There’s a throughline between two New York Times stories released Friday that needs to be drawn.

In one, reporters detail how Elon Musk is using his fortune and social media platform (X, once known as Twitter) to benefit former president Donald Trump’s campaign. In the other, the paper details how Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), refused to acknowledge that Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020.

And the throughline is that Vance is pretending Trump’s loss was driven by something that his own campaign with Trump actually did.

Vance sat down for an interview with the Times during which he was asked the same question that came up in the vice-presidential debate: Did Trump lose in 2020? This question has been portrayed as a “gotcha,” an unfair attempt to knock Republicans back on their heels. But it’s actually a very useful proxy for a question that nearly any Republican would otherwise sidestep, one centered on their willingness to prevent Trump from attempting to subvert the results in 2024. If they can’t say Trump lost the 2020 election even now, we can’t be confident they’re going to oppose Trump should he attempt similar machinations later this year.

Vance couldn’t say Trump lost. Instead, he reverted to a version of the same response he presented during that debate.

“Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” he was asked.

“Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?” he replied.

This is his parry, the idea that one couldn’t say the 2020 election was fair because there was an effort to censor this determinative story. It is, as we’ve noted in the past, a way for people unwilling to echo Trump’s wilder election-fraud claims to instead point to something less easily falsifiable, this idea that anti-Trump forces put their thumbs on the scales.

But what Vance says here is falsifiable. It is not the case that tech companies censoring a story — specifically, a New York Post story about an email attributed to a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter — cost Trump the election.

This, too, has been explored at length in the past, but it should immediately fail the smell test anyway. The 2020 election was a referendum on Trump, on his presidency and particularly on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It is ridiculous to suggest that this would have changed had Twitter (as it was then known) not briefly limited the sharing of a New York Post story about how one of Hunter Biden’s business partners sent him an email thanking him for getting him in the room with his father.

The “independent studies” which Vance mentioned presumably refer to one poll conducted on behalf of the right-wing Media Research Center after the election. It presented respondents with a sweeping claim linking Biden to foreign business interests, asking whether awareness of that purported link would have led people to reconsider their votes. A chunk of self-reported Biden voters said they would have.

Setting aside the vast inaccuracies inherent in having people assess what they would have done had the conditions of their decision-making been slightly different, the question didn’t even center on the New York Post story! It was about purported Chinese investors and used the same “Biden family” framing on which the failed Republican impeachment probe depended.

On the right, though, this poll became “people would have voted Trump if they knew about Hunter Biden” and then “the left” — here represented by Silicon Valley liberals — “censoring the Hunter Biden story handed Biden the election.” Despite that “censorship” — driven by concerns that the information was the product of a Russian interference effort — lasting only a brief period and almost certainly helping draw more attention to the story.

And now the throughline: The Times’s Elon Musk story notes that the Trump campaign had a direct hand in now-X limiting a story about Vance.

Hackers linked to Iran reportedly obtained the briefing book compiled as Trump was vetting potential running mates. (His former vice president, Mike Pence, needed to be replaced on the ticket for noteworthy reasons.) The hackers shopped the briefing book around, finding few takers.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein bit, however, publishing the document on his website. And in short order, X banned Klippenstein’s account, purportedly because the linked document included personal information about Vance.

But also because the Trump campaign wanted it to be limited, according to the Times’s Elon Musk story.

“After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month,” the story notes, “the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.”

In 2020, Twitter blocked the New York Post story after warnings from the federal government — then run by Donald Trump! — that foreign actors might disseminate stolen information. They soon lifted that limit. In 2024, X blocked Klippenstein’s story in coordination with the Trump campaign.

The former, Vance identifies as an unfair attempt to harm Trump, one that purportedly cost him the election. The latter? It seems unlikely he’ll be similarly incensed.

It is not the case that the vetting document published by Klippenstein would have shifted the election any more than it was the case that the block on the New York Post story did. But here we see how the same action, taken at different times and with different motivations, are presented in starkly different terms.

And at each point, in service to Trump’s ambitions.

