A group of MSNBC panelists mocked Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) after Tuesday night’s debate, calling his refusal to answer whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election the “moment of the night.”
“If you cannot say what happened in 2020 and the only reason you’re there is because what actually happened in 2020 is that Donald Trump sent his supporters to hang Mike Pence…then you lose,” MSNBC host Nicole Wallace told the group, which included fellow hosts Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid.
Vance started out well at the debate, Wallace said, “and in the end he sneezed on it and the whole thing fell apart and he had to walk out of that room with broken toothpicks.”
“Everything that he did for 88 minutes was lost and wiped out by that one inability to tell the truth in front of a huge television audience,” she argued.
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“Well, that moment was the moment of the night,” said fellow MSNBC host Chris Hayes. “Wait, why is hey here, oh right the Mike Pence thing, so that was the moment of the night.”
“He doesn’t answer, his technique is to not answer it,” Lawrence O’Donnell said of Trump's running mate.
The MSNBC host then quipped to the delight of his fellow panelists that Vance is, “by the way, the very first vice presidential candidate in history who doesn’t know who lost the last election.”
O’Donnell noted that the moment came “at the end of a long list of questions that he simply didn’t answer. He said words but he didn’t answer.”
Vance, elected in 2022, debated Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, the two-term governor of Minnesota.