PolitiFact: Here we learn that Vance’s statement that Trump didn’t lose in 2020 is false

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After weeks of evading a direct answer to the question of whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, finally came to a definitive answer.

But it was a wrong answer.

At an Oct. 16 event in Pennsylvania, a reporter asked Vance, “What message do you think is being sent to independent voters when the question ‘Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?’ not answered directly.”

The question drew boos from the crowd before Vance replied:

“Going into the 2020 election, I answered this question directly a million times: No. I think there were serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not in the words I would use, OK? I really do. “I don’t care whether you agree with me on this issue or not.”

Vance said the media will “focus on lawsuits” or a “crazy conspiracy theory.”

When rival vice presidential candidate Tim Walz asked Vance at the Oct. 1 debate whether Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance said, “I’m focused on the future” and then focused on censorship. In an interview with The New York Times, Vance repeatedly did not respond to questions about whether Trump lost, but said he would have voted against certifying the results.

Politicians are free to raise concerns about the election, but whether Trump wins or loses does not depend on word choice or opinion. This is how we know Trump lost.

Biden won more states

Biden earned his victory by winning more votes in the Electoral College. Biden received 306 electoral votes compared to 232 for Trump. Biden’s path to victory led through the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Although the popular vote does not decide who wins the presidential election, Biden received about 7 million more votes than Trump nationwide.

The result of the 2020 election was confirmed in many ways:

• States certified the results.
• Trump and his allies have lost more than 60 lawsuits.
• Congress accepted the results on January 6, 2021, following a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
• A group of conservatives, including former federal judges, examined each of Trump’s claims of fraud and miscounts and concluded that they “presented no evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results.”

Republicans in Trump’s own administration, including his then-Attorney General Bill Barr, told Trump that his statements about the “stolen” election were “bull—.” Republican state election officials, including in Georgia, said the election was certain that Biden would be the winner.

Ken Block, a former Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate who founded Simpatico Software Systems, wrote an editorial for USA Today explaining how the Trump campaign had hired him to try to bolster Trump’s post-election claims. But he didn’t find what Trump wanted.

“What these claims fail to take into account is that voter fraud is knowable, quantifiable and verifiable,” Block wrote in USA Today. “I have yet to see anyone present ‘evidence’ of voter fraud in the 2020 election that provides these three things.”

PolitiFact documented some examples of voter fraud in 2020, such as voting on behalf of deceased relatives. But those cases weren’t enough to change the outcome of the race, and Republicans committed some voter crimes.

Vance’s comments about censorship do not prove that Trump won

We did not receive a response from the Trump-Vance campaign, but the Republican National Committee sent PolitiFact news articles after the debate related to Vance’s statement about censorship of the Biden White House.

The “censorship” comments intensified in August when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress that the Biden administration had pressured the company to censor some posts as part of the company’s content moderation efforts. But experts told PolitiFact that such pressure does not amount to censorship, and the Supreme Court ruled in Biden’s favor in a lawsuit on the issue. The Trump administration also asked Twitter to remove some posts.

Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to a House committee that it was ultimately the company’s decision whether to remove content, but that “the government’s pressure was wrong” and that he regretted not speaking out about it at the time. One meta decision Zuckerberg cited — temporarily downgrading an October 2020 New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop after an FBI warning about a possible Russian disinformation operation — came while Trump was in office and running for president again.

Justin Grimmer, a professor of political science at Stanford University, concluded that there was no evidence to support claims of voter fraud. He said tech companies blocked citizens from sharing information about Hunter Biden’s laptop history, which he sees as a “mistake.”

“However, this activity does not invalidate an election nor would it be a legal basis for objecting to an election,” Grimmer said. “Similarly, I find it unfortunate that the Russians hacked the Clinton campaign’s email server in 2016. But it is absurd to suggest that a hacker attack would invalidate Trump’s victory.”

Our verdict

When asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance said “no.” He added: “Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not in the words I would use, OK?”

When it comes to determining the winner and loser of a presidential election, the choice of words doesn’t matter. The 2020 election was one of the most scrutinized and contentious in history. Biden won enough votes to win the election. Vance may wish that Trump won the election, but he didn’t.

We rate this statement with Pants on Fire!

Our sources

• C-SPAN, Senator JD Vance campaigns in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, October 16, 2024
• Email interview, Justin Grimmer, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, October 17, 2024
• Justin Grimmer and Abhinav Ramaswamy, An Evaluation of Fraud Claims from the 2020 Trump Election Contests, January 16, 2024
• PolitiFact, Trump’s new “proof” that Biden lost in 2020, is ridiculously wrong (and dusty). We checked it. January 5, 2024
• PolitiFact, Donald Trump falsely claims Georgia won in recorded call on January 4, 2021
• PolitiFact, How we know Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race, November 13, 2021
• PolitiFact, Trump Falsely and Prematurely Claims 2020 Presidential Victory, November 4, 2024
• PolitiFact, Joe Biden is right that more than 60 of Trump’s election lawsuits were baseless, January 8, 2021
• When asked by the New York Times whether he thought Trump lost in 2020, Vance finally answered: No, October 16, 2024
• Former President Donald Trump, Truth Social, January 2, 2024
• Anonymous, Summary of Voter Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election in Swing States, January 2, 2024
• Ken Block commented in USA Today: “Trump paid me to expose voter fraud.” Then he lied after I found out the 2020 election wasn’t stolen., January 2, 2024
• The Washington Post, Trump’s lawyers have filed a lawsuit alleging election fraud, January 3, 2024
• Georgia Secretary of State and State Election Commission Clear Fulton County ‘Voter Booth’ Investigation; Report Finds No Evidence of Conspiracy, No Fraud, June 20, 2023
• Senator John Danforth, Benjamin Ginsberg, The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, The Honorable J. Michael Luttig, The Honorable Michael W. McConnell, The Honorable Theodore B. Olson, Senator Gordon H. Smith, Lost, Not Stolen, July 2022
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Major election security showdown expected at Capitol meeting on July 27, 2023
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Investigation Blames Human Error for Fulton Election Audit Problems, March 16, 2022
• Texas Tribune, leaders of Texas-based activist group True the Vote accused of using donations for personal gain, June 5, 2023
• Email interview, Mike Hassinger, spokesman for the Georgia Secretary of State, January 4, 2024
• Telephone interview, Justin Grimmer, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, January 4, 2024
• Email interview with Ken Block, owner of Simpatico Software Systems and author of “Disproven: My Unbiased Search for Voter Fraud for the Trump Campaign, the Data That Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections,” 4. January 2024
• Email interview, Nick Custodio, Deputy Commissioner to Chairwoman Lisa Deeley and spokesperson for the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ Office, January 5, 2024
• Email interview, Paul Bender, law professor at Arizona State University, January 4, 2024
• PolitiFact, “Ted Cruz falsely claims Philadelphia is counting votes in ‘shroud of darkness,’” November 6, 2020
• PolitiFact, “Claim that Wisconsin official Meagan Wolfe allowed drop boxes for absentee voting is wrong,” November 8, 2023
• PolitiFact, “Trump’s false claim that poll watchers were blocked in Pennsylvania, Michigan,” November 12, 2020
• PolitiFact: “No, alleged voter registration irregularities in Michigan did not lead to voter fraud in 2020,” August 14, 2023
• The Associated Press, “No major problems with ballot drop boxes in 2020, AP finds,” July 17, 2022
• The Associated Press, “Wisconsin Supreme Court bans mail-in ballot boxes,” July 8, 2022
• Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, Advertising Observation Order, November 5, 2020
• Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling, July 8, 2022