Sen. JD Vance, the running mate of former president Donald Trump, repeatedly declined to acknowledge in a new interview that Trump lost the 2020 election, an issue that has dogged the Ohio Republican in the closing weeks of the presidential race.

In the interview with the New York Times, Vance was given five opportunities to acknowledge that Trump did not win in 2020, according to the Times. He refused to say so, insisting that he is “focused on the future” and criticizing an “obsession here with focusing on 2020.”

The conversation with Vance was taped for “The Interview,” a Times podcast that comes out every Saturday.

As the host, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, pressed Vance on the 2020 election, he countered with his own question, asking her whether “big technology companies” censored information that could have swayed the outcome. He was referring to a decision by Twitter that temporarily blocked users from sharing a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“I’ve answered your question with another question,” Vance said at one point. “You answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

Trump’s refusal to admit his reelection defeat has returned to the political spotlight in recent weeks. Vance declined to say Trump lost during his Oct. 1 debate with the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor said onstage that Vance delivered a “damning non-answer.”

The Democratic National Committee pounced Friday on the excerpt of the Times interview.

“With five more dodges, JD Vance has proven five more times that he will always put Donald Trump’s dangerous election conspiracy theories ahead of our Constitution and the rule of law,” Alex Floyd, a DNC spokesman, said in a statement.

In the Times interview, Vance also said he “would have voted against certification” in 2020, suggesting he would have joined the eight GOP senators and 139 House members who voted to object to the results in certain states. The Senate vote took place in January 2021, two years before Vance arrived in the chamber.

Vance has said before that if he were vice president after the 2020 election, he would have asked states to provide “multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.” The Constitution gives the states the power to pick their electors, and the vice president has no role in their selection.

Former vice president Mike Pence refused to bow to Trump’s pressure to block certification of his reelection loss, leading to a rupture in their relationship. Pence is not supporting Trump’s comeback campaign, and Trump said in a podcast interview released Wednesday that Pence “couldn’t cross the line of doing what was right.”

The presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris invoked Pence on Friday as it responded to Vance’s new interview.

“Donald Trump chose JD Vance to be his running mate for one reason and one reason only: He will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t and put Donald Trump over our Constitution,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.

Trump remains under federal indictment for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A court filing unsealed last week provided explosive new details that portrayed Trump as indifferent while his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Harris has elevated the issue in her campaign with less than a month left in the race. She campaigned in Wisconsin last week with Liz Cheney, the former GOP congresswoman who voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack and later helped lead a House committee that investigated it.

Donald Trump’s campaign requested military aircraft for Trump to fly in during the final weeks of the campaign, expanded flight restrictions over his residences and rallies, ballistic glass pre-positioned in seven battleground states for the campaign’s use and an array of military vehicles to transport Trump, according to emails reviewed by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter.

The requests are extraordinary and unprecedented — no nominee in recent history has been ferried around in military planes ahead of an election. But the requests came after Trump’s campaign advisers received briefings in which the government said Iran is still actively plotting to kill him, according to the emails reviewed by The Post and the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. Trump advisers have grown concerned about drones and missiles, according to the people.

In the emails over the past two weeks from campaign manager Susie Wiles to Ronald L. Rowe Jr., the head of the Secret Service, she expressed displeasure with the Secret Service and said the campaign recently had to cancel a public event at the last minute because of a “lack of personnel” from the Secret Service — instead only putting Trump in a small room with reporters. Wiles said Trump’s campaign is being hampered in its planning because of threats, and expects to hold far more events in the final weeks of the campaign.

She also wrote that the U.S. government has not been able to provide what the campaign views as an extensive enough plan to protect Trump. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a Trump ally, also wrote a letter to the Secret Service asking for military aircraft or additional protection for Trump’s private plane, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Post.

Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for Trump, declined to comment.

Secret Service officials did not answer specific questions about the discussions with the Trump campaign, but spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement that Trump is receiving “the highest levels of protection.” In a letter to the campaign, Rowe said the government is assessing what can be provided.

