A New York Times interview carried echoes of Vance’s “damning non-answer” in the vice presidential debate.

Characterizing questions about whether Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lied about his 2020 election loss as an “obsession” of the media, vice presidential contender JD Vance on Friday refused five consecutive opportunities to acknowledge the election results.

In an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, host of The New York Times podcast “The Interview,” Vance repeatedly attempted to suggest that questions about whether Trump refused to accept the results of a democratic election were unimportant, saying he was “focused on the future.”

“Do you think he lost the 2020 election?” asked Garcia-Navarro, point-blank.

“I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election,” Vance replied. “I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable.”

When Garcia-Navarro asked him the straightforward question a second and third time, he claimed tech companies’ censorship of a New York Post story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop “cost Donald Trump millions of votes,” still refusing to answer whether President Joe Biden was, in fact, the election winner in November 2020.

“I’ve asked this question repeatedly, it is something that is very important for the American people to know,” said Garcia-Navarro. “There is no proof, legal or otherwise, the Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.”

Vance later said he would not have certified the 2020 election if he had been in Congress at the time, citing his claim that “industrial scale censorship” cost Trump millions of votes.

“Vance definitively stated that he would have voided the votes of millions of Americans, and paved the way for installing Trump, after Trump lost the 2020 election,” said lawyer and writer David Lurie.

Independent journalist Aaron Rupar called Vance’s refusal to answer the question “one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen.”

The interview came days after Vance faced Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz in a debate. Vance responded to a direct question about whether Trump lost in 2020 with his favored refrain and more claims of censorship.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said at the debate. “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?”

Walz condemned Vance’s “damning non-answer.”

Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, responded to Friday’s interview by calling Vance “the Project 2025 enabler of Trump’s dreams.”

“Donald Trump chose JD Vance to be his running mate for one reason and one reason only: He will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t and put Donald Trump over our Constitution,” said Chitika. “His refusal to acknowledge the simple fact that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election is proof that if Trump wins, there will be no one left to check his worst instincts and stop him from gaining unprecedented, unchecked power to do whatever he wants and put our country at risk.”

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  election, refusal, results, trump, vance