Vance, given 5 chances to say Trump lost in 2020, takes none
KENNY HOLSTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) at the vice-presidential debate, in New York, on Oct. 1. Much as he did in the debate, Vance declined to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election — five separate times — in an interview with the New York Times.
Stay updated on Hawaii and national elections coverageHeading into the final three weeks of the 2024 election, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, will still not say whether his running mate won or lost the last race for the White House.
In an interview with The New York Times that will be published Saturday, Vance repeatedly refused to acknowledge former President Donald Trump’s defeat and went to even greater lengths to avoid doing so than he did during the vice presidential debate this month.
When asked about the previous election during an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” a Times podcast, the Republican vice presidential nominee responded that he was “focused on the future.” It was the same phrase he used to evade the same question during his debate with his Democratic rival, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
“There’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020,” Vance said. “I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable.”
When pressed a second time, Vance pivoted to a complicated counterargument: He suggested Trump would have won more votes in 2020 had social media companies not limited posts about a New York Post story about the contents of a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. Trump allies had maintained that documents on the laptop linked President Joe Biden to corrupt business dealings, but those claims were unfounded.
“Sen. Vance, I’m going to ask you again,” Garcia-Navarro said. “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
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“Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?” Vance replied.
“Sen. Vance,” Garcia-Navarro continued. “I’m going to ask you again, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
“And I’ve answered your question with another question,” Vance said. “You answer my question and I’ll answer yours.”
On her fifth request for a yes-or-no answer, Garcia-Navarro pointed out that there was “no proof, legal or otherwise,” of election fraud.
Vance dismissed that as “a slogan.”
“I’m not worried about this slogan that people throw, ‘Well, every court case went this way,’” Vance said. “I’m talking about something very discrete — a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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