VP debate highlights
Last night was the one and only vice presidential debate of the election cycle.
The debate was hosted by CBS. Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan moderated. They did a better job than the ABC moderators of the presidential debate, but Brennan was worse than O'Donnell when it came to practically laying out answers for Walz when a question came his way.
There were ten questions, candidates got 2 minutes to respond, and 1 minute multiple rebuttals each if desired. The debate lasted two hours with the moderators claiming "there is so much more to get to" anytime Vance wanted his rebuttal time.
There was a really crappy climate change question which the moderators wasted a lot of time on despite that topic not actually being a big voter issue. Meanwhile they didn't even mention the assassination attempts on Trump, China, Ukraine, the national debt, or energy issues.
A NY Times headline summed it up for a lot of people: Vance’s Dominant Debate Performance Shows Why He’s Trump’s Running Mate
“The Ohio senator is delivering one of the best debating performances by a Republican nominee for president or vice president in recent memory and making a case for Trump’s record far more effectively than Trump has ever been capable of doing,” wrote NY Times opinion author Ross Douthat.
“Tim Walz, on the other hand, seems affable, well meaning and, relative to Vance, largely out of his depth,” Douthat wrote. “He’s spending too much time partly agreeing with his rival while making a much more haphazard case against Trump than Vance is making against Kamala Harris.”
Douthat was not alone in his observations; multiple media outlets saw Vance as dominating the debate.
My personal take
Walz came off as overly animated, unprepared, and kept trying to blame Trump for everything that's happened over the past four years under Kamala Harris. His dark black suit was off-putting. That may sound petty, but he looked like an over-eager mortician to me.
Vance kept his cool and redirected back to the failures of Harris each time. He neutralized several attempts by the moderators to rattle him, especially when they asked him what made him change his past criticisms about Trump and he replied, "I was wrong about Donald Trump."
There was a clear difference in the ability to respond to the questions. Vance has been in front of reporters, typically hostile ones, and holding his own while Walz has been doing the same thing Harris has - hiding from reporters and answering questions with the "I grew up in a middle class family," mantra.
At one point, Vance had enough of those kind of answers and said something along the lines to Walz of, “I asked a specific question, you gave a slogan in response.”
I lost count of how many people were sending me this gif last night. I am not sure exactly who credit with its creation, but it’s a visual representation of Douthat’s article.
Throughout the night, Vance drove home the message that hasn't Harris has not done any of what she's proposing during her 3 and a half years as vice president yet now she wants to fix what the Biden-Harris administration has broken.
"Kamala Harris has been the vice president for three-and-a-half years," Vance said, "She's had the opportunity to enact all of these 'great' policies — and what she's actually done instead is drive the cost of food higher by 25%, drive the cost of housing higher by 60%, open the American southern border, and make middle class life unaffordable."
That resonated.
More To The Story
Iran and Israel
Yesterday, Iran launched an estimated 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. U.S. forces helped knock some of them down. This was the topic of the first question asked: whether either candidate would support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran.
Walz flubbed it. He stammered and was shaky in his response and spoke about Iran when he meant Israel. Walz searched for an answer, repeating the world needs "steady leadership" before defaulting to generic attacks on Trump.
"What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter," Walz said. "It’s clear, and the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago. A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment."
Vance, in comparison, noted no wars under Trump and relative peace around the world, citing "peace through strength."
"People were afraid of stepping out of line," Vance said. "Donald Trump recognized that for people to fear the United States, you needed peace through strength. They needed to recognize that if they got out of line, the United States' global leadership would put stability and peace back in the world."
Only Vance actually answered the question posed, saying, "It is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe. And we should support our allies wherever they are, when they’re fighting the bad guys."
Border Crisis & Deportations
On the border crisis, moderators asked if deportations under Trump's plan would separate families. The question was clearly loaded towards Vance and asked no such similar question to Walz about the over 10 million illegal aliens (estimated at 20-25 million with gotaways) that have flooded the country under Harris.
Walz's answer went back to Harris' "Trump killed the border bill," talking point.
Vance highlighted the fact that under Harris, "We have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost."
Walz countered, insisting children have not been used as "drug mules" before delivering another campaign talking point that Harris, while attorney general in California, "prosecuted transnational gangs for human trafficking and drugs."
Harris’ prosecutorial record has been called into question in the past week, with former Trump administration Department of Justice official Jeff Clark claiming he can't find records showing Harris ever personally led a single prosecution. This is not the first time either. During her 2003 district attorney campaign, her opponent said the same thing.
There was one moment during the immigration questioning that Walz actually nodded when Vance said Harris had "enabled the Mexican drug cartels to operate freely in this country."
Walz also said crossings were down at the border. Well, sure, if you cut out the last three years of immigration crossings — and Biden's border order this year does not count, Mr. Walz.
Walz likely went down that route because the data is mind boggling. Border encounters for 2020 came in at 646,822 - a new record that was surpassed by 1,956,519 in 2021. As of the end of September this year, crossing were at staggering 2,756,646, per Customs and Border Patrol data.
Additionally, we’ve recently learned there are 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE's national docket. Of that number, 435,719 are convicted criminals and 226,847 have pending criminal charges.
