Photo: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
October 3, 2024: J. D. Vance had the upper hand for most of the Vice Presidential debate last night. He was smooth and practiced, a consummate politician who has an answer for everything, whether or not it relates to the question or is even true. As Farah Stockman of the New York Times described it, “he did an excellent job of impersonating a decent man.”
AND he did an excellent job of lying through his teeth and evading the truth about some of his most contentious positions and those of his new boss, Donald Trump. Most notably, Vance refused to admit that Trump lost the election in 2020 – an election Trump lost by more than 7 million votes nationally and by 232 votes to Biden’s 306 votes in the Electoral College.
Every one of more than 60 lawsuits brought to court by Trump’s lawyers claiming electoral fraud in 2020 was thrown out for lack of evidence. There was, and still is, no evidence whatsoever of any fraud that could have changed the results of the 2020 election. And yet even today, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance still can’t bring themselves to accept the result of that election.
Vance has already said on previous occasions that if he had been in Mike Pence’s shoes as Vice President on January 6th, 2021, he would not have certified the election results. Which is all the more alarming because, as a sitting Senator, J.D. Vance will also take part in the certification process of this coming election. When asked point blank, “Would you again seek to challenge this year’s election results, even if every governor certifies the results?” Vance did not answer the question.
One of Vance’s most outrageous claims – one that has brought real suffering and trauma to the people of Springfield, Ohio – has been that Haitian immigrants in that city were stealing and eating other people’s pet cats and dogs. He did not directly repeat that clearly established false rumor last night, but did insist that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield were “illegal aliens” and had to be fact-checked by the moderators.
Like the vast majority of American citizens who are not descended from a tribal nation, the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are indeed immigrants from another country. They fled Haiti because of the violent conflicts and natural disasters that have made it one of the poorest and most inhospitable countries in the world. And they came to the US through normal, legal channels (and long before Biden became President…)
Vance continued his lies and obfuscation when talking about abortion, Obamacare, climate, the economy and several other issues. You can fact-check both his and Tim Walz’ performance last night at: CBS, NBC, NPR, Washington Post, or on many other online sites…