Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the GOP nominee for vice president, refused five times to answer a question about whether former President Trump lost the 2020 in a new interview with The New York Times.
Vance sat down with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, the host of the outlet’s podcast “The Interview,” for a lengthy discussion about his background and the campaign.
The first time Garcia-Navarro asked directly if Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance deflected and said he was “focused on the future.”
Pressed a second time for a “yes” or “no” answer, Vance pivoted to complaining about Facebook censorship of stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020. He again raised that issue when asked a third and a fourth time, suggesting censorship cost Trump votes.
On her fifth time asking, Garcia-Navarro noted there was “no proof, legal or otherwise that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.” Vance accused her of “repeating a slogan,” and again declined to answer.
The interview marks the latest instance of the Republican ticket getting caught up in Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election in the closing weeks of the 2024 race.
Trump repeatedly claims on the campaign trail that the election was rigged and fraudulent, despite there being no evidence of widespread fraud and dozens of legal challenges from his team being dismissed by the courts, including the conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
During the vice presidential debate earlier this month, Vance refused to answer when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) pressed him on the issue of whether Trump lost.
“This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) replied to Vance. “And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say, he is still saying he didn’t lose the election. I would just ask that: Did he lose the 2020 election?”
Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in 2020 and the weeks he spent spreading false claims about fraud culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, where Trump supporters sought to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory. Trump has since been indicted for his efforts to remain in power but those cases have largely stalled.
