Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Senator JD Vance and Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor Tim Walz speak during the vice-presidential debate on October 1, 2024.Mike Segar/Reuters
Tim Walz portrayed Donald Trump as an unsteady and ineffectual leader while JD Vance accused Kamala Harris of not doing enough during her time in office, in a high-stakes U.S. vice-presidential debate Tuesday evening.
Both men, seeking to break open the deadlocked presidential race, spent most of the debate attacking each others’ running mates. The result was an exchange that felt far more civil and substantive than any of the presidential debates since Mr. Trump entered the political arena.
Mr. Walz was forceful on abortion and guns but sometimes tripped over his words, using a rapid-fire delivery as he tried to cram dozens of talking-points into each answer.
Mr. Vance’s relatively smooth delivery, meanwhile, contrasted with his attempts to make Mr. Trump seem more mild than he has ever actually been. At one point, Mr. Vance suggested Mr. Trump had merely raised questions about 2020′s election results – when in reality Mr. Trump tried to overturn the election, leading to a riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The single most dramatic moment of the debate came when Mr. Vance took umbrage at being fact-checked by one of the moderators and had his microphone cut off.
Polling shows the presidential race effectively tied, both nationally and in the handful of swing states that will decide the election, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, meaning that either side eking out even a minor advantage could tip the result.
Mr. Walz opened the debate, which unfolded just hours after Iran bombarded Israel with missiles, by lacing into Mr. Trump for his “turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea,” and his elimination of a deal with Iran meant to stop the country from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance clashed on Tuesday at a vice presidential debate that was surprisingly civil in the final stretch of an ugly election campaign marred by inflammatory rhetoric and two assassination attempts.
Reuters
“Steady leadership is going to matter,” said Mr. Walz, the Democratic Governor of Minnesota. “A near 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd size is not what we need in this moment.”
He took a similar approach on immigration, scolding Mr. Trump for tanking a bill earlier this year that would have clamped down on migration at the U.S.’s southern border, and for failing to build his promised border wall. “Donald Trump had four years,” Mr. Walz said. “Less than 2 per cent of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime.”
On trade, he pointed to the growth of the U.S.’s trade deficit with China during Mr. Trump’s presidency and contrasted it with subsequent Biden-Harris administration government subsidies for new factories.
Mr. Vance, the Republican Ohio senator, fired back that Mr. Trump’s foreign policy was “peace through strength.”
“I’m 40 years old. When was the last time that an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out? The only answer is during the four years that Donald Trump was president.”
Six takeaways from the VP debate between Vance and Walz
He also repeatedly hammered at Ms. Harris’s attempts to run as an agent of change after nearly a full term as Vice-President, mocking her promises to implement a raft of new policies on “day one” of a prospective administration. “She has been the Vice-President for three and a half years. Day One was 1,400 days ago,” Mr. Vance said.
On immigration, Mr. Vance refused to back down on a baseless story he previously promoted about Springfield, Ohio. Mr. Vance had said that Haitian immigrants there were eating residents’ cats and dogs, a claim refuted by local officials. While he avoided repeating the pet-related details specifically, he railed against “illegal immigrants” arriving there.
“The people I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border. It is a disgrace,” he said.
When CBS host Margaret Brennan, one of the debate’s moderators, interjected to correct Mr. Vance – pointing out that the Haitians in Springfield are legal immigrants – Mr. Vance fought back. “The rules were, you weren’t going to fact-check me,” he said. “It’s something that Kamala Harris created, Margaret.”
“Thank you for explaining the legal process,” Ms. Brennan said as Mr. Walz joined in and both candidates’ microphones were swiftly turned off. “The audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut.”
Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris, the Republican and Democratic presidential contenders, respectively, debated once in September and do not have another match-up planned, potentially making the vice-presidential debate the last direct confrontation between the campaigns before the Nov. 5 election.
When Mr. Walz was grilled by Ms. Brennan about his previous false claim to have been in China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – he in fact arrived two months afterwards – he responded with a rambling answer that avoided directly addressing the question.
“I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said.
Only when pressed did he admit he had exaggerated. “Many times, I will talk a lot, I will get caught up in the rhetoric,” he said. “I got there that summer and misspoke on this,” he said, referring to the year he spent in China working as a teacher.
Mr. Vance, meanwhile, had to answer for a a 2016 Facebook message in which he compared Mr. Trump to Adolf Hitler, and a 2020 message in which he said Mr. Trump had “thoroughly failed to deliver” on his economic promises while in office.
“I was wrong about Donald Trump,” Mr. Vance said at Tuesday’s debate, adding that he had fallen for unspecified false media stories about Mr. Trump. “Donald Trump delivered for the American people.”
On abortion, Mr. Walz told anecdotes about women who had almost died because their Republican-run states had banned the procedure after three of Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court appointees voted to overturn federal abortion protections.
Mr. Vance conceded that his party has “got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue,” a reference to polling that shows the Democrats’ pro-choice position to be far more popular than Republicans’ push to ban abortion.
On guns, Mr. Walz recounted his 17-year-old son witnessing a shooting at a community centre, and called for more gun control. Mr. Vance said a solution to gun violence, “unfortunately,” is better locks and tougher doors and windows at schools.
“I say this not loving the answer, because I don’t want my kids to go to school in a school that feels unsafe, or where there are visible signs of security. But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools,” he said.
Mr. Walz replied: “Do you want your school hardened to look like a fort? Is that what we have to go?”
Late in the evening, Mr. Walz tried to pin Mr. Vance down on Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He pointed out that, should Mr. Vance win, he would be in a position to certify the following presidential election, a role that proved crucial on Jan. 6, 2021, when then-vice-president Mike Pence refused to help Mr. Trump reverse the election result.
“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Mr. Walz asked Mr. Vance of Mr. Trump.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Mr. Vance responded. “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?”
“That is a damning non-answer,” Mr. Walz said.
“It’s a damning non-answer for you to not talk about censorship,” Mr. Vance shot back.
Both Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance have had higher public profiles in the campaign than others who have sought the role of vice-president in previous election cycles.
Mr. Vance, who had already written a best-selling memoir before getting into politics, has been a ubiquitous media presence, regularly agreeing to interviews and seeming to relish the role of attack dog.
At 60, Mr. Walz is a political veteran, with 12 years in the House of Representatives and nearly six as Minnesota Governor.