Vice presidential debates don’t often determine presidential contests, but tonight’s debate between Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz just might.
Leaving Walz’s shaky start aside, the first memorable moment of the night actually came between Vance and the two moderators, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan.
After both candidates had been given an opportunity to answer and respond to each other on an immigration question, Brennan inserted herself into the debate, asserting, “And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, Temporary Protected Status.”
Vance then jumped back in, noting that CBS said it was not going to fact-check the debaters and that since CBS broke its own rules, he should be allowed to respond. Vance then began a detailed and factual discussion of how exactly Vice President Kamala Harris is abusing federal immigration law to bring migrants into the United States without authorization from Congress. But instead of letting Vance respond, CBS cut his microphone.
The exchange exposed that the debate was not one-on-one, but three-on-one. Vance was going to have to take on both Walz and the two moderators who were committed to breaking their own rules to help Walz attack Vance.
But Vance won the exchange, and the night. Voters who care about immigration saw the moderators cut a real policy debate short in order to minimize a true liability for the Harris-Walz ticket.
The second big moment of the night came on the economy after Walz was asked about Harris’s economic policies and Vance was allowed to respond.
“You're going to hear a lot from Tim Walz this evening of what Kamala Harris proposes to do, and some of it, I'll be honest with you, it even sounds pretty good,” Vance began, and then he went for the jugular.
“Here's what you won't hear is that Kamala Harris has already done it. Because she's been the vice president for three and a half years. She had the opportunity to enact all of these great policies, and what she's actually done instead is drive the cost of food higher by 25%, drive the cost of housing higher by about 60%, open the American southern border and make middle class life unaffordable for a large number of Americans,” Vance said.
And this really is Harris’s fundamental liability: She is trying to run as a challenger when she is in reality the incumbent. Vance’s answer perfectly drove that home.
The final big moment of the debate was truly embarrassing for Walz, and it was entirely self-inflicted. Asked to explain why he had previously said he was in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre when he wasn’t, Walz launched into a long resuscitation of his biography, admitting that he was “a knucklehead at times.”
Pressed by the moderators to answer the question, Walz froze, and then mumbled, “I got there that summer and misspoke on this.”
What made the moment even worse is that the moderators framed the question as one of being about Walz’s “leadership qualities,” and he basically just admitted he’s a lying knucklehead.
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With the Middle East on the brink of war and the economy under threat from a port strike, do voters really want a lying knucklehead to be the last person the president talks to before he or she makes a decision?
Every voter who answers “no” to the above question is now a Donald Trump voter after tonight’s debate.
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