With just three weeks until the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH), was pressed five times by The New York Times on whether he believes Trump lost the 2020 election. Each time, Vance sidestepped the question, refusing to acknowledge Trump’s defeat.
During an hour-long interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Vance said he was “focused on the future” rather than past elections.
“There’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable,” he stated, avoiding a direct answer.
When pressed again about Trump’s election loss, Vance suggested that Trump might have won without alleged censorship of politically damaging stories, despite the lack of evidence supporting such claims. He dismissed assertions about the integrity of the election process as mere “slogans,” indicating his unwillingness to accept the consensus that there was no widespread fraud affecting the results.
Vance’s consistent avoidance of the question highlights a broader trend among Trump allies to ignore the realities of the 2020 election. In a previous debate against Democratic opponent Tim Walz, he also failed to directly address Trump’s loss, prompting Walz to label his response as a “damning nonanswer.”
Critics, including Democrats, argue that Vance’s refusal to confront the truth about the 2020 election indicates a willingness to enable Trump’s undermining of democratic processes. Walz even called him a “coward” for dodging the question.
While Vance stated he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in 2024, he hedged on whether he and Trump would accept the outcome if they lost. He reiterated Trump’s stance that any perceived issues could lead to challenges, echoing Trump’s rhetoric from previous elections.
This reluctance to acknowledge Trump’s defeat underscores the ongoing influence of the former president’s conspiracy theories within the GOP.
Following Vance’s interview, Democratic National Committee officials criticized him for prioritizing Trump’s narrative over democratic principles, asserting that he would rather uphold dangerous election conspiracy theories than protect the integrity of the electoral process.
Watch the clip below:
JD Vance repeatedly refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election despite no proof of election fraud in an interview with The New York Times. https://t.co/UJJe685KAi pic.twitter.com/CQFrbIypcY
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 11, 2024
