Takeaways from the vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz

By Eric Bradner, Daniel Strauss, Arit John and Gregory Krieg, CNN

(CNN) — The vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was something that’s become increasingly rare in modern American politics: normal.

In an event that is unlikely to change the trajectory of the presidential race, the two running mates were cordial with each other, training their attacks instead on the tops of the opposing tickets and focusing largely on policy differences. Vance repeatedly hit Vice President Kamala Harris on border security, while Walz lambasted former President Donald Trump on abortion rights.

Vance was the Republican ticket’s younger face and more polite voice. Unlike Trump, he pronounced Harris’ first name correctly. He referred to his opponent by his title. He didn’t often whine about the moderators – though Trump did so during the debate on his Truth Social platform. The Ohio senator also largely passed on opportunities to litigate the details of Walz’s own biography.

Walz – who was noticeably less comfortable onstage than Vance – settled in after a nervous start. He cast Trump as a liar who ignores experts and rejects truths he finds unfavorable.

The debate was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. CBS moderators opened with a question about the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, but did not ask about the United States’ support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

The unusually normal debate ended with another refreshingly normal moment – the kind that hasn’t been seen over the past decade of presidential debates. The candidates shook hands and chatted away from the microphones, and lingered as their wives joined them.

Here are seven takeaways from the first and only scheduled vice presidential debate of the 2024 election:

Vance dodges on January 6

The clearest divide of the night came when Walz put Vance on the spot during a discussion of the January 6, 2021, insurrection and Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked Vance, attempting to force the Ohio senator to acknowledge a reality that Trump himself won’t.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” was how Vance began his response.

“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz shot back.

Vance tried to sidestep the violent attack by Trump supporters on the US Capitol on the day Congress was gathering to officially count Electoral College votes and certify Joe Biden’s victory.

“On January 6, what happened? Joe Biden became president; Donald Trump left the White House,” Vance said.

The Ohio senator, attempting to argue that Trump’s actions in 2020 were not unusual, pointed to Democratic complaints about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 worth of Facebook ads,” he said.

Unlike Trump, Clinton conceded the 2016 election, and did not attempt to interfere with the counting of electoral votes.

“January 6 was not Facebook ads,” Walz said.

Walz, though, drilled into the details of the costs of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.

“He lost this election, and he said he didn’t. One hundred and forty police officers were beaten at the Capitol that day, some with the American flag, and several later died,” he said. “The democracy is bigger than winning an election.”

Vance tried to redirect the discussion of democracy into a debate about social media censorship. But each time he tried, Walz pushed back, arguing that Trump was already laying the groundwork to reject the outcome of the 2024 race if he loses.

“Here we are four years later, in the same boat,” Walz said. “The winner needs to be the winner. This has got to stop. It’s tearing our country apart.”

Midwestern nice … up to a point

In many ways, this vice presidential debate reflected the way typical Americans argue about contentious issues.

There was no name-calling, few canned zingers and a clear directive for both Vance and Walz not to get personal – unless they were aggressively agreeing that the issues were, in fact, issues. The housing crisis, they agreed, was a crisis. Gun violence, both said, needed to be reduced.

Instead of jousting among themselves, Vance and Walz behaved agreeably in the service of trying to depict the respective presidential candidates as uniquely divisive or misguided.

“I agree with a lot of what Sen. Vance said about what’s happening – his running mate, though, does not,” Walz said when the debate turned to abortion. “And that’s the problem.”

Even after Walz rejected Vance’s claim that housing prices were being driven up by undocumented immigrants, the Republican offered his rival some kind words.

“Tim just mentioned a bunch of ideas. Now some of those ideas I actually think are halfway decent, and some of them I disagree with,” Vance said, before regaining his focus and adding, “But the most important thing here is: Kamala Harris is not running as a newcomer to politics. She is the sitting VP.”

Springfield pet-eating claims feature in immigration clash

During a debate over immigration and border security, Walz invoked Vance’s false claims about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio.

“There’s consequences for this,” Walz said, pointing out that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, dispatched state troopers to Springfield to ensure the safety of children after a series of bomb threats.

Vance shot back, “The people I care most about in Springfield are the American citizens.”

In the Ohio city and others like it, Vance said, because of an influx of migrants, “you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable.”

What Vance didn’t say: The 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian migrants in Springfield are in the United States legally.

But Walz didn’t fact-check Vance on that matter. And when he didn’t, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan explained those immigrants’ legal status.

The clash over Springfield came during a lengthy back-and-forth over immigration policy. Vance repeatedly referred to Harris as President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” a label that refers to her 2021 assignment to tackle the root causes of migration from Central American countries. And Walz hammered Trump for his role in thwarting a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year, saying the former president did so in order to keep immigration alive as a campaign issue.

“We could come together and solve this if we didn’t let Donald Trump continue to make it an issue,” Walz said.