“Assistance from the Department of Defense is regularly provided for the former president’s protection, to include explosive ordnance disposal, canine units, and airlift transportation,” Guglielmi said. The Secret Service is also imposing temporary flight restrictions “over the former president’s residence and when he travels,” he added. “Additionally, the former president is receiving the highest level of technical security assets which include unmanned aerial vehicles, counter unmanned aerial surveillance systems, ballistics and other advanced technology systems.”

The requests were first reported Friday by the New York Times.

Former U.S. officials said they were unaware of any presidential nominee getting a military jet. One person who has served under multiple Republican administrations in senior roles said it would be “extraordinary” for the Secret Service to grant such a request.

Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, receives protection from the U.S. Marines as vice president and flies on Air Force Two, which is a military airplane.

The Republican nominee has already started traveling with additional planes, and officials are also taking the precaution of dividing his motorcade at times and putting Trump in nondescript planes that do not have his name on the side instead of his longtime 757 jet.

The requests escalate a months-long battle between Trump’s team and the Secret Service, which has heightened after two assassination attempts on the former president. Granting such requests for a presidential candidate would be unprecedented, particularly a military plane to transport Trump. If the administration granted such assets, it would give Trump a distinct look in the final months that no challenger has ever had — and would remind voters visually, every day, that he is under threat.

Trump and his team have grown frustrated with the Secret Service in recent months, even as they praise Trump’s own security detail. The Secret Service has repeatedly escalated Trump’s security, but not to levels the campaign wants, the people said.

There is no evidence tying Iran to either of the recent assassination attempts, the people said, but the FBI has not ruled out the possibility of a connection. U.S. spies have determined that Iran’s leaders are seeking to take revenge on U.S. officials including Trump whom they hold responsible for a strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in 2020, but Iran’s ability to strike within the United States is limited, according to people briefed on the intelligence.

Trump has asked campaign advisers and U.S. government officials repeatedly whether Iran was behind the two gunmen who separately attempted to assassinate him on July 13 in Butler, Pa., and on Sept. 15 at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., according to people familiar with the briefing. Several of Trump’s advisers have become convinced — even without evidence — that Iran was behind previous threats.

In June, undercover FBI agents met with a Pakistani man in Brooklyn who was seeking to hire hit men to assassinate an American politician on Iran’s behalf, according to charges unsealed in August. The foiled plot prompted national security officials to alert the Secret Service about unspecified Iranian threats to Trump. Authorities arrested the Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, 46, on July 12, the day before Trump’s Butler rally.

Investigators have not established a motive for the Butler shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who opened fire from a nearby roof, grazing Trump’s ear and killing one rallygoer before he was killed at the scene by a Secret Service countersniper. Crooks was a registered Republican, made a small donation to a liberal PAC, researched past assassinations and had photos of Trump and President Joe Biden on his phone.

People briefed on the Butler investigation said there is no evidence pointing to foreign ties.

The Trump campaign is also dealing with the fallout from Iranian hackers who stole sensitive campaign documents and tried to release them through the media or share them with the Biden campaign, according to federal prosecutors. An indictment released Sept. 27 of three Iranian nationals alleged a wide-ranging, years-long effort that included targeting one of Trump’s lawyers, former CIA officials and a former U.S. ambassador. In recent days, more campaign employees have been told they were targeted by the Iranians.

Trump’s late-September visit to a college football game in Tuscaloosa, Ala., entailed the most protection he has had since leaving office, with bullet-resistant glass and 150 metal detectors deployed to the stadium, according to one of the people. For his return to Butler on Oct. 5, a row of shipping containers lined the perimeter of the venue to block the view from a passing road. The security forces on-site included drones, helicopters, undercover officers, snipers and tactical teams.

Iran makes no secret of its intention to seek to kill Trump, analysts note. An animated video showing a drone firing on Trump playing golf has resurfaced recently. The video was posted to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s website on Jan. 14, 2022.

