After weeks of dodging and weaving, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, finally bit the bullet and endorsed the Big Lie. Donald Trump's running mate has been coy about echoing his boss's false claims that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, but Wednesday, Vance came right out and claimed Trump was the true winner in 2020. When asked by a reporter if Trump lost in 2020, Vance feigned exasperation and said, "No. I think there are serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use."

That's the part of his quote getting the most attention, but what he said next may be even more chilling:

Here’s the thing that I focus on. Because what the media will do, they’ll focus on the court cases, or they’ll focus on some crazy conspiracy theory. What I know, what verifiably I know happened, is that in 2020, large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop story. And that had a major, major consequence on the election.

He reiterated this point later that day, again pretending to be exhausted by reporters asking him about it: "I think that Big Tech rigged the election in 2020."

He's arguing that tech companies are obliged to publish right-wing disinformation, and their failure to do so means democracy is forfeit.

Vance appears to believe he's found a nifty little tapdance that allows him to both back Trump's ridiculous lies while also holding himself out as too smart to really believe all that nonsense. As usual, Vance is not nearly as clever as he seems to think he is. Instead of coming across as "MAGA, but smarter," he reads like a naked opportunist who views his own voters with contempt. He is so worried that journalists will think he's stupid that he will tacitly admit he's lying rather than let reporters think he might actually believe this stuff. This isn't the first time, either, as we saw when he told CNN he feels he's entitled to "create stories" smearing innocent people as cat-eaters.

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