Walz vs. Vance: The key moments from the Vice Presidential debate

By Jacob Paul (with Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel)

The VP debate may not have been as heated as Harris V Trump, but the pair clashed on a range of policy areas last night.

Read time: 6 minutes

In brief…

• JD Vance and Tim Walz took part in the first and only Vice Presidential debate of the campaign in New York on Tuesday night.
• The debate was centred largely around their different policy positions rather than personal attacks, with topics ranging from abortion and Israel to gun control and immigration.
• The News Agents will give their take on today’s podcast.

What’s the story?

JD Vance and Tim Walz went head to head on Tuesday night in the first Vice Presidential debate of the campaign.

You might have been expecting it to be filled with the personal insults they have issued in the run up.

But rather than the character assassinations we have grown accustomed to seeing Donald Trump dish out in debates, the pair appeared to focus largely on policy rather than personality.

It was of course, not without the rare digs at one another along the way and plenty of attacks on the presidential nominees.

But who came out on top?

Israel

As the two midwesterners took to the stage in New York, missiles were flying in the Middle East, with Israel warning that Iran “will pay” for firing at it.

The moderators opened the debate by asking this question: Would the candidates support Israel if it chose to launch a strike against Iran?

Walz said: “Israel’s ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental.

“Getting its hostages back – fundamental…What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter.”

He then launched an attack on Donald Trump, saying that those close to the former president understand how “dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous”.

Jon describes this as a “nervous and jerky” start for Walz.

Vance hit back: “As much as Governor Walz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually delivered security in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line.”

Abortion

This is this issue on which the Democrats arguably have the edge over the Republicans, and Walz took full advantage.

Jon notes this was where Walz was “at his best”, while Emily agrees that Walz was “very strong on this”.

He spoke about how Donald Trump “brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v Wade” - the ruling that gave all women the legal right to an abortion.

Walz also criticised the Trump-Vance view - that individual states should decide whether women should have legal access to abortions.

He said: “That’s not how this works. This is basic human rights. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world.”

Vance conceded that the Republican Party needs to do a “much better job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue”.

He added: “I want us in the Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for mums to afford to have babies.”

“Vance, was recognising, in that debate, that they hadn't got the abortion argument right”, Emily says.

2020 election

Perhaps the worst moment for Vance was his deliberate non answer when Walz asked if he accepted Trump’s 2020 election defeat.

Emily refers to it as an “awful primary school answer.”

Instead of responding directly to Walz’s question, he 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?”

Walz pointed out that there was only one right answer - Trump did lose that election.

So he accused Vance of issuing a “damning non-answer”.

Jon says: “There is only one answer, and yet he knows if he gives that answer, he falls out with Donald Trump, he falls foul of the Maga crowd, and so he speaks with a forked tongue.”

Immigration

Vance and Trump have been in the spotlight for making some bizarre unfounded claims about immigrants.

Vance avoided going over the same mistakes, instead blaming Kamala Harris for alleged unchecked immigration in the US, particularly in his town of Springfield, Ohio, which he said is overwhelming local services.

He said: “The people I am most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border.”

Walz argued that Trump shut down the Senate immigration bill which he says would have offered stronger protection at the border.

This preceded the most heated moment of the night - which occurred not between Walz and Vance but between Vance and the CBS moderator. Vance was fact-checked live on air by when it was pointed out Springfield does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status.

Vance then lashed out at the moderator for doing so.

“That's not a great look, is it?”, Jon says of Vance’s reaction.

“Yeah, not great”, Emily agrees.

School shootings

The candidates were asked about school shootings and whether AR-15 style guns used in several of these horrific attacks should be banned.

Vance called school shootings “terrible stuff”, and appeared to blame Harris for the levels of gun violence America is currently experiencing.

Rather than calling for stricter gun controls, which Democrats have done, Vance took quite a different approach.

“I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the door stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger”, Vance said.

Walz took aim at Vance’s stance on this, saying: “I ask all of you out there: your schools hardened to look like a fort – is that, is that what we have to go through?”

Emily is not impressed with Vance’s stance either.

“That is not an answer to gun shootings in American schools”, she says.

Despite being a proud gun owner himself, Walz pointed to the tough rules he introduced which require background checks for anyone wanting to buy a handgun in his state of Minnesota.

What’s The News Agents take?

Jon says that what Vance wanted to do was “put a bit of meat on the idea of Trump's rampant populism conservatism”.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz was this “reassuring every man figure, the classic midwesterner.”

Emily notes that it is important not to forget that the two men are there to act simply as “surrogates”.

“It's not really about them. It's not really about their policies. They're there to speak for their leaders”, she says.

Emily adds: “Walz feels he can speak for Kamala because he knows what Kamala Harris thinks and says because she tells him.

“Vance doesn't seem to have that same relationship with Trump. He's always kept guessing.”

Listen in full on The News Agents USA.

---