See Bill Maher Talk Abolishing Electoral College, Unifying Divided Nation

Bill Maher spent the opening portion of the first post-election Real Time, and the first episode with President-elect Donald Trump, discussing how the mogul became commander-in-chief despite getting 500,000 (and counting) less votes than Hillary Clinton.

“One other little detail about the election: Hillary won,” Maher said in his opening monologue. “She won popular vote, probably by a million and a half. It’s just that there were more Trump voters in the places that it counted, like Moscow.”

In a sit-down interview with Eric Holder, the former Attorney General said flatly, “We have to just abolish the Electoral College,” noting that it’s a difficult task that would require a constitutional amendment.

“It’s funny because always Donald Trump, opposite land, kept saying ‘The election’s rigged.’ It is rigged, in his favor,” Maher said. “Not just that but the election is on Tuesday, instead of a holiday like most countries. Poor people can’t just say ‘Hey, I’m taking off for the rest of the afternoon.'”

Maher also cited long lines at urban polling venues, the need for photo IDs and the “gutting” of the Voting Rights Act as ways the system is rigged for Republicans.

The measures being used to prevent people of color from voting “are a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution and goes against the fundamental thing that binds us as Americans, the ability of the people to decide who their leaders are and what policies those leaders will shape,” Holder said.

“The Republican Party has put itself on the wrong side of history here. Fifty years from now, people are going to look back and say this is the party that denied people the right to vote.”

The entirety of Real Time was dedicated to the unexpected election of Donald Trump as president and how Americans, specifically Democrats, must cope with and rebound from that.

“Like it or not, we’re living with Trump now, even though that kind of sounds like one of those prescription drug ads you hear on TV. ‘I’m living with Trump, but I’m not letting Trump control my life,'” Maher said during his final New Rule, which focused on the growing divide between Republican and Democratic voters.

“We’ve always had our disagreements here but now half the country wants absolutely nothing to do with the other half. Our motto is no longer ‘E Pluribus Unum’; it’s ‘Go fuck yourself.’ And that is not a sustainable way to live.”

Maher continued, “Maybe liberals and conservatives need couples therapy, a safe space where liberals can say to conservatives ‘Your obsession with guns makes me uncomfortable,’ and conservatives can say to liberals, ‘We feel bullied when you demand we make gay wedding cakes.’ But that’s probably not going to happen. You can unfriend someone whose politics you don’t like but you can’t unfriend 47 percent of America… America needs you more than ever, right here, with me, and the rest of the Resistance. Until we can figure out how to really make America great again.”

Watch the entirety of Maher’s post-election Real Time – which included guests John Legend, Thomas Friedman, David Axelrod, Trae Crowder and Ana Marie Cox – below: