Unpacking JD Vance's Absurd Statements About The 2020 Election And Trump’s Big Lie

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At the end of Tuesday night’s debate, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance wouldn’t give a straight answer when Democrat Tim Walz asked whether Donald Trump lost the election in 2020.

“I’m focused on the future,” Vance said, before quickly trying to change the subject: “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?”

Walz termed it a “damning non-answer” and went on to say voters had a clear choice in the upcoming election between “who’s going to honor that democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump.”

Aside fromone stray comment he later brushed off as sarcasm, Trump has never conceded his loss in the 2020 election and has continued to insist, without any evidence whatsoever, that it was stolen.

As Trump’s running mate, it’s not surprising Vance would deflect from Trump’s allegedly criminal conduct related to the election. But what does pandemic-era “censorship” by the Biden administration have to do with an election that happened before he took office?

Republicans have accused the Biden administration of illegally “jawboning” social media companies into suppressing dubious content about the COVID-19 pandemic since the outbreak began. The Supreme Court this year threw out a lawsuit from social media users and two Republican state attorneys general, however, claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated. Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show anyone in the government actually forced any platforms to impose their content moderation rules against certain posts.

Still, Republicans see a pattern of