Garcia-Navarro Blows Her Chance

Today’s NYTimes features a video of an interview where Lulu Garcia-Navarro asks JD Vance repeatedly whether Trump lost the 2020 election and he repeatedly refuses to answer.( www.nytimes.com/...) She is admirably persistent and makes it clear that he is simply refusing to answer a legitimate and important question, but part way through she missed her golden opportunity.

When she asks the question for the fourth time, Vance says “I’ve answered your question with another question. You answer my question and I’ll answer yours.” She persists and asks her question again. What she should have done is say “no you won’t” and then answered his question.

His question was “Did big technology companies censor” the Hunter Biden laptop story. A reasonable answer would have been that “those companies found the story to be unsupported or outright false and therefore didn’t carry the story the way you wanted them to. if you want to call it censorship when stories aren’t reported the way you want them to be, you are free to do that.”

But it doesn’t really matter what answer she gave. Anything would do. Vance would have tried to argue with her answer, but she could simply have come back with this: I answered your question and you don’t like the answer. Now answer my question as you promised. Did Trump lose the 2020 election?

Vance would have refused to answer again and she could say “So when you said you would answer my question if I answered your’s, you were lying.”