Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
For the first time in this presidential race, Donald Trump’s running mate — Ohio senator J.D. Vance — exercised relative restraint while speaking publicly. During Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate against Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Vance made fewer freakish comments than he typically does. He largely succeeded in looking like the kind of guy who could order a sandwich or even a doughnut without incident, a departure from the image he has projected so far. Indeed, the overall performance has been described as “unusually normal,” but given Vance’s tendency toward wild, nonsense claims, it was never going to be totally normal. When the topic of immigration came up, Vance ran headlong into a fact-check and proceeded to talk over moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan until the network cut his mic.
WOW — Vance gets mad when his lies about his own constituents are fact-checked. His mic ends up getting cut. pic.twitter.com/PxZ4nmphNW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2024
The catalyst for Vance’s fussy interlude was the baseless conspiracy theory that Vance has helped push about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he has accused of stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets. This is not true and never has been, as local law enforcement and government officials have repeatedly emphasized. Nonetheless, high-profile Republicans (up to and including Trump) have clung to the fabrication, creating real problems for Springfield’s approximately 20,000 Haitian immigrants: Parents have pulled their children out of school amid incidents of hate speech, vandalism, and bomb threats. Speaking on immigration, Walz gestured toward the rumor without repeating it, saying Vance had “created stories” that “vilified a large number of people who were here legally.” The reference kicked off an exchange about allegedly illegal immigrants, prompting Brennan to clarify that “Springfield does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status.” Vance didn’t like that.
“Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t gonna fact-check,” he said, bulldozing Brennan and O’Donnell as they attempted to move questioning on to the economy. “Since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.” Vance then summarized the steps involved in one official avenue for migrants to legally enter the country while awaiting asylum hearings. When Walz interjected that “those laws have been on the books since 1990,” Vance again pivoted blame to Harris, before his voice suddenly dropped by several decibels. “Gentlemen, the audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut,” Brennan said. “We have so much we want to get to. Thank you for explaining the legal process.”
Still, Vance is right that CBS moderators weren’t tasked with fact-checking the debate in real time, so we can do a little bit of that now. Also on the subject of immigration, Vance overstated Harris’s role in border policy, clinging to the idea that she has been President Biden’s “border czar.” As CNN explains, Harris has never held a security role relating to the nation’s southern border; her assignment has been diplomatic, to help the administration understand and address the factors that fuel migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. With that in mind, Vance’s charges that Harris let “fentanyl into our communities at record levels” and enabled drug cartels’ use of children as mules are also, obviously, false.
Remarkably, Vance also claimed that Trump “salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously” until he came into office. The opposite is true: Again and again, the Trump administration tried to torpedo the Affordable Care Act, without ever providing an alternative for the approximately 12 million Americans who relied on marketplace health insurance when he took office. After his attempts to repeal the law failed, Trump moved to administrative sabotage that systematically weakened the ACA, a campaign that ultimately left millions of people without insurance. In another surprising turn, Vance also insisted that he “never supported a national abortion ban,” despite saying — during his 2022 congressional run — that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” and that he was “sympathetic” to “some kind of federal response” that prevented people traveling between states for abortions if Roe v. Wade were overturned. Up until Trump tapped Vance for VP, the senator’s website stated that he was “100 percent pro-life” and in favor of “eliminating abortion,” as CNN notes. We could go on, but this man has spoken at length about his views on abortion. He doesn’t believe in it.
Another thing Vance doesn’t buy: Climate change, a real phenomenon scientists agree is largely man-made and largely due to carbon emissions from overreliance on fossil fuels. Vance’s boss has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax,” and during the debate, Vance also appeared to cast doubt on the fact that it’s happening. Saying he had “noticed some of our Democratic friends” talking about “this idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change,” Vance adopted a skeptical tone. “Let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science,” he said. It is true. And 195 of the world’s preeminent climate scientists agree.
Of course, Walz — who delivered a less commanding performance than Vance — stumbled over a few facts himself. The Democrat falsely claimed that if enacted, the right’s Project 2025 would require people to register their pregnancies during a second Trump term. Although Project 2025 outlines a suite of extreme restrictions on abortion and contraception, it doesn’t sketch plans for a federal pregnancy registry. Walz also stumbled over his previous (and evidently inaccurate) assertion that he had been in Hong Kong for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, but succeeded in landing a blow against Vance on the Capitol insurrection.
As the pair discussed the riot that erupted on January 6, 2021, over Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, Vance said Trump had “peacefully handed over power.” He also repeatedly dodged questions about whether he would seek to challenge the outcome of this year’s election as he did in 2020, “even if every governor certifies the results,” like they did in 2020. Vance kept deflecting, blaming any threats to our democracy on Big Tech and Harris’s desire “to censor people who engage in misinformation” online. Reminding Vance that “January 6 was not Facebook ads,” Walz asked Vance directly: “Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?” To which Vance replied, “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?”
Which, as Walz put it, “is a damning non-answer.”
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