WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — In his most direct answer yet about the 2020 election results since he joined the Republican presidential ticket, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio appeared to say Wednesday that he does not believe Donald Trump lost the last presidential election.
Fielding questions from reporters after he spoke at a rally in central Pennsylvania, Vance was pressed about recent appearances in which he has declined directly to say whether or not Trump lost his re-election bid against Joe Biden.
“What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question: Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?” a reporter asked Vance.
“First of all, on the election of 2020, I’ve answered this question directly a million times: 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 said.
He went on to admonish the media for focusing on the last election rather than on the issues that he said voters care about, like the cost of living or the southern border, adding that he “couldn’t care less if you agree or disagree with me on this issue.”
“What verifiably I know happened is that in 2020, large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop,” Vance said, a nod to comments he makes in interviews and campaign trail appearances suggesting censorship cost Trump “millions” of votes in 2020.
“Now, let’s take that as a baseline reality. Even the journalists who constantly fact-check me admit that’s real. You could say — well, let’s say your view is that happened and we still think Trump lost, or that happened and we think that means Trump won,” Vance said. “Who cares? It happened. Censorship is bad, and that’s the substance of what we’re focused on.”
Later, at his second campaign stop of the day, in Wilmington, North Carolina, Vance doubled down on his remark when another reporter asked him about his answer earlier in the afternoon.
“I’ve answered this question 10 times recently,” Vance said. “I think that Big Tech rigged the election in 2020. That’s my view. And if you disagree with me, that’s fine.”
Given a chance to ask a follow-up question, the reporter asked: “Why did you answer the question now? Why did you say ‘no’ when you didn’t say it before?”
“I have given this answer to this question for literally years,” Vance said, once again taking the media to task.
“Do your job and focus on the problems the American people care about, rather than bull—- from four years ago.”
Representatives for Vance did not respond to a request for comment.
Though he has long questioned the election’s results, Vance has been cautious in public appearances in saying definitively whether Trump won or lost four years ago — a stark contrast to Trump, who continues to say the election was stolen, even as voters are already casting their ballots in this year’s contest.
Even before Vance was nominated to join the Republican presidential ticket, he cast similar doubts about the results and said he would not have certified the election results had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2020.
“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance said in an interview on ABC News’ “This Week” in February, before he joined Trump’s presidential ticket.
One of his most notable answers as the vice presidential nominee, however, came on the vice presidential debate stage this month, when his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, pressed him about the outcome of the 2020 election.
“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied before he pivoted to again deride censorship on social media.
More recently, in a recent interview with The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast, Vance declined five times to explicitly say whether Trump lost the 2020 election, pointing once more to censorship and posing a question to the show’s host: “Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?”
Later at in his event in Williamsport, in response to a follow-up question about what he would need to see in November to say the 2024 election is secure, Vance said he is “not worried about it” because a lot of work has been done to “make sure that every legal ballot is cast and every legal ballot is counted.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
