A reporter asked JD Vance, five times: Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?

New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro gave JD Vance five chances to answer a pretty easy question – did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

This, going forward, is going to be the first question that I ask Republican politicians in interviews, and if they can’t give a straight answer, as Vance can’t seem to, that’s all we’ll end up being able to talk about before we’re done.

“I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future,” Vance said on his first stab at running away from having to say, well, yes, of course Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and, I mean, come on, it wasn’t even close.

The second walk-around: “Let me ask you a question. Is it OK that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, which independent analysis have said cost Donald Trump millions of votes?”

The “independent studies” that Vance referenced here was actually one “independent study,” by a far-right group that commissioned what we call in the business a “push poll,” which, not surprisingly, got the results that it was designed to get.

That’s how push polls work.

They’re not polls; they’re marketing.

While we’re here, wonder what Vance thinks about “big technology companies” like Twitter censoring the hacked Trump campaign emails story.

The NYT, separately, broke that one on Friday, about Elon Musk conspiring with the Trump campaign to remove links to an independent journalist’s reporting on hacked emails revealing the campaign’s vetting report on Vance from back when he was still a candidate for the Republican VP nomination.

Sadly, we didn’t get a response from him on that topic, either.

Back to the Big Lie, and Vance’s efforts to walk around that.

Answer #3: “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.”

Classic dodge here from Vance, just repeating what he’d already said.

The “millions of votes,” incidentally, are a fever dream.

Answer #4: “I’ve answered your question with another question. You answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

I’m rubber, you’re glue.

Whatever you say bounces off me, and sticks to you.

This JD Vance guy is 9 years old.

And finally, #5: “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.”

Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020 are called “MAGA Republicans,” and the problems they have with 2020 are focused on how their side lost by 7 million votes.

Garcia-Navarro did get an answer on a related question from Vance, who said he “would have voted against certification because of the concern that I just raised.”

I know, breaking news.

“When you have technology companies censoring Americans at a mass scale in a way that, again, independent studies have suggested affect the vote, I think that it’s right to protest against that, to criticize that, and that’s a totally reasonable thing,” Vance said.

So, presumably, it would be kosher for Kamala Harris to not certify the 2024 election – as the vice president, that’s her job this coming Jan. 6 – if she loses, because of Elon Musk and Twitter censoring the hacked Trump campaign emails.

I mean, that’s what our guy JD Vance just said there, right?