Republican vice-presidential nominee Senator JD Vance of Ohio took a beating from Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was selected as running mate by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, tonight in New York in a 90-minute debate hosted by CBS News.
Vance ironically said that he was a beneficiary of Democratic social programs that Republicans have frequently attempted to cut, including food stamps and Social Security, before launching a broadside attack on the nation’s current leadership.
The forum is expected to be the last debate before the election because disgraced former President Donald Trump has refused to participate in a second matchup after he embarrassed himself in his one confrontation with Vice President Kamala Harris.
That raises the stakes for both sides as the Republican and Democratic campaigns race to make their pitch to voters with just five weeks until Election Day.
Walz was more plain-spoken, and his digs at Trump and Vance show the cutting side of the unfailingly polite and kind ‘Minnesota nice’ might be deeply passive-aggressive.
Vance said that people suffering from hurricane damage need government help, but that position conflicts with the history of GOP policymakers who have attempted to scale back federal spending without regard to the danger of being unprepared for emergencies.
Walz responded by telling Vance that “climate change is real” and detailing a lengthy list of actions led by Democrats designed to aid farmers, who he said recognize the problem due to “drought one year and massive flooding the next year.”
Leading up to the debate, some of the statements that Donald Trump and JD Vance have made reflect a casual relationship with the truth.
Vance detoured into a soliloquy about his mother’s drug addiction and then he accused Vice President Harris for ‘family separations,’ which became a tragedy during Trump’s tenure in the White House instead of answering a question about Republican proposals for mass deportation.
Walz hit back hard by pointing out that Trump stopped bipartisan legislation that would equip the current administration with tools to bring illegal immigration under control because rather than solving a problem, the Republican wanted to preserve a controversy he could use as an issue.
Trump’s lie about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating dogs and cats became a political punchline that took on a life of its own after the presidential debate. In a bizarre rant, Trump repeated false claims about pet-eating Haitian immigrants that were previously debunked by Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and a number of Springfield city officials.
“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. In the past four years, 15,000 Haitians have settled in the city of almost 60,000, most of whom through a legal resettlement program for migrants. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Though city officials confirmed that they have received no such reports, and the baseless claim quickly drew condemnation, false claims about Haitians eating pets went viral on rightwing social media, and were quickly amplified by conservative lawmakers.
Vance called Kamala Harris the “border czar.” She was never given that job. She was tasked by Biden with working with three Central American countries to improve living conditions and lower odds that migrants would leave.
Walz criticized Vance for justifying his lies about Haitians eating pets and he again slammed Trump for blocking the bipartisan immigration legislation but moderators had to mute Vance’s microphone after he again trailed off on a different direction in an attempt to distract from the issue at hand and continued to talk over the hosts.
Demonizing immigrants through falsehoods about their diet is a political tactic that originated in the late 19th century, during the height of anti-Chinese sentiment, said May-lee Chai, author and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.
Before the 1888 presidential election, Grover Cleveland’s campaign published trading cards depicting caricatured images of Chinese men eating rats and smearing his rival, Benjamin Harrison, as “China’s presidential candidate,” according to the book Recollecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History.
Vance waxed nostalgic for the “secure southern border” of the Trump administration, ignoring the fact that crossings soared during his term. Record numbers of families and children arrived in 2019 while the Republicans stumbled through several botched policy responses, most notably the failed attempt to deter migrants by taking away their children.
Even before Harris picked Walz to be her running mate, the Minnesota governor made headlines and launched countless memes when in July he delivered a simple, yet memorable critique of Trump Republicans, proclaiming them to be “just weird.”
“These are weird people on the other side,” Walz said in a July television interview, one of many where he has described Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), as “creepy,” “weird,” “strange” or “odd.” “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. … These are weird ideas.”
Walz has continued to deploy his folksy, Midwestern-dad approach as he has stepped into the attack dog role that vice-presidential hopefuls traditionally play in the final stretch of the campaign, and his tendency for quick-witted yet plain-spoken jabs at the GOP ticket will be on display as he takes the stage Tuesday night for his one-and-only debate against Vance.
