Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump's running mate, was evasive when asked Sunday whether he would accept the results of the November election.
“If we had a free and fair election, I would accept the results,” Vance told CNN's Dana Bash on “The State of the Union.”
Mr. Vance, 39, who is being recruited by the Trump campaign as a surrogate, suggested that Republicans are bracing for the prospect of election disputes.
“As Democrats did in 2000, as Democrats did in the past, and certainly as Republicans did in 2020, we need to be willing to work on those issues if we think they are problems. “There has to be a willingness to pursue and prosecute your case,” he said.
Mr. Vance is scheduled to join Mr. Trump at a fundraiser in Cincinnati on Wednesday that could mark an audition for Mr. Trump's running mate. He also attended a recent event at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, along with several other vice presidential candidates and Republican donors.
Mr. Vance seems keen to demonstrate his loyalty to Mr. Trump, telling ABC News in February that if he were vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have been given a vote by Congress before confirming him. He said he would have allowed the review of fraudulent electoral rolls. election.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence rejected Trump's calls to block the transfer of power after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Vance also defended Trump's recent comments that “any Jew who voted for Biden should be ashamed.”
“You have to remember that Donald Trump is being very outspoken here,” Vance said. “And he doesn't single out Jewish Americans by name. He singles out a lot of them to vote for Joe Biden.”
Mr. Vance wasn't always a steadfast follower of the former president.
Before the 2016 election, Vance, a venture capitalist and author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” called Trump a “cultural heroine” and “an instigator who led the white working class into a hypersocial society.” I called it. dark place. ”
But his candidacy for the Senate in 2022 has garnered the support of one of the world's most influential figures in the world of “Make America Great Again”: the former president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. . He endorsed Vance on social media during the campaign. Crowded Republican primary. That would pave the way for support from the former president himself.