Vance says Trump did not lose in 2020 ‘by the words that I would use’

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said Wednesday that former President Trump did not lose in 2020 “by the words that I would use” — some of his most extensive comments yet on the subject of the last presidential election results.

“First of all, on the election of 2020 — I’ve answered this question directly, a million times — no,” Vance said a campaign event in Pennsylvania when a reporter asked what message Vance thought it sent to independent voters when he didn’t directly answer the question “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 said.

“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,” he added later. “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.”

Vance has largely dodged the question of whether Trump lost the 2020 election — something the former president and many of his allies have refuted, instead baselessly claiming fraud or wrongdoing occurred.

Most recently in an interview with The New York Times published last week, he repeatedly avoided answering whether Trump lost the presidential election.

The Harris-Walz campaign criticized Vance’s comments on Wednesday, with spokesperson Matt Corridoni saying in a statement, “There we have it — JD Vance 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.”