When it came to national security, Vance kept talking about ‘peace through strength.’ Walz was keen on pointing out how Trump is fickle and easily swayed.
During the debate, vice-presidential candidates will have two minutes to answer a question when asked, and the opposing candidate will be allowed two minutes to respond.
Each candidate will then have one minute for rebuttal statements, but moderators may at give candidates an additional minute each to continue a topic.
Candidates will have lights indicating how much time they have left to speak, as well as a countdown clock.
Asked how he’d pay for trillions of dollars in new spending plans, Walz said he and Harris “do believe in the middle class because they come from the middle class” and said he supports Biden’s tax plan, which raises $5 trillion in taxes on the rich and corporations over 10 years.
Walz touted Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic plans, saying he and his running mate “do believe in the middle class.”
He emphasized the role of increasing the available housing stock to help bring down unaffordable housing prices. Harris has proposed building 3 million new homes across the country, although experts say the US needs 7 million new housing units to stabilize the market.
“A house is much more than just an asset to be traded somewhere. It’s foundational to where you’re at,” Walz said.
Walz also argued for “making sure tax cuts go to the middle class,” such as child tax credits, as well as “fairness” in pricing for everyday goods.
Walz said Trump’s incompetent response to Covid caused the economy to crash, resulting in the highest unemployment since the 1980s, and he also explained that working-class Americans deserve a fair tax structure, instead of one that allows billionaires like Trump to get away without paying taxes.
Vance has criticized economists who oppose Trump’s tariff proposals, arguing that economic growth occurred despite the severe effects of the coronavirus on employment.
Trump, however, is calling for more than a 10-fold expansion of tariffs compared to his first term — trillions more in import duties than under his first term, which helped raise the price of imports and triggered the massive inflation for which Republicans hope to blame Democrats.
Vance articulated a rejection of the bipartisan economic establishment, which many on both the left and right blame for outsourcing American manufacturing to China and elsewhere. Both candidates seem to agree that elite policymakers have let down the American middle class by endorsing outsourcing and global trade agreements—choices that many economists continue to support.
The right has moved away from believing experts, and JD Vance, arguably more explicitly than other GOP leaders, laid bare that he doesn’t trust experts and doesn’t think others should either.
Instead, trust Trump — regardless of the “facts,” regardless of the best analysis from the people who have dedicated their lives to studying these issues.
That exposes one of the biggest issues in America — that people don’t agree on a shared set of facts. People have their own ideologies and are finding others who are affirming what they believe — whether Trump or a link on social media — rather than having their minds changed by facts.
Democrats have had their own issues with perceptions of being too elitist and talking down to working-class voters. Republicans, like Trump, have exploited that to apparently mean not to trust experts at all.
And when experts don’t have to be trusted, in fact shouldn’t be, according to Vance, then it only lends more credence to conspiracy and makes it harder to bridge divides.
Walz presented great points on climate change giving examples on how climate change is real and he explained how to solve the climate crisis.
Walz was most comfortable discussing abortion and leveling attacks on Vance for his opposition to a congressional bill that would have protected IVF.
As he has many times since he became Harris’ running mate, Walz spoke about how fertility treatments enabled him and his wife to have their children.
Walz took a similar approach to Harris on the abortion questions, telling specific stories about women impacted by the Republican success in banning abortion such as Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother who died after she couldn’t access legal abortion care in her home state of Georgia.
Walz also named Amanda Zurawski, who was denied abortion care after she experienced preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes (PPROM) at 18 weeks of pregnancy and almost died from sepsis; Kaitlyn Joshua, who was denied treatment while miscarrying and instead was told she should go home and wait; and Hadley Duvall, who was raped by her stepfather when she was a child.
Vance falsely claimed he never supported a national “ban” on abortion but he backed a 15-week ban on abortion and in 2022, he said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” In the same breath that Vance was lying he was saying that Republicans need to earn Americans’ trust on the abortion issue.
Vance recounted a story about told him, “that she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”
Then he said vague things about wanting to protect innocent life in this country and at the same time claimed that he wants to protect the vulnerable.
