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The legacy media continues to push Sen. J.D. Vance to say Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, with Martha Raddatz on Sunday’s “This Week” being the latest in a string of interviewers pressing the vice-presidential candidate on that question. While Vance responded as before, that “of course Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020,” the full exchange revealed that the fundamental flaw is in the question — not Vance’s answer.

For a full two minutes during yesterday’s interview, Raddatz demanded Vance say Trump lost the 2020 election. “Why won’t you say that?” she asked, to which Vance replied: “Because, Martha, I believe that in 2020, when Big Tech were censoring American citizens, that created very serious problems.” 

“I don’t understand why you won’t just say that you believe it?” Raddatz retorted. “Did Donald Trump lose? That’s the question, and you know that’s the question.” 

It was here that an exasperated Vance made his point clear: “Martha, I’ve said repeatedly I think the 2020 election had problems, you want to say ‘rigged,’ you want to say, ‘he won,’ use whatever vocabulary term you want.” What happened, Vance stressed, was the “censoring of fellow citizens in a way that ‘violated our fundamental rights,’” and that was a bigger problem, Vance explained, than what words he used to frame the issue.

This exchange proves key to understanding why Vance refuses to say, “Donald Trump lost the 2020 election,” and why the liberal press continues to demand an answer to that question. 

The query includes an undefined term — “lost” — which holds a different meaning to Trump supporters and to the anti-Trump inquisitors.

If “lost” merely meant Biden is the president of the United States, then that’s an easy answer: Yes, of course, Trump lost, as Biden was inaugurated and has spent the last 3.5 years in the Oval Office.

But that’s not what those demanding Vance say Trump lost mean by “lost.” Every person posing this question injects within the concept of “lost” a concession that Trump’s 2020 challenges were frivolous, unfounded, or wrong. That’s why they pose the question and why Vance won’t provide a “yes” — because that is not what Vance and many other American’s believe.

If asked whether Trump “lost” the 2020 election, meaning that if all legal votes were counted and all illegal counts discarded — and the counting was done legally pursuant to controlling election law — the answer by Trump supporters would be a resounding “I don’t know.”  

No one can possibly know the answer to that question because in 2020 there were too many election laws violated or ignored, and too many illegal votes counted. But the lawsuits challenging the elections outcomes were tossed as moot once the votes were certified, so there was never a determination on the validity of the tallies, leaving uncertain the accuracy of the election results.

But “lost” can also have a third meaning in this context: Did Trump lose a free and fair election to Joe Biden? 

Yesterday Vance answered that question, telling Raddatz, “you want to say ‘rigged’” “you want to say, ‘he won,’ use whatever vocabulary term you want.” The vice-presidential candidate’s closer then cemented the point, stressing that the “censoring of fellow citizens” was such that it “violated our fundamental rights.” In other words, no, Trump didn’t lose a free and fair election to Joe Biden.

Vance in his Sunday interview with Raddatz, as well as in earlier interviews, highlighted as an example of the censorship, the squelching of the Hunter Biden laptop story. The government’s complicity in that censorship, coupled with strong evidence indicating Trump would have won in 2020 had Americans learned the truth about the laptop, confirms Vance’s view that the election was “rigged.”

The censorship of the laptop story, however, was but one aspect of the rigging that took place in 2020, as I previously detailed. A few examples: The 2020 election was also rigged by the “systemic violations of election law” which “disparately favor[ed] one candidate” and “allow[ed] for tens of thousands of illegal votes to be counted.” “And the election was rigged with every illegal drop box placed in Democrat-heavy precincts,” and by the unconstitutional authorization of no-excuse absentee voting and the illegal collection of ballots in nursing homes.

There’s still more: “The election was rigged with every dollar of Zuck Bucks designed to get out the Democrat vote, and with every leftist activist embedded in county clerks’ offices to push such efforts while accumulating untold voter data to the benefit of the Biden campaign.” The election was also “rigged when Georgia rendered the election code’s mandate of signature verifications inoperable and the state court delayed a hearing on Trump’s challenge to the Georgia outcome until after the vote certification, thereby ignoring evidence that more than 35,000 illegal votes were included in the state’s tally — more than enough to require a court to throw out the election.”

So, if by “lost” Raddatz and other members of the legacy press mean Trump lost a free and fair election to Joe Biden, then, the answer is no.

Or, as Vance said, use whatever vocabulary you want: “you want to say ‘rigged’” “you want to say, ‘he won.’”

Vance is right, but Trump’s running mate is also wise to not waste time in debating what “lost” means because the public doesn’t care: What Americans care about is the disaster they are living under the Biden-Harris Administration.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press.

She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.