At the same time, notes former CIA official Norman Roule, “Iran is challenged by the fact that it lacks an extensive presence in the United States and is also under extensive scrutiny by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence services and their foreign partners.”

Unable to easily insert their own personnel into the United States, the Iranians have had to resort to “third country nationals and criminals” to try to carry out assassinations, he said.

Iran has likely felt able to threaten the former president based in part, he said, “on the lack of serious consequences by the West for its lethal operations” against former U.S. officials, activists and journalists in the United States and Britain, Roule said.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, said the available evidence on Crooks and the golf course suspect appears to more closely match the profile of homegrown violent extremists whom the FBI has identified as a rising domestic terrorism threat.

“There was intelligence about a potential threat from Iran, but the shooter on July 13th had no connection,” Blumenthal said. “I’m aware of no evidence at this time that the apparent would-be assassin in Florida had any tie to any other country.”

Iran’s desire for revenge is not new. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress in 2022 that his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, was still receiving round-the-clock government security.

Biden directed the National Security Council to warn Iran’s government to stop plotting against Trump and former U.S. officials, adding that the United States would view any attempts on Trump’s life as an act of war.

A White House official said Biden’s strategy to address Iran’s lethal plots includes protective measures as well as disrupting threats through law enforcement actions. Biden has directed “every resource” for Trump’s protection and for agencies to provide threat information to his security detail, according to Security Council spokesman Sean Savett.

“We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority, and we strongly condemn Iran for these brazen threats,” Savett said in a statement. “Should Iran attack any of our citizens, including those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences.”

Trump has started referencing the threats in settings such as news conferences and interviews.

“You’re in danger right now because of them and their challenge to me,” Trump told reporters at an Oct. 1 news conference in Milwaukee. Reflecting on going back to Butler, he recounted how the bullet that grazed his ear might have done more damage had he not been turning his head to look at a screen.

“Had I not made that turn, I would not be speaking to you people today,” Trump said.

Abigail Hauslohner and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

For about as long as he’s been part of the 2024 presidential race, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) appeared to be a weight around Donald Trump’s ankles — possibly even the most unpopular running mate in modern history.

Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio was far from resounding, and his early performances on the 2024 campaign trail seemed to confirm that he was not exactly a political star-in-waiting and was maybe even a mistake by Trump.

But that might be changing, after Vance’s well-received debate performance last week.

A number of polls conducted since that debate suggest Vance’s image has improved somewhat. While for many weeks they showed him double-digits underwater — a stark contrast to Democratic running mate Tim Walz’s relatively good image ratings — Vance appears to be inching closer to parity.

The evidence thus far is limited. But at the very least, Vance doesn’t appear to be as much of a drag on Trump.

Both an Economist/YouGov poll and a Yahoo/YouGov poll over the past week have shown Vance with his best image splits since Trump chose him as his vice-presidential candidate in July. Among registered voters, Vance was just three points underwater in first poll (45 percent favorable versus 48 percent unfavorable) and six points underwater (43-49) in the second one. In neither poll is he in positive territory, but it’s relatively normal for politicians to be slightly unpopular these days.

New Wall Street Journal polls of seven key swing states released Friday showed Vance’s split in those states at 41-44 — not much different from Walz’s 40-40 split.

And recent state polling from The Washington Post and Quinnipiac University both show Vance is no longer the least popular candidate among the four who will appear atop people’s ballots.

The Quinnipiac polls showed Vance averaging a 43-44 split in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Walz was at 44-39 — while The Post’s poll showed Vance with a positive 49-42 split in Ohio.

That last one might not seem that impressive, given Ohio leans red and is Vance’s home state. But he hasn’t been terribly popular there. He not only performed worse than any other statewide Republican in 2022, but earlier polling from the New York Times and Siena College showed he was underwater even there.

The new Post poll actually showed he had a better image in his home state than anybody else on the presidential ballot. His image was also better than that of Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown (45-42) and nearly on-par with that of long-popular Republican Gov. Mike DeWine (41-32), who won reelection in 2022 by 25 points.

