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. //

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. //

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.