J.D. Vance dogged by questions over Trump’s loss in 2020 election, falsely suggests it’s ‘rigged’
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
US Senator J.D. Vance was asked five times in an interview with The New York Times this week whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and he declined to answer each time.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
Follow topic:
UNITED STATES – US Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who has faced renewed questions about the 2020 election since refusing at the vice-presidential debate in October to acknowledge that former US president Donald Trump lost, falsely suggested on Oct 12 that the election had been “rigged”.
“I think the election of 2020 had serious problems,” Mr Vance said at a campaign event in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. “You want to call it rigged. Call it whatever you want to, it wasn’t okay.”
Mr Vance was asked five times in an interview with The New York Times this week whether Trump lost the 2020 election, and he declined to answer each time. Taking questions from reporters at a rally at a factory for military vehicles in Johnstown, Mr Vance again refused to acknowledge his running mate’s defeat and downplayed the severity of the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol
“Yes, there was a riot at the Capitol on Jan 6, but there was still a peaceful transfer of power in this country,” Mr Vance said, describing the rioters as “a few knuckleheads who went off and did something they shouldn’t do”. The rioters, hundreds of whom were convicted of crimes in connection to the attack, had interrupted the certification of Mr Joe Biden’s US presidential victory as they stormed the Capitol that day.
Johnstown, which has a storied history in the Pennsylvania steel industry, is in an overwhelmingly Republican county east of Pittsburgh that Trump won by 38 points in 2020. Some members of the audience at the event, filling roughly half the seats in the venue, stood up on their chairs and booed reporters as they asked questions about the 2020 election and the Jan 6 riot.
He repeated his assertion that censorship by tech companies had hurt Trump in 2020. Mr Vance also chided the press for asking him about that election, saying that he had not been asked one question about inflation or the economy.
Mr Vance said he is “a lot more worried that American citizens can’t afford a good life in their country because Kamala Harris has been the Vice-President, and that is what I’m trying to change”. The audience of Trump supporters then gave Mr Vance a standing ovation, and broke out into chants of: “J.D.”
Later, after Mr Vance departed Johnstown for a town hall event in a packed airport hangar in Reading, Pennsylvania, he said the attorney-general would be the most important job in a second Trump administration. He vowed to “clean house” at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Justice Department, and to fire those who were responsible for Trump’s first impeachment, which he characterised as “fake”.
“Here’s what president Trump and I are going to do when we get in there: We’re going to fire the people responsible,” Mr Vance said to raucous applause. NYTIMES
