Vice-presidential running mate of the Republican party, JD Vance, has eschewed giving a nod to the fact that Donald Trump lost the 2020 elections. He had managed to dodge a direct response on whether the former president would make a case to challenge this year's election results even if they were certified in every state.
Senator Vance of Ohio faced off Tuesday with his Democratic opponent Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in the only vice presidential debate for this election cycle.
The debate comes a little over a month before the pivotal US presidential elections when the country will decide between Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Trump as the next leader.
Though President Donald Trump never made it clear whether he will challenge again this year's election results even if every governor certifies the same, Vance was referring to the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square. And that's all I've said, and that's all that Donald Trump has said,'' Vance said.
He said that Trump told the protesters on Jan 6th to "protest peacefully," and former President Trump "left the White House" on Jan 20 when Joe Biden took office. ".now, of course, unfortunately, we have all of the negative policies that have come from the Harris-Biden administration," he said.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing behind the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, which Biden had won as a Democrat. The Republican presidential candidate has claimed time and again that he won the elections in 2020.
While debating, NBC News reported that the Democratic vice presidential candidate Walz also asked Vance if Trump had lost the 2020 election.
"Do he (Trump) lose the 2020 election?" Walz asked.
"He is focusing on the future, Tim," Vance was quoted in a report as saying.
This is a non-answer," Walz said. "I'm pretty shocked by this. He lost the election. This is not a debate, it's not anything anywhere other than in Donald Trump's world." The two vice presidential candidates also traded barbs on other issues during a CBS News debate here, including immigration, gun policy, climate change, abortion and the economy.
Calling censorship a "threat" to democracy in the US, Vance alleged that Harris has engaged in it at an "industrial scale".
"She did it during Covid. She's done it over a number of other issues, and that, to me, is a much bigger threat to democracy than what Donald Trump said when he said the protesters should peacefully protest on January the sixth," he said.
On immigration, Walz attacked false claims from Vance that Haitian immigrants have been robbing people in Springfield, Ohio, of their pets to eat.
"There are consequences for this," Walz said. To that, Vance replied, "The people I care most about in Springfield are the American citizens." He stated that with the influx of immigrants, "you've got schools that are overwhelmed, you've got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you've got housing that is totally unaffordable." On abortion, Walz was pressed by the moderators to respond to a claim from Trump that he supports abortion in the ninth month. "In Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade," Walz said. "We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care." "The states will decide what's right for Texas might not be right for Washington. That's not how this works," Walz was quoted as saying by CNN.
"This is basic human rights. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many accounts in the world," he added.
Meanwhile, Vance said Republicans need to "do so much better of a job at earning the American people's trust back on this issue, where they, frankly, just don't trust us."
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