JD Vance was asked if he will accept the 2024 election results. His response is telling.

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance dodged questions during Tuesday’s debate about whether he would try to undermine the results of the November election if given the chance — just as he has said he would have done in 2020. He also declined to answer whether he believes Trump. lost in 2020.

The question came up in the second half of Vance’s debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.

“Sen. Vance, you said you would not have certified the last presidential election and that you would have asked the states to nominate alternative electors,” CBS News moderator Norah O’Donnell told Vance. “That is being called unconstitutional and illegal. Would you try to question this year’s election results again, even if every governor certifies the results?”

Vance… didn’t answer the question. Instead, he went on several tangents about inflation and online censorship. When he answered the question briefly, he lied.

“What President Trump has said is that there were issues in 2020, and my own belief is that we need to fight about those issues, debate those issues, peacefully in the public square, and that’s all I’ve said and that’s everything Donald Trump said. has said,” Vance said of Trump’s claims of election fraud that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

That’s not all Vance has said, and it’s not all Trump has said either.

Vance later added a few more falsehoods, claiming that Trump had said that “protesters should protest peacefully on January 6th” and adding that Trump “peacefully surrendered power on January 20th,” the day Joe Biden was inaugurated inaugurated.

He also declined to answer whether Trump lost the 2020 election at all.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” he said when pressed by Walz.

“That’s a damn non-answer,” Walz replied.

What Trump actually did

Trump is facing federal charges over his attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. He was recently indicted again on these charges, and his lawyers made new arguments in the case just hours before Tuesday’s debate.

“Despite losing, the defendant – who was also the sitting president – ​​was determined to remain in power,” the indictment said. “So more than two months after election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determining fraud in the elections. [and that] he had actually won. These claims were false and the defendant knew them to be false.”

After losing in 2020, Trump spent weeks pursuing baseless lawsuits alleging widespread election fraud for which there was no evidence. When those lawsuits failed, his team cultivated fraudulent “alternative” voter rolls with the aim of pressuring Congress to count these fake Trumps. votes in key states instead of the votes for Biden that were certified by those states. Trump then pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to go along with the plot. Although dozens of Republicans in Congress ultimately voted in favor of Trump’s plan, Pence balked and Trump’s strategy failed.

To put pressure on Pence and members of Congress, Trump invited his supporters to a “wild” protest in Washington on January 6, where Congress and Pence would have the opportunity to count the fraudulent voters and ultimately declare the results for Trump to undo. In a speech that day before sending a crowd to the Capitol, Trump did indeed use the word “peaceful” — but the overwhelming message to his supporters was that they should “fight” for him: “And we are fighting. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight hard, you will no longer have a country.”

The mob fought and attacked the Capitol for hours in an attempt to confront Congress as Trump sat back and watched. “When advisors urged the defendant to deliver a calming message directed at the rioters, the defendant refused, but repeatedly noted that the people in the Capitol were angry that the election had been stolen,” the complaint against Trump says . That is far from peaceful.

Vance has said he would have agreed with Trump’s plan

Vance said Tuesday that if he had been vice president, all he would have wanted was a peaceful debate over the election results.

But in fairer moments, Vance has said he would have agreed with Trump’s plan to overturn the election.

Vance told ABC News in February: “If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed multiple electoral rolls, and I think the United States Congress should have fought there over it.”

And he told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in June, “Look, this is what this would have looked like if you really wanted to do this.” You would have actually tried to go to the states that were having problems; you would try to compile alternative electoral rolls, as they did in the 1876 election. And then you have to actually prosecute that case; you have to make an argument for the American people.”

“Do I think Mike Pence could have played a better role? Yes,” Vance said during a podcast recording a few days ago, repeatedly declining to say he would have certified the Electoral College results and adding that he would have “asked the states to submit alternative electoral rolls. ”

The “argument” Vance is talking about is Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen. That simply wasn’t the case, as multiple surveys by dozens of nonpartisan analysts and members of both parties have shown. Apart from a few isolated cases of voter fraud, which occur in every election, widespread fraud has not occurred. And there was certainly no systematic fraud in 2020.

Vance has repeatedly said he would have worked with Trump and Republicans in Congress to overturn the legitimate outcome of a democratic election. So when he said Tuesday that he wanted to “fight on these issues,” that is the fight he is talking about: a fight for democracy itself.

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