The YouGov polling provides more detail on how views of Vance have improved.

For instance, Americans back in August were about evenly split on whether Trump had made the right or wrong decision in selecting Vance. They now say Trump made the right call by a nine-point margin (38-29).

Previous YouGov polling showed Americans were significantly more likely to say Vance was not ready to serve as president — by nine points in July and 13 points in August — but now they’re about evenly split (37-39).

As for last week’s debate, the YouGov polling shows twice as many independents said the debate made them think better of Vance (41 percent) than made them think worse of him (19 percent). Independents were about evenly split on whether it improved or hurt their views of Walz.

Part of the reason Vance did better than Walz on that last question might be because those independents had a dimmer view of him to begin with; in other words, he had more room to grow with them. But the polling would seem to reinforce the idea that Vance did plenty of good for himself. Instant post-debate polls showed a relatively even contest, but those same polls also showed that the debate’s viewers skewed more Democratic than Republican.

Things could still change as the debate fades in people’s memories; Vance has certainly demonstrated that he can create problems for himself. And even with his improved numbers, Vance is still more unpopular than the vast majority of recent running mates, who like Walz are generally viewed favorably.

But for now, the large gap in views of the two running mates appears to have shrunk, and Vance isn’t really looking like much of a liability in the all-important swing states.

When considering how the presidential election is likely to turn out, there is no more important question than who will be motivated to cast a ballot. All of the talk of Vice President Kamala Harris’s and former president Donald Trump’s efforts at persuading undecided voters is interesting but not terribly relevant. Instead, given the likelihood of the presidency being determined by narrow margins in a handful of states, the central issue is whose base of support shows up at the polls.

That question overlaps with the other defining aspect of the contest: that men and women appear to be unusually polarized on vote choice. Trump is running a campaign explicitly focused on getting more men (particularly young men) to vote. Harris, by contrast, is depending on women, often letting the historic nature of her bid serve as an implicit appeal.

But the 2024 election is also the first presidential contest to unfold in the post-Roe v. Wade world. In 2022, Democrats overperformed expectations in the midterms, an outcome attributed at times to turnout shifts driven by views on abortion access. In special elections — and particularly on ballot initiatives centered on abortion — abortion’s role has been more explicit.

New polling from KFF reinforces the advantage Harris has both with women and on the issue of abortion. The pollsters went back to women they had interviewed in June, evaluating how their views of the race had shifted since Harris became the Democratic nominee.

Perhaps the most important shift appeared in the extent to which women expressed more motivation to vote than they usually felt. Overall, the percentage of women saying they were more motivated than normal jumped nearly 20 points, driven by a big surge among Democratic women. Democratic women were also far more likely to describe themselves as satisfied with the candidates for president than they were in June.

Relative to June, women were also more likely to say that the election would have a big impact on the issue of abortion. In fact, KFF found that women — including Republican women — thought it was likely that Trump would sign a national ban on abortion (should it come to his desk if he won in November) and that Harris would sign a law codifying the protections of Roe.

Certainly some Republican women would see a national abortion ban as good and abortion protections as a negative. Two-thirds of women, though, oppose such a ban. (Trump has said he wouldn’t sign a national ban, but his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) endorsed a “minimum standard” during the vice-presidential debate earlier this month.)

There’s an important aspect to the turnout question that is worth mentioning. There are more women in America than men, and women usually make up more of the electorate than do men. But that wasn’t the case in 2022, according to analysis conducted by the Pew Research Center. More importantly, women made up the majority of nonvoters in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

Those nonvoters were disproportionately non-White. KFF’s research shows that Black and Hispanic women are more likely now than in June to say they’re satisfied with the presidential candidates — and more likely to say so than White women. But White women are more likely to say they feel more motivated to vote than usual.

Voters are notoriously bad at predicting whether they will actually vote. Harris’s team, though, can pick out patterns here that comport with what it would want to see: a highly motivated base of women who see a sharp divide between the candidates on the issue of abortion access. It just needs to hope that the increase in motivation correlates to an increase in turnout.