WASHINGTON – Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) downplayed former President Donald Trump’s most extreme plans for a second term during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate on issues such as abortion, immigration and health care.
But one of Vance’s most blatant attempts to rewrite reality came when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, asked him directly whether Trump had lost the 2020 election. he did that very much.
“[Trump] still says he didn’t lose the 2020 election,” Walz said, turning to the Ohio Republican. “Did he lose the 2020 election?”
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied. “Did Kamala Harris Censor Americans from Expressing Their Opinions in the Wake of the 2020 COVID Situation?”
“That’s a damn non-answer,” Walz said.
Vance, that ever called Trump ‘America’s Hitler’ also defended his running mate for overseeing a peaceful transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden – despite inciting a violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which injured more than 140 police officers (and several deaths by suicide) and almost got Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence assassinated.
“He peacefully surrendered power on January 20,” Vance said.
However, the debate, the first and only meeting of the vice presidential candidates — and most likely the final presidential debate of this year’s election cycle — was fairly uneventful. There were no fireworks or petty arguments like during debates with Trump. Vance and Walz remained committed to defending and deferring to the candidates at the top of their tickets. They even said a few nice things to each other, including when Vance was sympathetic to Walz and mentioned that his son had witnessed a shooting at a community center.
But when it came to policy issues, Vance — who entered the night as one of the least popular vice presidential choices in recent American history and delivered a performance that conservatives hope will improve his image — spent most of his time contemplating Trump’s drastic policy plans.
When immigration came up, he repeatedly refused to answer questions about Trump’s plans to use the U.S. military for mass deportations, including whether that would involve separating parents from children born in the United States are.
“We have a historic immigration crisis,” Vance responded before turning to talk about fentanyl.
When asked again a few minutes later whether he and Trump would separate parents from their children even though their children are U.S. citizens, Vance again deflected.
“My point is that we already have mass separations of children thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border,” he said, playing down his running mate’s plan to set up camps along the border. deport millions of people in record time. (Vance’s claim that Harris caused the separation of children also does not stand up to scrutiny.)
The Ohio Republican later disputed that he had ever supported a national ban on abortion. However, he did – after 15 weeks – and once said that anyone opposed to such a ban would make the US “the most barbaric pro-abortion regime in the world.”
When asked why he changed his position on supporting such a ban, Vance scoffed.
“First of all, I have never supported a national ban,” he stated. But then he admitted that he did, except he just called it by another name: “When I ran for Senate in 2022, I talked about setting a minimum national standard.”
In one of his stranger diversions, Vance dodged a basic question about whether he believes climate change is a hoax — something Trump has claimed — calling it “weird science.”
And when health care came up, the Republican senator unleashed some serious gaslighting by claiming Trump was “saving” the Affordable Care Act, when in reality he was ruthlessly trying to destroy it. As president, Trump spent years trying to dismantle the landmark health insurance law, introduced by former President Barack Obama in 2010. Republicans in Congress, at Trump’s direction, have voted dozens of times to repeal the law, but each time failed.
On Tuesday, Vance somehow distorted that reality by making Trump the savior of the law through some of the rules he put in place as president.
“I think you can make a very good argument that it saved Obamacare, which it was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along,” he said.
“When Obamacare collapsed under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program,” Vance continued. “Instead, he worked in a bipartisan manner to ensure Americans had access to affordable care.”
Walz, meanwhile, was not a particularly strong check on some of his opponent’s claims.
Neither Walz nor the moderators directly held Vance accountable for spreading unconfirmed reports of Haitian immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, which has seen a surge in legal immigration since the pandemic. The lies that Vance, Trump and other Republicans there spread about immigrants resulted in schools and municipal buildings being closed or evacuated due to bomb threats.
“I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this, but by standing behind Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point,” said Walz, who at one point called out Vance for seemed to acknowledge in a CNN interview he spread stories that were not confirmed as advancing a specific story about immigration.
The Minnesota governor, who has answered far fewer media questions than Vance during the campaign, struggled to project confidence early in the debate and often looked sad or surprised as Vance gave his answers.
He also awkwardly addressed A misleading claim that he was in Hong Kong for the 1989 pro-democracy protests. Walz said he accompanied American sports teams in Hong Kong during the summer of that year, but the dates may not have exactly corresponded to the weeks of the demonstrations.
“All I said about it was, I got there that summer and I was wrong about it,” Walz said, noting he wasn’t perfect in his response to the claim.
“I’m an idiot sometimes,” he added.
