproduces the exchange and does not adjudicate it.

Sources & related coverage

Bill Maher: Nancy Mace "looks to me like a traitor for the corner office": image 1