JD Vance Refuses 5 Times to Say Donald Trump Lost 2020: JD Vance in the News

NEW YORK – In a lengthy interview published over the weekend, Ohio Sen. JD Vance again refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

This denial is a foundation of the so-called “big lie” of the former president, that somehow the election was stolen from him. Dozens of courts, Trump’s own Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and some Republican officials have dismissed the claim as unsubstantiated.

The “big lie” is blamed as a contributing factor in the January 6, 2021, United States Capitol riot that attempted to thwart the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Vance, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, refused during his debate with Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to acknowledge that Trump lost the election.

In his interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times, Vance dodged the question five more times. He said the focus on 2020 is an obsession, that he and Trump are looking ahead and trying to draw attention to their claims that censorship of big tech companies cost Trump millions of votes.

One story, originally published by the New York Post, referred to emails on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden that he said discussed overseas business. The president’s critics argue, without conclusive evidence, that it demonstrates corruption. Some social media companies took down references to the story, arguing it could be Russian disinformation.

“Did big tech companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?” Vance said in response to the third time Garcia-Navarro asked the question.

“Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again,” Garcia-Navarro said for the fourth time. “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”

“I answered your question with another question,” Vance said. “You answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

Recently, Trump has continued to preach the “big lie” on the campaign trail, saying that the 2020 election was rigged and that he actually won in a landslide. He blames vote-by-mail fraud, noncitizen voting, a vast interstate conspiracy, and fraud orchestrated by the Democratic Party.

However, the governors of all 50 states certified the results of the 2020 election. Election officials and outside experts praised the election, with more votes cast for president than ever before, as one of the safest and most accurate ever. And when Trump tried to challenge the results in court, he lost more than 60 times.

Trump’s rhetoric, however, is often cited as a possible cause of unrest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Speaking before a rally, Trump urged the crowd to march on the Capitol to get Republicans to oppose the certification of the electoral count.

“If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore,” he said at the time.

After Vance declined to answer her question directly, Garcia-Navarro said there is “no evidence, legal or otherwise, that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.” Vance then cut her off.

“You’re repeating a slogan instead of engaging with what I’m saying, which is that when our own tech companies engage in industrial-scale censorship, admittedly supported by the federal government, in a way that independent studies suggest affects the votes. , I’m concerned about Americans who feel there were problems in 2020,” Vance said. “I’m not worried about this slogan that people throw around: ‘Well, all the court cases went that way.’ I’m talking about something very low-key: a censorship problem in this country that I think affected things in 2020 and, more importantly, it led to the government of Kamala Harris, which has screwed this country up in a big way.”

While he did not respond to Garcia-Navarro’s question about who won the election outright, Vance insisted that he and Trump would support a peaceful transfer of power.

Vance previously said he would not have certified the results of the 2020 election, as Trump’s then-Vice President Mike Pence did. The US Constitution does not empower the vice president to reject electors submitted by states, as Vance has said he would have asked had he presided over the certification.

As rioters stormed the Capitol to stop the certification, they chanted “hang Mike Pence.” A White House aide later told Congress that Trump said Pence “deserves it.”

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Cleveland.com is closely following JD Vance’s every move and the reactions he causes as he becomes the first Ohioan in 80 years to appear on a presidential ticket for either major party. JD Vance’s coverage aims to provide a daily snapshot of the buzz around him, capturing what he says, what he does and what others say about him.