A Confident J. D. Vance Keeps Tim Walz on His Heels in First and Only Vice-Presidential Debate By Ryan Mills
Ohio Senator J. D. Vance turned in a confident and controlled debate performance Tuesday night, seemingly making a stronger case for the reelection of his running mate, former president Donald Trump, than Trump himself has in either of his two debates this year.
Vance kept Democrat Tim Walz on his heels for most of the night, arguing that the country was safer, and more prosperous during Trump’s first term in office than it’s been under nearly four years with Kamala Harris as vice president. He swatted away Walz’s contention that Harris has plans to fix the border crisis and strengthen the economy, saying that as vice president she “ought to do them now.”
Walz, who has mostly avoided the media spotlight since he was tapped by Harris, appeared nervous when the bout began, stumbling over his words and taking long pauses to collect himself. Vance, by contrast, seemed poised after sitting for near daily interviews with adversarial journalists.
Defying the media’s arch-conservative caricature, Vance was compassionate to women who are facing unplanned pregnancies, and suggested that his Republican Party needs “to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back” on the issue of abortion.
He even sparred with the CBS moderators, fact-checking their fact-check of him on the topic of Haitian immigration and its impact in Springfield, Ohio.
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, argued that Harris will provide the country with steady leadership, accused Trump of pitching tax cuts for billionaires and getting an immigration bill killed because he wanted illegal immigration to remain a “campaign issue.”
The debate between Vance and Walz — likely to be the final face-to-face matchup between presidential-ticket contenders before Election Day — was mostly civil, and on several issues they said they agreed on many of the fundamentals. Both candidates tended to keep their attacks focused on Trump and Harris rather than one another.
Just hours after Iran sent waves of missiles at Israel, a key American ally, the debate’s first question from moderators Margaret Brenan and Norah O’Donnell focused on foreign policy.
“Israel’s ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental,” Walz said. He said a Harris presidency will provide “steady leadership,” and then referred to Trump’s performance at last month’s presidential debate.
“The world saw 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,” Walz said, accusing Trump of being “fickle” and susceptible to “flattery” from world leaders.
Vance responded that “Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line.”
Vance asked voters if they could recall the last time in their lives that an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out. He answered for them: “The only answer is during the four years that Donald Trump was president.”
Vance expressed concern for the victims of Hurricane Helene, and argued that the best way to curb carbon commissions — if that is what is leading to stronger hurricanes — is to reshore American manufacturing and energy production “because we are the cleanest economy in the entire world.”
“The best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people,” he said. “And unfortunately Kamala Harris has done exactly the opposite.”
Vance argued that Harris had failed as President Joe Biden’s “appointed border czar,” by undoing “94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border.”
Walz said Trump failed in his promise to build a wall along the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. “Less than 2 percent of that wall got built,” he said, “and Mexico didn’t pay a time.”
Vance repeatedly hammered Harris for the high levels of inflation during her term, arguing at one point that her economic plans may sound “pretty good,” but “what she’s actually done instead is drive the cost of food higher by 25 percent, drive the cost of housing higher by about 60 percent, open the southern border and make middle class life unaffordable for a large number of Americans. If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle class problems, then she ought to do them now.”
“We can do so much better,” Vance said. “To all of you watching, we can get back to an America that is affordable again. We’ve just got to get back to commonsense economic principles.”
On abortion, a difficult subject at the moment for Republicans, Vance denied Walz’s contention that Trump would create a federal pregnancy-monitoring agency. He noted that many Americans “don’t agree with everything I’ve ever said on this topic,” and expressed sympathy for a person dear to him who believes having an abortion saved her life from ruin.
“I think that what I take from that as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue.”
He called for the Republican Party to be “pro-family in the fullest sense of the world,” a party that supports fertility treatments, that “makes it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family.”
He said that “as messy as democracy sometimes is,” the best way for the nation to handle abortion is to allow the states to manage it as they see fit, Trump’s preference.
Walz argued that reproductive rights shouldn’t be based on geography. But he was on his toes when Vance asked him if Minnesota law puts no obligation on doctors who perform a botched abortion “to provide life-saving care to a baby that survives.”
Walz called that a “distortion” and said “that is not the way the law is written,” but was unable to explain why Vance’s interpretation was incorrect.
Near the end of the debate, Vance dodged a question from Walz — did Trump lose the 2020 election. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied. That was “damning non-answer,” Walz said.
In addition to making the case for their ticket, Tuesday’s debate was also an opportunity for the candidates to introduce themselves to American voters, many of whom likely didn’t know either of them until they were tapped as Trump’s and Harris’s running mates.
FiveThirtyEight polls show that voters so far have a better view of Walz — 40 percent of voters have a favorable view him compared to 36.5 percent unfavorable. Vance, on the other hand, is underwater with only 34.8 percent of voters viewing him favorably, compared to 45.8 percent who view him unfavorably, the polls show.
The FiveThirtyEight polling average shows Harris and Walz with a narrow national lead over Trump and Vance, 48.6 percent to 45.8 percent, with a month to go before Election Day.
Walz, a former teacher, football coach, and Congressman from a red district in southern Minnesota, has played up his folksy Midwest dad image on the campaign trail. But as governor he has helped push his state decidedly to the left.
Vance made a name for himself with his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his hardscrabble upbringing in rural eastern Kentucky and the struggles facing America’s rural working class. He was initially a harsh Trump critic before running for Senate in 2022 and reinventing himself as one of the former president’s chief defenders.
Vance faced criticism for old comments suggesting that the Democratic party is led by miserable “childless cat ladies,” and for more recently leading the charge of accusing Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating their neighbors’ pets.
Walz was a leader in the effort to label the Trump-Vance ticket as “weird” and out of touch.
Vance, who has served as Trump’s primary attack dog, has painted Harris and Walz as “dangerously liberal,” and has attacked Walz for overstating his military record.
Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate comes just a few weeks after the only scheduled debate between Trump and Harris, during which the former president came across as unfocused, blustery, and angry. He then falsely claimed that every poll showed him winning the debate, and said there’s no need for a rematch and that it’s “too late.”
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