JD Vance refuses 5 times to say if Donald Trump lost in 2020: JD Vance in the news

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

That refusal is a foundation of the former president’s so-called “Big Lie,” that the election was somehow stolen from him. Dozens of courts, Trump’s own departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and some Republican officials have rejected the baseless claim.

The “Big Lie” is blamed as a contributing factor to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot that sought 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 ducked the question five more times. He said the focus on 2020 is an obsession, that he and Trump are looking forward and trying to instead draw attention to his claims that censorship by big technology companies cost Trump millions of votes.

A story, initially published by the New York Post, referenced emails on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden that it said discussed overseas business dealings. Critics of the president argue, without conclusive proof, that shows corruption. Some social media companies took down references to the story, arguing that it could be Russian disinformation.

“Did big technology 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 a fourth time. “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”

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

Trump recently has continued to preach the “Big Lie” on the campaign stump, saying the election in 2020 was rigged and that he really won in a landslide. He blames fraud by mail-in voting, by noncitizen voting, by a vast interstate conspiracy and fraud orchestrated by the Democratic Party.

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

Trump’s rhetoric, though, is often cited as a potential cause of rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Speaking at a rally beforehand, Trump urged the crowd to march to the Capitol to get Republicans to oppose certification of the electoral count.

“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said then.

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

“You’re repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I am saying, which is that when our own technology firms engage in industrial scale censorship, by the way backed up by the federal government, in a way that independent studies suggest affect the votes, I’m worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020,” Vance said. “I’m not worried about this slogan that people throw, ‘Well, every court case went this way.’ I’m talking about something very discrete: A problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020, and more importantly that led to Kamala Harris’ governance, which has screwed this country up in a big way.”

While he would not answer Garcia-Navarro’s question about who won the election directly, Vance insisted he and Trump would support a peaceful transfer of power.

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

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

See more JD Vance in the news stories.

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