Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election during Tuesday's vice presidential debate and downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that left more than 140 police officers injured.

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

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

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

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

“That’s a damn non-answer,” Walz said. “That really shocks me. He lost the election. This is not a debate, this is nothing different than in Donald Trump’s world.”

Walz noted that the reason 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 that he refused to overturn the election in the name of Trump.

Trump is facing criminal charges in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election with a conspiracy to delegitimize the election with a campaign of “unsupported, objectively unreasonable and constantly changing” claims that special counsel Jack Smith alleged which he knew were wrong. Trump pleaded not guilty, but while some Trump supporters linked to the attack acknowledged that they felt like gullible “idiots” for believing Trump's lies, Trump continued to publicly repeat his falsehoods about the election. Trump again refused last month to admit he had lost.

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

“America, I think you have a really clear decision in this election about who will honor this democracy and who will honor Donald Trump,” Walz said Tuesday.

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

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

Asked by one of the debate moderators whether he would challenge the election results this fall even if the results were certified in every state, Vance initially said he wanted to talk about the future. He then added: “Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and I believe that we should argue about those issues and discuss those issues peacefully in public. And that’s all I said,” and that’s all Donald Trump said.

Vance also said that Trump called on “protesters” to go to the Capitol “peacefully” in his speech on January 6, and that Trump “the White House” on January 20, 2021, the day of President Joe Biden's inauguration , “left”.

When Walz asked him to acknowledge that Trump lost the election, Vance again said he wanted to talk about the future, but then turned back to the 2016 election and compared Trump's false election claims to Democrats opposing Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 protested factual claims by a Russia-based campaign to boost Trump on social media in that election.

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

Walz said that while the candidates agreed on some points Tuesday night, on Jan. 6, “we were miles apart.” “This was a threat to our democracy in a way we had never seen before, and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say – he still says – that he didn't lose the election,” he said .

Trump fans who believed Trump's lies walked onto the Capitol grounds on January 6th armed with firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax and a hatchet. a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a giant “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 and prison sentences ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison for a Proud Boy leader convicted of seditious conspiracy. Trump gave the Proud Boys a huge 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.”