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JD Vance has finally given a straight answer as to whether or not he believes Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
The Republican vice presidential nominee has refused to answer the question head-on for weeks, with his Democratic rival Tim Walz slamming his response as “a damning non-answer” whe confronted with the matter during the vice presidential debate earlier this month.
But now, the Ohio senator has finally confirmed his stance – and the answer is “no”, he does not believe Trump lost the 2020 race.
“On the election of 2020, I’ve answered this question directly a million times: No. I think there are serious problems in 2020,” he said at a campaign event in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday night.
“So, did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use,” Vance said.
“But look, I really couldn’t care less if you agree with me or disagree with me on this issue.”
The Harris campaign condemned the Republican candidate’s denial of the election result. “There we have it – JD Vance finally admitted he denies the 2020 election results,” 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.”
Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN that the refusal to accept Trump’s loss should be “disqualifying.”
“When you lose an election – you say so. That’s how democracy works. The Trump-Vance Ticket continues to lie about 2020. That alone is disqualifying,” he said.
Vance’s answer follows much back and forth over Trump’s baseless assertion the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In the debate with Walz on October 1, Vance refused twice to admit that Trump had lost – or to answer the question at all.
The first time he swerved the question and said: “The media’s obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago. I’m focused on the election of 33 days from now because I want to throw Kamala Harris out of office and get back to common-sense economic policies.”
When Walz asked him the question again, Vance replied: “I’m focused on the future.”
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
Then last week, in an interview with The New York Times, Vance was given five opportunities to answer the question by Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
Each time, he refused to give a straight answer or acknowledge his running mate lost the election. Instead, he trotted out the line: “I am focused on the future.”
Many Republicans have also refused to directly admit that Trump lost the presidential race in 2020.
Speaker Mike Johnson refused to utter the statement aloud on ABC News’s This Week.
“You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we are talking about the future,” he said. “We are not going to talk about what happened in 2020, we are going to talk about 2024.”