Last year, Vance urged the Justice Department to enforce the Comstock Act, the federal law that prohibits the mailing of abortion-related materials.
Reproductive health experts have expressed worry that a Trump administration would invoke that 151-year-old law to try to crack down on abortion nationwide.
Vance has been pugnacious on the campaign trail and used a large number of falsehoods. Speaking to a broader audience, he took a different approach that mirrors recollections from those who served with him in the Marine Corps.
Trump was posting in all caps on Truth Social claiming that he would veto a federal abortion ban and reiterating his support for exceptions for rape, incest and health. He also repeated false claims about late-term abortions and post-birth executions, which are not legal anywhere.
In the discussion on gun violence, Walz revaled that his 17-year-old son witnessed a shooting at a community center.
Before launching into his response, Vance acknowledged what Walz said: “First of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed the shooting. And I’m sorry about that. … Christ have mercy. It is awful.”
Vance said there has been an increase in illegal guns trafficked by Mexican cartels but those gangs are buying them from U.S. gun stores, where laws are far more lax, and bringing those weapons to Mexico.
Vance called for stronger windows and doors and more school resource officers, efforts that have already been tried and haven’t worked so we need to crack down on how shooters get illegal guns.
Mexico has extremely restrictive gun laws. But the cartels are moving drugs and people north, and bringing guns and cash south.
Walz had a better argument because of his strong stance on gun safety and the importance of it. It’s more than just having children that go to school and wanting them to feel safe. It’s about everyone.
Responding to a question from the moderator about Harris’s housing policy: “The Harris campaign promises a $25,000 down payment, assistance for first-time home buyers and a $10,000 tax credit. They also promise to build 3 million new homes. Where are you building these homes? And won’t handing out that kind of money just drive up prices higher?” Walz said no, pushing back on the idea that it’s a hand-out.
It is not at all clear how Vance’s plan to build new homes is going to work without immigrant labor, especially if the Trump administration follows through on its plan for mass deportations. Many migrants come to the United States for jobs in construction.
Vance claimed that the government is giving away free housing to “millions” of migrants. There is no free national housing program for migrants.
Vance was pressed on his comments about shifting chronically ill Americans to new health plans. That’s alarmed a lot of patient advocates and policy experts, who say it could force sicker Americans to spend more on their care.
Walz slammed Vance for claiming that Trump made the Affordable Care Act better. Vance’s account of Trump’s record on Obamacare is a lie.
Vance also skirted the truth saying we have laws in place that protect people with preexisting conditions.
The law that protects those people is the Affordable Care Act and Republicans spent years trying to repeal it, foiled only by Sen. John McCain.
Walz was also clearly comfortable talking about health care.
When Vance tried to trap him by asking if he supported the individual mandate — the provision of the ACA that requires that everyone have health insurance — Walz didn’t hesitate. He said he did because you need to have a broad enough risk pool, meaning a mix of healthy and sick people, to make sure everyone is covered.
At one point during the debate, there seemed to be a consensus between the parties on issues such as paid family medical leave, child care, and housing. However, the GOP has consistently opposed any taxes that would be needed to fund national paid family medical leave.
Vance claimed that tariffs could raise more than enough money to pay for a national childcare plan, without noting that Trump’s 20 percent sales tax on imports would have drawbacks for the rest of the economy if ever implemented.
“You’ve said many things about the American family,” CBS moderator Margaret Brennan asked Vance, who has made many controversial comments — among them his most famous remark that the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies,” including Harris (who has stepchildren).
Vance nearly tied himself in knots trying to explain Trump’s indecipherable explanation on what he would do to address child-care costs.
Walz made better arguments on health care, on preventing school shootings, that abortion is a woman’s choice about her body, and how to handle climate change but the Democrat scored a knockout punch noting that Mike Pence is not on the stage as he rebutted Vance’s contention that Trump peaceful
No questions came up on Ukraine and Russia or Iran’s missile barrage against Israel.
Since Walz stepped onstage to debate Vance tonight, people from all across the country have been making a huge number of donations to the Democratic National Committee.