Vance and Walz focus their attacks on the top of the ticket — not each other: VP debate takeaways

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice Presidential hopefuls Tim Walz and JD Vance squared off Tuesday night in what may be the last debate of the 2024 presidential campaign. It was the first encounter between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator, following last month’s debate between the tops of their tickets, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

No more debates are on the political calendar before Election Day. Tuesday’s confrontation came as the global stakes of the contest rose again as Iran fired missiles at Israel. The vice presidential hopefuls sparred over the violence in the Middle East, climate change and immigration. Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s debate.

A sharper turn on immigration

The debate in New York hosted by CBS News opened with a sober tone that reflected growing domestic and international concerns about safety and security. But it gave way to sharper attacks from both Walz and Vance — and a moment in which the moderators stopped the discussion by cutting the two men’s mics.

Walz accused Vance and Trump of villainizing legal immigrants in Vance’s home state. He pointed to the fact that Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had to send in extra law enforcement to provide security to the city’s schools after Vance tweeted about and Trump amplified false claims about Haitians eating pets.

“This is what happens when you don’t want to solve it, you demonize it,” Walz said, saying not doing so would allow people to “come together.”

Vance said the 15,000 Haitians in the city had caused housing, economic and other issues that the Biden-Harris administration was ignoring.

When the debate moderators pointed out that the Haitians living there had legal status, Vance protested that CBS News had said its moderators would not be fact-checking, leaving the onus to the candidates. As Vance continued and the moderators tried to move on, his microphone was cut and neither man could be heard.

A return to cordiality on the debate stage

The two Midwesterners struck a noticeably friendlier tone than the matchup between Trump and Harris — or, earlier this year, the showdown between Trump and President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race following a disastrous performance.

When they first turned to immigration and the influx of migrants coming over the U.S.-Mexico border, one of the most heated topics of the campaign, the two men credited each other with having good intentions.

“I believe Sen. Vance wants to solve this, but by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point and when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings,” Walz said.

Vance echoed the sentiment, saying, “I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”

Walz catapulted onto Harris’ campaign by branding Trump and Republicans as " just weird,” creating an attack line for Democrats seeking to argue Republicans are disconnected from the American people. But for almost the entire debate, he never used the word.

Vance’s occasionally confrontational interviews and appearances have underscored why Trump picked him for the Republican ticket.

Vance in particular seemed to be attempting to soften his aggressive image, ratcheting down his typically forceful delivery, referring to Walz as “Tim” and a more supple approach, saying at one point, “I know a lot of Americans don’t agree with everything that I’ve ever said on this topic.”

His efforts to explain Trump’s policies and positions with a more gentle touch were also reminiscent of how former Vice President Mike Pence often operated when he and Trump were in the White House.

The two broke over Pence’s refusal to join his efforts to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Both men acknowledged past missteps

The role of a presidential running mate is typically to serve as an attack dog for the person at the top of the ticket, arguing against the opposing presidential candidate and their proxy on stage. Both Vance and Walz have embraced that role.

Vance was asked to address his past biting criticisms of the former president, including once suggesting Trump would be “America’s Hitler.”

“When you get something wrong and you change your mind, you ought to be honest with the American people,” he said Tuesday.

Walz, meanwhile, was pressed on his misleading claim, which was investigated this week by Minnesota Public Radio and other outlets, that he was in Hong Kong during the turbulence surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, part of a broader pattern of inaccuracies that Republicans hope to exploit.

Confronted with his misstatements about his travels to China years ago, Walz defended himself by saying, “I’ve not been perfect.” In fact, he said, “I’m a knucklehead at times.” Eventually, he acknowledged he misspoke about his history.

With Mideast in turmoil, Walz promises ‘steady leadership” and Vance offers ‘peace through strength’

Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday elicited a contrast between the Democratic and Republican tickets on foreign policy: Walz promised “steady leadership” under Harris while Vance pledged a return to “peace through strength” if Trump is returned to the White House.

The differing visions of what American leadership should look like overshadowed the sharp policy differences between the two tickets.

The Iranian threat to the region and U.S. interests around the world opened the debate, with Walz pivoting the topic to criticism of Trump.

“What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter,” Walz said, then referenced the “nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” and responding to global crises by tweet.

Vance, for his part, promised a return to “effective deterrence” under Trump against Iran, brushing back on Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her role in the Biden administration.

“Who has been the vice president for the last three and a half years and the answer is your running mate, not mine,” he said. He pointedly noted that the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, happened “during the administration of Kamala Harris.”

Vance and Walz punch up rather than at each other

Vance and Walz trained the bulk of their attacks not on their on-stage rival, but on the running mates who weren’t in the room.

Both vice presidential nominees sought to convey a genial mien as they lobbed criticism at Harris and Trump, respectively.

It was a reflection of the fact that most voters don’t cast a ballot based on the vice president, and on a vice presidential nominee’s historic role in serving as the attack dog for their running mates.

Walz pointedly attacked Trump for failing to meet his pledge of building a physical barrier across the entire U.S.-Mexico border at the country’s southern neighbor’s expense.

“Less than 2% of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime,” Walz said.

Underscoring the focus on the top of the ticket, during a back-and-forth about immigration, Vance said to his opponent: “I think that you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”

Both candidates put a domestic spin on climate change

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Vance took a question about climate change and gave an answer about jobs and manufacturing, taking a detour around Trump’s past claims that global warming is a “hoax.”

Vance contended that the best way to fight climate change was to move more manufacturing to the United States, because the country has the world’s cleanest energy economy. It was a distinctly domestic spin on a global crisis, especially after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the international Paris climate accords during his administration.

Walz also kept the climate change focus domestic, touting the Biden administration’s renewable energy investments as well as record levels of oil and natural gas production. “You can see us becoming an energy superpower in the future,” Walz said.

It was a decidedly optimistic take on a pervasive and grim global problem.

Walz, Vance each blame opposing presidential candidate for immigration stalemate

The two running mates agreed that the number of migrants in the U.S. illegally is a problem. But each laid the blame on the opposing presidential nominee.

Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris the “border czar” and suggested that she, as vice president, single-handedly rolled back the immigration restrictions Trump had imposed as president. The result, in Vance’s telling, is an unchecked flow of fentanyl, strain on state and local resources and increased housing prices around the country.

Harris was never asked to be the “border czar” and she was never specifically given the responsibility for security on the border. She was tasked by Biden in March 2021 with tackling the “root causes” of migration from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and pushing leaders there and in Mexico to enforce immigration laws. Harris was not empowered to set U.S. immigration policy — only the president can sign executive orders and Harris was not empowered as Biden’s proxy in negotiations with Congress on immigration law.

Walz advanced Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly killed a bipartisan Senate deal to tighten border security and boost the processing system for immigrants and asylum seekers. Republicans backed off the deal, Walz noted, only after Trump said it wasn’t good enough.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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