When asked about who won the last presidential election, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said on Wednesday that “by the words I would use,” former President Donald Trump did not lose in the 2020 election.
The vice presidential nominee has been asked the question numerous times by members of the media and even his vice presidential opponent, Tim Walz. Most recently, he was asked by a reporter at a campaign event in Pennsylvania.
“First of all, on the election of 2020 — I’ve answered this question directly, a million times — no,” Vance said. “Did Donald Trump lose in 2020? I think there were serious problems in 2020. So, did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use.”
Vance went on to address the issues that he saw with the last election, saying that the media doesn’t focus on what it should.
“Here’s the thing that I focus on — because what the media will do, they’ll focus on the court cases, or they’ll focus on some crazy conspiracy theory,” Vance said. “What I know, what verifiably I know happened is that in 2020, large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop story, and that had a major, major consequence on the election.”
Trump and many of his allies have continued to insist the former president won the 2020 election, but due to mass amounts of fraud they claim but have never been able to find or articulate, say it was stolen. Despite these claims and his numerous efforts in court cases to prove it was stolen, this has remained untrue.
Now, in the weeks leading up to the election, Vance has taken on the brunt of those questions, and the vice presidential nominee has largely refrained from giving a yes or no answer.
In an interview with the New York Times last week, Vance again avoided answering the question directly.
Matt Corridoni, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, criticized Vance’s comments on Wednesday, saying that he has “finally admitted he denies the 2020 election results.”
“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,” Vance said.