Abortion
Walz briefly put Vance on the defensive in this round.
Walz was asked whether he supports abortion up until the ninth month as legislation he signed allows for and he replied, "That's not what the bill says."
The moderators did not correct Walz's denial that he indeed signed legislation in Minnesota that removed the requirement for doctors to save the life of babies born alive during a botched abortion. He also removed the reporting requirement for cases where that happens.
Walz tried to muddy the water further claiming that was debunked in the presidential debate, yet what was mentioned in the ABC debate was referring to former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's comments that the baby would be allowed to die on the table.
The legislation Walz signed also scrapped any kind of informed consent before an abortion is conducted, repealed the requirement that abortions be performed by doctors, as well as removing language barring coerced abortions. The law he signed also allows minors to get abortions without parental consent.
Walz also repeated that "Abortion is a human right" and shouldn't be a geography issue.
Vance said the voters should decide and noted that they are.
"The proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions," Vance said. "Let the individual states make their abortion policy. And I think that's what makes the most sense in a very big, a very diverse — and let's be honest — sometimes, a very, very messy and divided country."
Vance also was brutally honest, saying Republicans need to do "so much better of a job at earning the American people's trust back on this issue, where they, frankly, just don't trust us." He went on to say what he and Trump want to do is "to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word," which included supporting IVF.
"I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies," Vance said. "I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there's so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options right now."
Walz pivoted to Project 2020 during part of his response as well and said there would be "a registry of pregnancies." Project 2025 is from the Heritage Foundation and Trump has stated on numerous occasions he has nothing to do with it.
Walz and China, Vance and Trump
It was surprising to see the moderators actually question Walz on whether he was in China for the Tiananmen Square protests as he has boasted.
Walz looked pretty shocked he was being asked that question and initially tried to filibuster but the moderators reasked the question when he did not provide an answer.
Walz, whose ties to Communist China are the subject of Congressional probes, said during his response that he "learned a lot of what needed to be in governance" from China and finally said when pressed by the moderators, he admitted he "misspoke" about Tiananmen and he was not there until later that year in the summer.
On the other side of that coin, moderators asked Vance why he supports Trump now when he was critical of him in the past. Vance's response was straightforward and a clap back. He said, " I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record."
Vance then went on to explain Trump's record, something he did repeatedly and very well throughout the night.
"Donald Trump delivered for the American people rising wages, rising take-home pay, an economy that worked for normal Americans, a secure southern border," said Vance. "A lot of things, frankly, that I didn't think he'd be able to deliver on. And, yeah, when you screw up, when you misspeak, when you get something wrong and you change your mind, you ought to be honest with the American people about it."
Gun control and school shootings
There was a question on gun control and school shootings and Vance was clear about better securing school buildings and adding more school resource officers (SROs).
Harris has said she wants to remove all police presence from schools and Walz went down that road too,peppering in that Harris-Walz supports the 2nd Amendment as many times as he could
This question might have been one of the worst moments for Walz. Following a first time claim that his 17-year-old son "witnessed a shooting at a community center while playing volleyball," Vance offered some condolences to Walz that had happened. That feel good moment didn't last when Walz spun into a ramble and awkwardly claimed he's become "friends with school shooters." Walz also fought the idea that school security should be tightened up.
Despite CBS asserting it would not allow "live fact-checking" during the debate, but Brennan did on several occasions. In one instance when the moderators went down the Springfield, Ohio, road regarding the town being overrun by Haitian migrants, Vance objected and pushed back. Brennan tried to have the last word and said the Haitians had protected status and were not there illegally.
"Margaret, the rules were that you are not going to fact-check. And since you're fact-checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on," he said. "So there's an application called the CBP one app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand."
Vance tried to explain the legal scenario in which Harris had overwhelmed the town but the moderators cut his mic.
There was another cringe-inducing “January 6/accept the outcome of the election” question just like in the ABC debate. Both questions were designed to force Trump and Vance to defend themselves. This time around, Vance turned the tables, criticizing Walz and Democrats who say Trump could pose a "threat to democracy," and that there is an actual threat: Censorship.
"But, unfortunately, it's not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about," Vance continued. "It is the threat of censorship. It's Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics. It's big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens."
Vance also landed a punch by saying, "for years in this country, Democrats protested the results of elections," and then he brought receipts.
"Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 worth of Facebook ads. This has been going on for a long time, and if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I'm on board," Vance said. "But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had, I don't buy that, governor."
It was along this line of questioning that I think Vance missed an opportunity to hit Walz on his record of sending riot police into suburbs to use pepper and paintballs to force citizens into staying inside their homes during the COVID lockdowns. Yes, that happened. Watch it here.
In closing remarks, Walz hit all the key phrases constantly repeated by the Harris Walz campaign; Harris is "a new way forward," she brings "the politics of joy," and "real solutions for the middle class."
If you were playing debate drinking bingo, Walz got you drunk just in the closing statement.
Vance said, "We need change. We need a new direction. We need a president who has already done this once before and did it well. Please vote for Donald Trump."
Here is the full debate video, which includes the pre-debate talking head chatter. To skip right to when the debate actually started, click here.
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