After months of dodging the question, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance finally came out and said it: He believes the proven lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. And while it’s easy to ridicule Vance for finally falling in line with the desperate GOP nominee, his willingness to do Trump’s bidding is no laughing matter.
Vance’s admission came during a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, after a reporter asked the Ohio senator what message it sends to independent voters when he repeatedly refuses to answer questions about whether he believes Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that Trump was the rightful winner.
“I’ve answered this question directly a million times,” Vance replied. “No, I think there are serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use.”
Vance for weeks has been dancing around the question of who he believes won the last election.
Over the weekend, he repeatedly dodged the question from a New York Times reporter about whether he thought Trump won in 2020.
“I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future,” Vance told the Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020.”
Vance gave a similar answer during the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate. When his opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, asked Vance if he believes Trump lost the 2020 election, the response was downright evasive.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said. “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?”
Walz’s response was one of the stand-out moments of the night when he replied that Vance just gave a “damning nonanswer.
Of course, Trump did not win the 2020 election.
Despite filing dozens of since-failed legal challenges, Trump and his allies provided no evidence of the kind of widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election. And an exhaustive investigation by The Associated Press in 2021 found fewer than 425 cases of fraud out of more than 25.5 million votes analyzed. Many of those fraudulent votes weren’t even counted, as they were identified before they were added to final vote tallies, the AP reported at the time.
However, it should come as no surprise that Vance is willing to claim the election was stolen.
The whole reason he is Trump’s running mate in 2024 is because Trump dumped former Vice President Mike Pence from the GOP ticket after Pence refused to go along with an effort to steal the election by refusing to certify the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has since been indicted for that plot, and faces four felony counts for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
Unlike Pence, Vance has said he would have gone along with Trump’s scheme and refused to certify now-President Joe Biden’s win.
“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we had,” Vance said in September—the exact scenario Trump and his allies were hoping for back in January 2021.
That should put a chill down the spines of Americans, as Vance is not only on the Republican ticket but a sitting U.S. senator who could be part of another “stop the steal” effort by objecting to the 2024 results if Vice President Kamala Harris wins on Nov. 5.
What’s more, if Trump and Vance do win in 2024, Vance would oversee the certification of the 2028 election and be in a position to block certification of a Democratic victory.
Harris’ campaign slammed Vance for his 2020 election denialism.
“There we have it—JD Vance finally admitted he denies the 2020 election results,” Harris campaign spokesperson Matt Corridoni said in a statement. “As Governor Walz said on the debate stage weeks ago, Donald Trump selected Vance for this exact reason — he knows Vance will be a loyal soldier in Trump’s pursuit for absolute, unchecked, limitless power.”
Emily Singer October 17, 2024 at 11:00PM From Daily Kos
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