NEW YORK — On Tuesday, Tim Walz and J.D. Vance went after each other’s running mates in a vice presidential debate. The first thing they talked about were growing problems at home and abroad, like the storm that hit the southeast U.S. and rising fears of a war in the Middle East.
Like most V.P. talks, Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, and Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio, focused many of their mostly friendly attacks on the top of the ticket. Each used the current problems to explain why people should vote for either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump.
The debate took place in the last few weeks of a campaign that had been marked by harsh, personal attacks and historic changes, such as one candidate pulling out and two failed assassinations. As early voting starts across the country, polls show that Harris and Trump are in a very close race. This makes anything that can sway voters on the edges more important, even how the vice presidential candidates make them feel.
Instead of angry debates, the candidates mostly talked about policies, and sometimes they said they agreed with each other, even though they had very different ideas about how the country should grow.
Vance showed sympathy when Walz told him that his teenage son had seen a shooting at a community center.
“I’m sorry about that.” God have mercy on us, Vance said.
Walz said, “Thank you for that.”
The former president, who tried to get attention by live-blogging the debate on Tuesday, was at the center of both Walz and Vance’s arguments about whether Americans should vote to re-elect him.
Walz said that Trump was wrong about the problems and a bad leader. Vance shot him down every time he tried to answer and made the case for the man he had harshly attacked before.
“What’s going to matter most is steady leadership,” Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, said in answer to a question about what was happening in the Middle East. The world saw it in that debate a few weeks ago, when Donald Trump, who is almost 80 years old, talked about how big of crowds we don’t need right now.
In response, Vance said that Trump is a scary person whose very appearance on the world stage is enough to scare people away.
“Gov. Walz can say bad things about Donald Trump’s tweets, but the only way to fix a world that is badly broken is through smart diplomacy and peace through strength,” he said.
A stronger stance on immigration
CBS News hosted a debate in New York that started with a serious tone that showed how safety and security worries are growing in the United States and around the world. But Walz and Vance began to attack more strongly, and at one point, the managers stopped the conversation by cutting off the mics of the two men.
Walz said that Vance and Trump were making illegal aliens in Vance’s home state look bad. He brought up the fact that Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had to send in more police to protect the city’s schools after Vance tweeted and Trump played up false claims that Haitians ate pets.
“This is what happens when you don’t want to solve it: you make it evil,” Walz said, adding that this would help people “come together.”
Vance said that the 15,000 Haitians living in the city were a problem with housing, the economy, and other things that the Biden-Harris administration was ignoring.
When the debate moderators said that the Haitians living there had legal standing, Vance said that CBS News had said its moderators would not check the facts, so it was up to the candidates to do so. His microphone was cut off as Vance went on and the moderators tried to move on. Neither guy could be heard.
Back to being friendly on the debate stage
The tone between the two Midwesterners was much friendlier than the one between Trump and Harris or the one between Trump and President Joe Biden earlier this year, before Biden dropped out of the race after a terrible showing.
When they first talked about immigration and the large number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, which was one of the most controversial issues in the campaign, both men thought the other was trying to do the right thing.
Walz said, “I think Sen. Vance wants to solve this, but by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it turns into a talking point, and when it turns into a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other people.”
Vance said the same thing: “I believe you want to solve this issue, but I don’t believe Kamala Harris does.”
Walz got involved with Harris’s campaign by calling Trump and Republicans “just weird.” This gave Democrats a way to hit Republicans by saying they don’t care about the American people. But he never used the word during almost the whole discussion.
Vance’s sometimes heated talks and public appearances have made it clear why Trump chose him for the Republican ticket.
Vance seemed to be trying to soften his image as an aggressive person by speaking less strongly (he called Walz “Tim”) and being more flexible (he said, “I know a lot of Americans don’t agree with everything I’ve ever said on this topic”).
He tried to explain Trump’s policies and views in a kinder way, which reminded me of how Vice President Mike Pence often did things when he was in the White House with Trump.
They broke up because Pence wouldn’t help him try to change the results of the 2020 election.
Both men admitted making mistakes in the past.
Most of the time, a presidential running mate’s job is to attack the other candidate and their representative on stage for the person at the top of the ticket. Vance and Walz have both taken on that job.
Vance was asked about the harsh things he had said about the former president in the past. For example, he said that Trump would be “America’s Hitler.”
He told the people of the United States on Tuesday, “If you are wrong and then change your mind, you should be honest with them.”
This week, Minnesota Public Radio and other news outlets looked into Walz’s false claim that he was in Hong Kong during the chaos surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. This is part of a larger pattern of lies that Republicans hope to use against him.
“I’ve not been perfect,” Walz said in response to accusations that he lied about trips he took to China many years ago. He even admitted, “Sometimes I’m a knucklehead.” He finally admitted that he had been wrong about his past.