Walz says he ‘misspoke’ about his presence at Tiananmen Square

New reporting by Minnesota Public Radio News and APM Reports in the lead up to Tuesday’s debate called into question Walz’s claims about how frequently he traveled to China, which he has previously said was as many as “about 30 times.” Reports contradicted those claims and specifically whether the Minnesota governor was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

CNN also reported additional information on Walz’s claims earlier on Tuesday.

When asked about the reports and the discrepancy, a Harris campaign spokesperson said it was “likely closer to 15” times.

And when asked directly during the debate Walz filibustered, first describing his upbringing and rise in electoral politics before conceding that he can sometimes get caught up in the moment, be a “knucklehead,” and said he “misspoke.”

Vance didn’t seek to directly capitalize on Walz’s concession, but alluded to it in a different question shortly thereafter, saying, “When you misspeak, you ought to be honest with the American people about that.”

A dividing line over abortion

States’ right or human rights? That was the core of the debate between Walz and Vance on abortion rights.

Both candidates, of course, came prepared to discuss the issue. What was striking, though, was the clarity on both ends.

Vance argued that because the US is such a diverse country in so many ways, the rulemaking should be devolved as much as possible – to the states, in his view.

“We have a big country and it’s diverse and California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia,” Vance said, stating a position that Trump has been less than clear about. (Trump on social confirmed during the VP debate what he’d demurred on in his own, saying now that he would veto a national abortion ban.)

“The states will decide what’s right for Texas might not be right for Washington? That’s not how this works,” Walz said. “This is basic human rights. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas (since its restrictions went into effect), outpacing many accounts in the world.”

But Vance, who spent most of the night on the front foot, was more cautious during this exchange. Plainly appealing to swing voters’ concerns, he said – as many anti-abortion advocates have promised – that the Republican Party needs to do a better job of advancing “pro-family” policies, including access to fertility treatments and make housing more affordable.

For his part, Walz was repeatedly asked to respond to a false assertion from Trump that the Minnesota governor supports abortion in the ninth month. In one of his stronger moments of the night, Walz brought up the personal stories of women who faced health crises or died due to state abortion bans.

“In Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade,” Walz said. “We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care.”

The governor incorrectly claimed the Trump campaign and the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 would create a “registry of pregnancies.” The organization’s proposal would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect data on abortions.

Vance was asked if the Trump campaign wants to create a “federal pregnancy monitoring agency,” referencing another past claim by Walz.

“Certainly we won’t,” Vance said.

Conversation on gun violence

Vance and Walz had something approaching a constructive conversation about gun violence in America, agreeing that it is bad, getting worse and needs to be addressed – especially in schools.

That this bears noting underscores just how fruitless past Democratic-led efforts have been in stemming the bloody tide. But the question of how to deal with it, despite the friendly nods between the two onstage, remained unresolved.

Vance at one point even suggested that the current administration’s border policy (or, as he put it, “Kamala Harris’ open border”) was a driving factor – a non sequitur given the length and depth of the crisis. He did, however, also acknowledge it was a more complicated issue.

Walz mostly agreed with that sentiment but fought to keep the conversation from turning into a stalemate. When Vance pointed to mental health and drug use as another cause of gun deaths, Walz sought to refocus the conversation.

“Sometimes it just is the guns,” Walz said. “It’s just the guns.”

The Minnesota governor agreed that lawmakers “should look at all the issues” but stopped there to add a line of caution.

“This idea of stigmatizing mental health – just because you have a mental health issue doesn’t mean you’re violent,” Walz said.

The candidates also shared concerns over how schools were responding to the threat of active shooters. Again, though, Vance treated the issue as something more like a force of nature than a policy question.

“I unfortunately think we have to increase security in our schools,” he said, acknowledging that it was not a pleasant prospect. “We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger.”

Walz agreed, in part, but, in urging tighter restrictions, asked viewers, “Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?”

Scrutinizing Trump’s ‘concepts of a plan’ on health care

Vance was put on the spot about how the “concepts of a plan” that Trump claimed in the last debate he had to replace the Affordable Care Act would work — and whether he could guarantee Americans with pre-existing conditions wouldn’t pay more for health care under Trump’s plan.

“Well of course we’re going to cover Americans with pre-existing conditions,” Vance said.

But Trump has never articulated how he would change the Affordable Care Act’s key provisions, including requiring insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions and allowing children to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26.

And Vance declined to detail any parts of Trump’s plan, saying he is “not going to propose a 900-page bill standing on a debate stage. It would bore everybody to tears.”

“And it wouldn’t actually mean anything, because part of this is the give-and-take of bipartisan negotiation,” he said.

Walz pounced, highlighting Trump’s 2016 pledge to undo former President Barack Obama’s signature law — an effort Walz noted would have been successful had the late Sen. John McCain not cast the deciding vote against a repeal.

“Go back and remember this: He ran on — the first thing he was going to do on day one, was repeal Obamacare,” Walz said. “What that means to you is, you lose your pre-existing conditions. If you’re sitting at home and you’ve got asthma? Too bad. If you’re a woman? Probably not. Broke your foot during football? Might kick you out. Your kids get kicked out when they’re 26.”

This story has been updated.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.