Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election during the vice presidential debate on Tuesday and downplayed the severity of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, which injured more than 140 law enforcement officers.

He also declined to say whether he would seek to challenge the outcome of this year’s election.

Near the end of the debate, Democratic vice presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz asked Vance, a senator from Ohio, to confirm that Trump had lost the last election.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance responded before pressing Walz about social media censorship.

“That’s a damn non-answer,” Walz said. “I’m quite shocked by this. He lost the election. This is not a debate, it is nowhere else but in Donald Trump’s world.”

Walz noted that the reason why former Vice President Mike Pence — who was the target of “hang Mike Pence” chants from pro-Trump rioters who invaded the Capitol in 2021 — was not on the debate stage is because he refused to to overturn elections. On behalf of Trump.

Trump is facing federal criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election through what a federal grand jury said was a conspiracy to delegitimize the election with a campaign of “unsupported, objectively unreasonable and increasingly changing” allegations made by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. claims he knew they were false. Trump has pleaded not guilty, but while some Trump supporters involved in the attack have admitted they feel like gullible “idiots” for believing Trump’s lies, Trump has continued to publicly repeat his falsehoods about the election. Trump again refused to admit he had lost last month.

Walz said it was important to be “honest” about what happened on Jan. 6 and that Americans should not engage in “revisionist history” about the attack.

“America, I think you have a very clear choice in this election about who is going to honor that democracy and who is going to honor Donald Trump,” Walz said Tuesday.

“This has to stop. It is tearing our country apart,” he said.

“I don’t think we can be the frog in the pot and make the boiling water rise to the top,” Walz continued. “Sometimes you really want to win, but democracy is bigger than winning elections.”

When asked by one of the debate moderators whether he would challenge the election results this fall even if the results have been certified in every state, Vance first said he wanted to talk about the future. He then added: “Look, what President Trump has said is that there were issues in 2020, and my own belief is that we need to fight about those issues, that we need to discuss those issues peacefully in the public square. And that’s all I said: and that’s all Donald Trump said.”

Vance also said Trump asked “protesters” to go “peacefully” to the Capitol in his Jan. 6 speech and that Trump “left the White House” on Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

When Walz asked him to acknowledge that Trump had lost the election, Vance again said he wanted to talk about the future, but then returned to the 2016 election, comparing Trump’s false election claims to Democrats protesting the victory from Trump to Hillary Clinton in 2016, citing factual claims made by a Russia-based campaign to boost Trump in that election on social media.

Vice President Kamala Harris wants to “censor people who engage in misinformation,” Vance continued, saying this was “a greater threat to democracy than anything we’ve seen in the last four years and the last 40 years.”

Walz said that while the candidates agreed on some issues Tuesday night, “we are miles apart on January 6th. “This was a threat to our democracy in a way we had not yet seen, and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability. to say – he still says he didn’t lose the election,” he said.

Trump fans who believed Trump’s lies entered the Capitol grounds on January 6 armed with firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bicycle racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk axe, an axe, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a huge “Trump” billboard, “Trump” flags, a pitchfork, pieces of wood, crutches and even an explosive device.

About 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and federal prosecutors have secured more than 1,000 convictions, along with prison sentences ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in prison, for a Proud Boy leader convicted of seditious conspiracy. Trump gave the Proud Boys a major boost by telling them to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 debate, and federal prosecutors said members of the group wanted to be “Donald Trump’s army.”