Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance skillfully responded to a misleading question about election integrity in a recent interview with the New York Times.
“Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” asked the NYT’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “Let me ask you a question. Is it okay that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, which independent analysis have said it cost Donald Trump millions of votes?” Vance responded, pointing to Facebook and Twitter’s infamous decision to censor the bombshell story just weeks before the 2020 election.
Both Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have acknowledged that intelligence officials pressured them to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, alleging that it exhibited “hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.” Several polls indicate that this government-assisted censorship significantly influenced the election outcome. For example, a survey by the New Jersey-based Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics found that nearly four in five Americans believe that “truthful” reporting of the story would have tilted the election in Donald Trump’s favor.
Garcia-Navarro attempted to sidestep this fact by once again asking Vance whether his running mate lost the 2020 election. “Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes? I think that’s the question,” the Ohio Republican shot back. “Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” an annoyed Garcia-Navarro once again asked. “And I’ve answered your question with another question. You answer my question and I’ll answer yours,” Vance replied.
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“You’re repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I’m saying, which is that when our own technology firms engage in industrial-scale censorship, by the way, backed up by the federal government in a way that independent studies suggest affect the votes, I’m worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020,” he continued. “I’m not worried about the slogan that people throw. ‘Well, every court case went this way.’ I’m talking about something very discreet, a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020, and more importantly, that led to Kamala Harris’s governance, which has screwed this country up in a big way.”
When questioned about whether he would have certified the 2020 election—a decision former Vice President Mike Pence made without thoroughly investigating fraud allegations—Vance stated that he would not have done so. “I’ve said that I would have voted against certification because of the concern that I just raised,” he said.