Vance, Given 5 Chances to Say Trump Lost in 2020, Takes None

Vance, Given 5 Chances to Say Trump Lost in 2020, Takes None

In an interview with The New York Times, Senator JD Vance repeatedly refused to acknowledge Donald J. Trump’s defeat and said he would not have certified the 2020 results.

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By Michael C. Bender

Heading into the final three weeks of the 2024 election, Senator JD Vance of Ohio will still not say whether his running mate won or lost the last race for the White House.

In an interview with The New York Times that will be published on Saturday, Mr. Vance repeatedly refused to acknowledge former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat and went to even greater lengths to avoid doing so than he did during the vice-presidential debate earlier this month.

When asked about the previous election during an hourlong interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” a Times podcast published each Saturday, the Republican vice-presidential nominee responded that he was “focused on the future.” It was the same phrase he used to evade the same question during his debate with his Democratic rival, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.

“There’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020,” Mr. Vance said in the interview. “I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable.”

When pressed a second time, Mr. Vance pivoted to a complicated counterargument: He suggested Mr. Trump would have won more votes in 2020 had social media companies not limited posts about a New York Post story about the contents of a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son. Trump allies had maintained that documents on the laptop linked President Biden to corrupt business dealings, but those claims were unfounded.

“Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again,” Ms. Garcia-Navarro said. “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”

“Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?” Mr. Vance replied.

“Senator Vance,” Ms. Garcia-Navarro continued. “I’m going to ask you again, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”

“And I’ve answered your question with another question,” Mr. Vance said. “You answer my question and I’ll answer yours.”

On her fifth request for a yes-or-no answer, Ms. Garcia-Navarro pointed out that there was “no proof, legal or otherwise,” of election fraud.

Mr. Vance dismissed that as “a slogan.”

“I’m not worried about this slogan that people throw, ‘Well, every court case went this way,’” Mr. Vance said. “I’m talking about something very discrete — a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020.”

During his 90-minute debate with Mr. Walz, Mr. Vance twice refused to answer a direct question about whether Mr. Trump had lost the 2020 election. It was widely considered his weakest debate moment and may have turned off voters. In CNN’s focus group of seven undecided Michigan voters who watched the debate, the only person who settled on a pick after the event said he would support Vice President Kamala Harris specifically because of Mr. Vance’s refusal to acknowledge the 2020 election results.

Mr. Vance’s interview with The Times covered a range of subjects, including his conversion to Catholicism and the backlash over his attacks on “childless cat ladies.” But the exchange on the 2020 results showed he still had not found an answer to put the last election behind him. Acknowledging the truth that Mr. Biden won, of course, would discredit Mr. Trump’s claims and risk angering the former president.

Mr. Trump has anchored his party to this issue — and raised concerns about the reaction that could follow the results on Nov. 5 — by continuing to dispute the 2020 contest.

Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge in a podcast interview last month that he had indeed “lost by a whisker,” but then insisted during his debate with Ms. Harris on Sept. 10 that “that was said sarcastically.”

“Look, there’s so much proof,” Mr. Trump said during the debate, after refusing to acknowledge his defeat. “All you have to do is look at it. And they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval. I got almost 75 million votes.”

Mr. Trump received 74.2 million votes, but the presidency is decided by the Electoral College, not a nationwide popular vote. Still, Mr. Biden received 81.3 million votes.

Three weeks later, at the vice-presidential debate, Mr. Vance was asked directly by Mr. Walz whether Mr. Trump lost.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Mr. Vance told him. “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?”

“That is a damning non-answer,” Mr. Walz shot back.

In his Times interview, Mr. Vance said he would not have voted to certify the 2020 results, and added that “we commit to a peaceful transfer of power” in 2024.

“If there are problems, of course, in the same way that Democrats protested in 2004 and Donald Trump raised issues in 2020,” Mr. Vance said, “we’re going to make sure that this election counts.”