Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) contended during the vice presidential debate on Thursday that censorship poses a “threat to democracy” and his Democratic Party rivals do not want to discuss it.
CBS News journalist Nora O’Donnell, a moderator in the debate, asked Vance if he would seek to challenge the results of the 2024 election after suggesting he would not have certified the last presidential contest without alternate electors.
Vance argued that he and his running mate, former President Donald Trump, are “focused on the future.” He discussed unwinding the “inflation crisis” as an example.
Getting to the question at hand, Vance noted how Trump drew attention to “problems” in the 2020 election. Vance also said his personal stance was to debate those concerns “peacefully in the public square.”
After giving a reminder that Trump himself urged his supporters on January 6, 2021 — the day a Capitol riot disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election results — to “protest peacefully,” Vance turned his focus toward the current administration.
“I believe that we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country, but unfortunately, it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship,” Vance said.
Vance also said that Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, has been “engaged in censorship at an industrial scale” over COVID-19 and other things.
The comment follows Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying in a recent letter that the Biden-Harris administration “repeatedly pressured” his company to censor content related to COVID during the pandemic.
That, to me, is a much bigger threat to democracy than what Donald Trump said when he said protesters should peacefully protest on January the 6th,” Vance added.
Vance was facing Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz in the debate.
