JD Vance said on Monday that if he was vice president during the 2020 election cycle, he would have accepted fraudulent slates of electors that were presented by allies of Donald Trump, an action that would have invalidated millions of votes.
Trump’s running mate made the statement during an interview at the All-In Summit, a tech conference in Los Angeles.
Moderator and “All-In” podcast host Jason Calacanis noted that in January 2021, former Vice President Mike Pence defied Trump’s wishes and went ahead with certifying the electoral votes that led to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris officially being elected president and vice president. Calacanis asked Vance if he would have done the same.
“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors,” Vance replied, while also asserting that he believed Pence “could have played a better role” during the proceedings.
Under the Electoral College and as mandated by the Constitution, electors are selected by each state to vote for the candidate who won the majority of votes in the state. Vance’s proposal would have invalidated the choices of millions of voters who picked the Biden-Harris ticket over the Trump-Pence slate.
Following his election loss, bogus electors were submitted on Trump’s behalf in an attempt to subvert the result in Trump’s favor. Several states, including Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, have since brought criminal charges in relation to the fake elector schemes.
The Harris-Walz campaign slammed Vance for promoting and validating the election conspiracy theory that inspired Trump supporters to storm the Capitol in an attempt to “stop the steal” on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The Trump-Vance ticket is spending the days before the debate ratcheting up their dangerous lies, the same lies that inspired a mob to attack the Capitol and try to overturn the 2020 election,” spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
A recent campaign ad from the Harris camp highlighted the fracture between Trump and Pence that has led to Pence opposing Trump’s third presidential campaign.
“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence said in an interview clip excerpted in the ad.
The ad also highlights other former Republican officials who worked under Trump who are now opposed to him, citing his undemocratic impulses.
Harris’ campaign has emphasized a message of “freedom” to contrast her approach to governing over Trump’s frequent embrace of policies and rhetoric associated with dictatorships—including ignoring and trying to subvert unfavorable election results.
Vance’s controversial comments are the latest in a series of stumbles for Trump’s running mate. The Ohio senator has been criticized for describing Democratic leaders and voters as “childless cat ladies,” referring to school shootings as merely a “fact of life,” and promoting a racist conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants living in his state.
Indicating to millions of voters that he would ignore their votes is unlikely to boost Vance’s favorability ratings, which have been negative in every poll taken since Trump selected him.
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