Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, as he did not directly answer whether the former president would seek to challenge this year’s election results, even These should be certified in every state.
Ohio Senator Vance comes face to face with his Democratic rival Minnesota Governor Tim Walz Tuesday in the only vice presidential debate of this election cycle.
The debate comes just a month before the crucial US presidential elections when the country will choose between Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Trump as the next leader.
In the context of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, when Vance was asked whether Trump would challenge the election results again this year, even if every governor certifies the results, he did not give a clear answer.
“Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square. And That’s all I’ve said, and that’s all Donald Trump has said,” Vance said.
He said Trump told protesters to “protest peacefully” on January 6, and the former president “left the White House” on January 20 when Joe Biden became president. “…Now, of course, unfortunately, we have all the negative policies that have come from the Harris-Biden administration,” he said.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in connection with the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election won by Democrat Biden. The Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly claimed that he won the 2020 election.
During the debate, Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, also asked Vance about Trump losing the 2020 election, NBC News reported.
“Did he (Trump) lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked.
“Tim, my focus is on the future,” Vance was quoted as saying in the report.
Describing it as a “non-answer”, Walz said, “I’m quite surprised by it. He lost the election. This is not a debate, this is not anything other than Donald Trump’s world.”
In the debate hosted by CBS News here, the two vice presidential candidates debated issues such as immigration, gun policy, climate change, abortion and the economy.
Calling censorship a “threat” to democracy in the United States, Vance accused Harris of engaging in it on an “industrial level.”
“He did it during COVID. He’s done it on a lot of other issues, and to me, that’s a much bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump did when he said protesters should protest peacefully on January 6,” he Said. Said.
On immigration, Walz noted Vance’s false claims about Haitian immigrants eating residents’ pets in Springfield, Ohio.
“There will be consequences,” Walz said. To this Vance responded, “The people I care about most in Springfield are American citizens.”
Vance said that because of the influx of migrants, “you have schools that are overwhelmed, you have hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have housing that is completely unaffordable.”
On the issue of abortion, Walz was asked by the arbitrators to respond to a claim by Trump that he supports abortion in the ninth month. “In Minnesota, what we did was reinstate Roe v. Wade,” Walz said. “We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care.”
“States will decide what’s right for Texas, what may not be right for Washington. It doesn’t work that way,” CNN quoted Walz as saying.
“This is a basic human right. We’ve seen maternal mortality rates skyrocket in Texas (since restrictions went into effect), outpacing many of the world’s cases,” he said.
Meanwhile, Vance said Republicans “need to do a much better job of gaining back the trust of the American people on this issue where they, frankly, don’t trust us.”