Vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and J.D. Vance focused their criticism on the top of the ticket Tuesday as they engaged in an intense political debate that could be the final debate of the 2024 presidential campaign.
This is the first meeting between the Democratic governor of Minnesota and the Republican senator from Ohio, after last month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. This comes just five weeks before Election Day, with millions of voters now able to cast their ballots early.
A standoff erupted on Tuesday as the stakes of the contest rose again after Iran fired missiles at Israel, while a devastating hurricane and a potentially debilitating port strike roiled the country at home. Time and again, Walz and Vance pointed out the differences in politics and personalities between their running mates as they tried to introduce themselves to the country.
Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s discussion.
With the Middle East in turmoil, Walz promises “steadfast leadership” and Vance offers “peace through strength.”
Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday sparked a contrast between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy: Walz promised “steady leadership” under Harris while Vance pledged a return to “peace through strength” if Trump returns to the White House.
The sharp political differences between the two tickets were overshadowed by different visions of what American leadership should look like.
The Iranian threat to the region and American interests around the world opened the discussion, with Walz focusing the topic on criticizing Trump.
“The key here is that consistent leadership is going to be important,” Walz said, then referenced “almost 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” and responding to global crises via a tweet.
For his part, Vance promised a return to Trump-era “effective deterrence” against Iran, brushing aside Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her role in the Biden administration.
He said: “Who was the vice president during the past three and a half years, and the answer is your running mate, not me.” He clearly noted that the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 occurred “during the Kamala Harris administration.”
Vance and Walls punch each other instead of each other
Vance and Walls directed the bulk of their attacks not at their rivals on stage, but at their colleagues who were not in the room.
Both vice presidential candidates sought to convey a kind outlook while directing criticism at Harris and Trump, respectively.
It was a reflection of the fact that most voters do not cast their ballots based on the vice president, and of the vice presidential nominee’s historical role of serving as an attack dog on their running mates.
Walz clearly attacked Trump for failing to fulfill his pledge to build a physical barrier across the entire border between the United States and Mexico at the expense of the country’s southern neighbor.
“Less than 2 percent of that wall was built, and Mexico didn’t pay a dime,” Walz said.
Emphasizing the focus on the top of the ticket, during a back-and-forth on immigration, Vance told his rival: “I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think Kamala Harris wants that.”
It’s been a wonky political debate, with talk of risk pools, housing regulations, and energy policy
In an era of world-class rhetoric optimized for social media, Tuesday’s debate was a turn toward substance. Both candidates took a calm approach and both enthusiastically delved into the finer details.
Walz delved into the crafting of the Affordable Care Act while he was in the House in 2009, and Vance pushed the senator’s claim that Trump, who tried to repeal the law, actually helped preserve it. Vance, who defended his claim that illegal immigration raises housing prices, cited a Federal Reserve study to support his position. Walz talked about how Minneapolis is adjusting local regulations to boost housing supply. The two men spoke about the intersection between energy policy, trade, and climate change.
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It was a very different approach than we’ve often seen in presidential debates over the past several election cycles.
Vance remains defensive about abortion
Walz repeatedly pounced on Vance on abortion access and reproductive rights, with the Ohio senator trying to argue that a state-by-state matrix of abortion laws is the ideal approach for the United States. Walz responded that women’s “fundamental right” should not be determined “by geography.”
“This is a very simple proposition: These are women’s decisions,” Walz said. “We trust women. We trust doctors.”
Walz sought to personalize the case by pointing to the death of Amber Thurman, who waited more than 20 hours in a hospital for a routine medical procedure known as a D&C to remove tissue left after taking abortion pills. She developed sepsis and died.
Instead of avoiding the reference, Vance at one point agreed with Walz that “Amber Thurman should stay alive.”
Vance steered the conversation toward GOP proposals that he said would help women and children economically, thus avoiding the need to terminate pregnancies. But Walz countered that such policies — tax breaks, expanded aid for child care, a more balanced economy — could be pursued while still allowing women to make their own decisions about abortion.
Both candidates have focused on climate change at the local level
In the wake of Hurricane Helen’s devastation, Vance posed a question about climate change and gave an answer about jobs and manufacturing, circumventing Trump’s previous claims that global warming is a “hoax.”
Vance emphasized that the best way to combat climate change is to move more manufacturing industries to the United States, because the country has the cleanest energy economy in the world. It was a clear spin on a global crisis, especially after Trump withdrew from the international Paris climate accords during his administration.
Walz also kept the focus on climate change domestic, touting the Biden administration’s investments in renewable energy as well as record levels of oil and natural gas production. “You can see that we are becoming an energy superpower in the future,” Walz said.
It was a decidedly optimistic look at a bleak and pervasive global problem.
Both Walz and Vance blame the opposition presidential candidate for the immigration impasse
Both candidates agreed that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States is a problem. But each of them blamed the rival presidential candidate.
Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris a “border czar” and suggesting that, as vice president, she would single-handedly roll back the immigration restrictions Trump imposed as president. The result, in Vance’s telling, is an unchecked flow of fentanyl, a strain on state and local resources, and increased housing prices across the country.
Harris was never asked to be “border czar” nor was she specifically given responsibility for border security. Biden tasked her in March 2021 with addressing the “root causes” of migration from Central American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and pushing leaders there and in Mexico to enforce immigration laws. Harris was not empowered to set US immigration policy — only the president can sign executive orders and Harris was not empowered as Biden’s agent in negotiations with Congress over immigration law.
Walz advanced Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly killed the Senate’s bipartisan agreement to tighten border security and strengthen the processing system for migrants and asylum seekers. Walz noted that Republicans backed away from the deal only after Trump said it was not good enough.
Both candidates relied on tried-and-true debate tactics, including not answering tough questions
When asked directly whether Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants would alienate parents of U.S.-born children, Vance never answered the question. Instead, the senator tried to make the best of Trump’s plan to use the military to help with deportations and focus on attacking Harris for a porous border. When asked to respond to Trump calling climate change a “hoax,” Vance also avoided responding.
The discussion began with Walz asking whether he would support a pre-emptive strike by Israel against Iran. Walz praised Harris’ foreign policy leadership but did not answer that question either.
At the end of the debate, Vance did not answer Walz’s direct question about whether Trump had actually lost the 2020 election.
Waltz stumbles and throws punches on an uneven night
Walz had so many verbal blunders one night that he admitted to “speaking incorrectly” too often. In the opening moments of the debate, he conflated Iran and Israel when discussing the Middle East.
At one point, he said he “became friends with school shooters,” and stumbled across an explanation for inaccurate statements about whether he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. (He wasn’t.)
But the governor put Vance noticeably on the defensive on abortion and, near the end of the debate, with a pointed question about whether Trump won the 2020 election.
Vance remains on one side in the January 6 insurrection
The two candidates did their best to be civil to each other until the end, when Vance refused to retract his statements that he would not have certified Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
Vance tried to turn the issue into claims that a “far greater threat to democracy” is Democrats trying to censor people on social media. But Waltz wouldn’t let her go.
“It bothers me,” Walz said, noting that he was applauding some of Vance’s answers. He talked about the ways in which Trump tried to overturn his loss in 2020, and noted that the candidate still insists that he won that contest. Walz then asked Vance if Trump actually lost the election.
Vance responded by asking if Harris was censoring people.
“This is a compelling answer,” Walz said, noting that Trump’s former Vice President, Mike Pence, was not on the debate stage because he stood up to Trump on January 6, 2021, and oversaw Congress’s certification of the former president’s loss.
“America, I think you have a really clear choice in this election about who will honor that democracy and who will honor Donald Trump,” Walz concluded.
