NEW YORK — Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) traded barbs and talked policy during the vice president debate, but also shared moments of agreement and even sympathy on the stage.
Held in bustling Manhattan, the debate ran through a range of policy issues including immigration, the economy, gun control, abortion access, housing costs, inflation, China, energy and even the proper use of federal lands. But it mostly stayed above board and avoided the fireworks that have been a hallmark of recent presidential debates.
Vance had a smoother delivery from the start of the debate when he took the time to share personal details about his upbringing made famous by his Hillbilly Elegy memoir, whereas Walz stumbled out of the gate and didn’t appear to shake his nerves until the final minutes of the face-off. Debate experts widely gave Vance higher marks for the strength of his responses and the ease of his presence on the stage.
Here are the top five takeaways from the running mates debate.
1. Vance outlines deportation plans
Vance returned over and over to the theme of comparing former President Donald Trump’s tenure to that of the Biden-Harris administration, especially on the topic of immigration. He hit the issue hard when asked about it directly, and brought it up again amid answers on other topics.
Vance even offered some clues into how Trump would carry out his promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants if elected, a key piece of what remains Trump’s signature selling point.
“We’ve got 20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country. What do we do with them? I think the first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants. About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally,” said Vance during the CBS News debate Tuesday evening. “I think you start with deportations on those folks.”
Another plank would involve making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to work in the U.S., which could convince some of them to return home on their own. Vance tied in an economic argument in the process.
“You make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers,” Vance said.
A lot of people will go home if they can’t work for less than minimum wage in our own country. That’ll be really good for our workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day’s work.”
The second of 20 points on the Trump-Vance campaign website states that the Republican ticket would “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.”
Walz responded by noting that Vance had previously called Trump’s deportation plan “so unworkable” and said that it was “laughable,” and pointed to a bipartisan border security bill that Republicans turned down earlier this year.
2. Walz bombs question on travel to China
Walz struggled at the beginning of the debate and sometimes appeared nervous or off-kilter, especially when pressed on his travel to China.
Walz has a long history of visiting China and has said that he’s been to the country up to 30 times in the past. Notably, he has claimed to have been in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protest in the spring of 1989. But new reporting found that he didn’t actually arrive in Asia until August of that year. He was asked to explain the discrepancy.
Walz’s initial response to the question took up nearly 450 words, spanning his upbringing in Nebraska, his time in the National Guard, his first trip to China, and the difference it made in his life, but it did not directly address the question.
Moderators pressed again, asking, “Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy?”
“No. All I said on this was, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just — that’s what I’ve said,” Walz said, then paused before adding. “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.”
3. A kinder kind of debate
In sharp contrast to the two presidential debates this year, both candidates on stage in New York mostly kept a cool head and were even complimentary of each other.
Walz could often be seen nodding along when Vance spoke, the two rarely attempted to interrupt each other, and they said more than once that they agreed on portions of controversial topics.
The candidates said some version of “I agree” 10 different times, even if sometimes it was ultimately used to disparage the people at the top of the ticket.
“I actually think I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think Kamala Harris does,” Vance told Walz as they battled over solving the immigration crisis and the senator’s attacks on Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Walz also made a point of agreement on immigration, saying “I agree. It should not take seven years for an asylum claim to be done,” though he used it to make a wider point about how Trump killed the bipartisan immigration bill.
At other times they said they fully agreed, such as on the idea that more manufacturing jobs need to be brought to the U.S. from overseas and that housing should not be thought of as a commodity.
4. A softer side of Vance
Vance came into the debate with much lower favorability ratings than Walz and thus had more ground to make up with the electorate.
He tried to do that by showing a softer side of his personality. Vance did not attack Walz’s record in the National Guard, and in turn was not attacked over his “childless cat ladies” comments or being “weird.”
In a surprising moment of genuine sympathy between the candidates, Vance expressed concern for Walz’s teenage son who witnessed a shooting.
“Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting. I’m sorry about that, and — Christ have mercy. It is, it is awful,” Vance said.
“I appreciate that,” Walz responded.
They shared different views on how to curtail shootings, but Vance stressed again that his opponent’s goals were genuine.
“We do have to do better. And I think that Gov. Walz and I actually probably agree we have to do better on this,” Vance said.
At the end of the 90 minutes, the two Midwesterners met and spoke for a while, lingering on the New York City debate stage.
5. A clash over the biggest threat to democracy
The most heated things got during the proceedings was near the end when the two sparred over the question of what’s the biggest threat to democracy.
Walz, as expected, spoke of Trump challenging the results of the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and the odds that he would challenge the results again. Vance had a different take, saying the biggest threat was censorship.
“I believe we that actually do have a threat to democracy in this country, but unfortunately it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship,” Vance said, bringing up Walz’s comments that there is no guarantee to free speech on misinformation.
Vance warned of big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens and charged that Harris would push censorship if elected.
Walz continued to press Vance on the election issue, saying that Vance was only on the stage because former Vice President Mike Pence certified the results of the 2020 election. When Walz directly asked Vance if Trump lost four years ago, Vance said he was focused on the future and pivoted back to censorship.
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.