Vance refuses to answer whether Trump lost 2020 election
The BBC's Anthony Zurcher on the VP debate's biggest takeaways
- Published
JD Vance has refused to say whether he thinks Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and whether he would contest the 2024 vote if Democrats win next month.
The Republican vice-presidential candidate - who has previously said he would have challenged the 2020 result if given the chance - avoided giving answers on both issues during Tuesday night's debate.
In a head-to-head that was largely civilised in tone, he was accused by his Democratic opponent Tim Walz of "a damning non-answer" after sidestepping a question about that result and the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.
Trump was seeking a second term then and has spent years making false claims about voter fraud during that poll.
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The exchange unfolded after the CBS News moderators asked Vance if he would try to challenge the results of November's election, even if every US state governor certified them - as was the case in 2020.
Vance did not directly answer, instead saying he was "focused on the future".
He sought to defend Trump over the riot during which President Trump's supporters attacked the US Capitol building in an effort to stop Joe Biden becoming president.
Vance said Trump had simply spoken of "problems" in 2020, and insisted that Trump had only said that "protesters ought to protest peacefully".
Turning to the outcome of the 2024 vote, he said: "If Tim Walz is the next vice-president, he'll have my prayers, he'll have my best wishes, and he'll have my help whenever he wants it."
But Walz persisted with the events of 2020 - challenging Vance to answer whether Trump had lost the poll. When Vance again sought to change the topic, Walz said: "That is a damning non-answer."
Walz added that they were "miles apart" on the issue, despite agreeing on other things during their 90-minute debate.
Other than one or two other tussles - including an exchange on immigration that led to the two men's microphones being muted - the debate was polite in tone.
Walz found himself under pressure from the moderators over past comments of his own - marking the latest occasion in which he has fallen foul of fact-checkers.
He admitted that he "misspoke" when he claimed he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. News reports from the time show that he was actually in the US when the events took place in China.
Tuesday's event in New York marked the first and only scheduled head-to-head between the pair.
Polling by CBS News immediately afterwards suggested that 42% of viewers felt Vance won the debate, compared to 41% who thought Walz came out on top. Some 17% called the debate a tie.
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North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.