Following last night's vice presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign hit back at former President Donald Trump's running mate J.D. Vance after Vance refused to say Trump lost the 2020 election, turning his "damning non-answer" into a brutal new ad.
During the debate, Kamala Harris's running mate Governor Tim Walz asked Vance directly who won the 2020 election and instead of answering, Vance pivoted away from the question altogether. Vance also minimized the significance of the insurrection of January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the election results.
When Walz asked Vance "did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?" Vance dodged, answering:
"Tim, I'm focused on the future."
To that, Walz replied:
"That is a damning non-answer."
Afterward, the Harris campaign told reporters that Vance's response was "the top moment of the night" and pledged to release a new ad skewering his remarks.
Sure enough, the ad dropped this morning, featuring the exchange above followed by footage showing Trump's supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, as the caption reads:
"If we elect Donald Trump, the past will be the future."
Then the ad concludes with Walz's frank observation:
"America, I think you've got a really clear choice of who's gonna honor that democracy and who's gonna honor Donald Trump."
You can see the ad below.
Vance was swiftly called out.
Earlier this year, Vance told ABC News that if he had been vice president in 2020, he would not have certified the election results as Mike Pence did in 2021:
“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there."
"That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”
To clarify, the Constitution does not grant the vice president the authority to compel states to submit multiple slates of electors. Legal experts agree that such decisions rest solely with the states. In the case of the 2020 election, there was no legitimate basis for states to consider multiple slates of electors.
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