UPDATED, writethru: Overall, the lone 2024 Vice Presidential debate Tuesday was a polite affair, as both candidates suggested that there was common ground.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, running mate of Dem candidate Kamala Harris, drove home the civility of the debate when, as the event neared its conclusion, he admitted, “I’ve enjoyed tonight’s debate, and there was a lot of commonalities here, and I’m sympathetic to misspeaking on things, and I think I might have with the senator.”
“Me too, man,” Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Donald Trump‘s running mate. interjected.
It’s hard to think of such a moment in last month’s Harris-Trump debate, and it is perhaps a function of Walz’s and Vance’s backgrounds in the Midwest.
Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan did what good moderators do: They kept things moving along and they asked specific and sharp questions.
It’ll probably be remembered for two major gaffes — Walz’s admission that he “misspoke” about being present in China during the Tiananmen Square protests, and Vance’s refusal to say that Trump lost the 2020 election. (Trump spent the debate tweeting, and at one point posted about an entirely different topic: Pete Rose’s death. Perhaps he was distracted, bored, or both.)
Earlier in the debate, Walz pressed Vance on a question tied to Trump’s continued claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked.
Vance didn’t answer, and instead said he was “focused on the future” and tried to attack the Biden administration and tech platforms for alleged “censorship.”
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
“It’s a damning non-answer for you to not talk about censorship,” Vance said. “Obviously Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020. We’ve talked about it.”.
Vance tried to whitewash the events of January 6th, claiming that the fact that Joe Biden was sworn in was proof that there was a “peaceful transfer of power.” In fact, 140 police officers were assaulted at the Capitol, and Trump waited until late in the afternoon to tell his supporters to go home. As rioters were threatening Mike Pence, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” Walz called Vance’s characterization of January 6th as revisionism.
Earlier, Vance blamed immigrants for driving up the cost of housing, saying that the “massive increases in home prices that have happened alongside massive increases in illegal alien population.”
But Walz said that the problem is that “we’ve got a lot of folks that see housing as another commodity. It can be shifted, it can be moved around. Those are not the folks that are living in those houses.”
He pointed to Minnesota investment in housing, including down payment assistance.
“We can’t blame immigrants for the only reason. That’s not the case that is happening in many cities,” Walz said.
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A portion of the vice presidential debate was devoted to each candidate’s gaffes.
Walz asked about his past claim that he was in Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square unrest and massacre occurred in 1989. In fact, Walz was not there during the protests, which culminated in Beijing’s crackdown in June of that year.
Walz gave a long answer and said that he had been a “knucklehead” at times.
“I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, that’s what I’ve said,” Walz said. “So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, went in, and from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”
Vance was asked about his past comments disparaging Trump, having once compared him to Hitler, as well as disparaging Trump’s tenure as president. As he has before, Vance blamed the media for buying into their coverage of Trump.
“I was wrong about Donald Trump,” he said, while implicitly attacking Walz for not doing more press interviews.
On the subject of abortion, Vance, pressed on his past support for a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks, claimed that he never supported one.
“I did … when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard,” he said.
Per CNN, on a podcast in 2022, Vance said that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” and that he was “sympathetic” to the view that a ban was necessary to prevent women from crossing state lines to obtain the procedure.
The debate moderators were doing some fact-checking, which led to a tense moment with Vance.
At one point, co-moderator Brennan noted that a large number of Haitian migrants in Springfield, OH had legal status. Vance has claimed that illegal immigration has devastated that community.
Vance interjected, “The rules were that you weren’t going to fact-check, and since you are fact-checking me, I think it is important to say what is going on,” suggesting that it is relatively easy to be granted legal status.
Brennan then said, “Thank you senator for describing the legal process. We have so much to get to senator.”
“It’s been on the books since 1990,” Walz interjected.
The two candidates continued to spar, but by then their mics had been muted. “The audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut,” Brennan said, as she moved on to another topic.
CBS News said before the debate that, while the candidates would not be fact-checked like they would be on the Sunday shows, it would still be up to the moderators when to step in. The network also said that it reserved the right to mute mics.
Earlier, during a discussion on climate, co-moderator O’Donnell also noted, “The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate.”
Vance, the Ohio senator, and Walz, Minnesota’s governor, opened the debate by sparring over who is responsible for the unfolding crisis in the Middle East.
House after Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, Brennan asked the candidates whether they would support or oppose Israel making a pre-emptive strike on Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Walz did not directly answer the question, but used the time to attack Trump’s fitness for office, saying, “a nearly 80 year old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment.”
“It’s those that were closest to Donald Trump that understand how dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous,” Walz said, noting those who served in his administration who have warned about him, as well as Vance himself.
He blamed Trump for backing out of the Iran nuclear deal.
“Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than the were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership,” Walz said.
Vance, meanwhile, said that Trump ushered in an era of stability, saying that he “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,” he said.
Vance pinned blame on Harris for being part of an administration during a time when Iran ramped up its nuclear program.
“You blame Donald Trump. Who has been the vice president for the past three and a half years?” Vance said.
This will likely be the only debate between Vance and Walz — and perhaps the last election-year faceoff this cycle. Trump has so far refused another match up with Harris, who had accepted CNN’s plans for an October 22 presidential debate. Trump and Harris have held just one debate, an ABC News-sponsored event on September 10.
The candidates appeared in a network studio without an audience, with the political press corps watching on monitors in another part of the CBS Broadcast Center complex.
Typically, vice presidential debates have little impact on a presidential race. One of the more memorable moments came in 1988, when Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, Michael Dukakis’ running mate, dressed down Dan Quayle, the GOP nominee running with George H.W. Bush. “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen famously said to him. The Republican ticket went on to win in the general election, even though the moment has been forever linked to Quayle’s career.
This cycle, with polls showing the race in a dead heat, the debate could very well matter. Neither Walz nor Vance had much of a national profile before they each were chosen as running mates, and pundits were largely left to guess how each would come across during the evening.
