JD Vance

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    ‘Slick talker’ v ‘sincere and truthful’: swing-state voters respond to VP debate

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    ‘Walz came across as passionate, sincere and truthful’Walz was rushing and appeared to want to discuss complex issues with depth but didn’t have enough time to delve into some of the points. He had more substance and came across as more sincere than Vance, who was slick, polished and said little of consequence.I would have liked to hear more about how, exactly, Trump and Vance want to build on federal land. For example, if they plan to use land in Montana or Michigan for housing, and I have family in North Carolina and Alabama, how would that be useful to me? I would also like to have heard Vance [being] questioned about how tax breaks for the rich are going to help people on a fixed income like me, or middle-class families like those of my grown children.My favorite moment was when Walz directly addressed the audience in his closing remarks. It came across as passionate, sincere and truthful. I voted for Biden last time and this time I will vote for the Harris-Walz ticket with enthusiasm.– Catherine, 76, part-time consultant in international aid and development, North Carolina‘Vance presented himself to be a slick talker’I voted for Biden-Harris in the last election and will vote for Harris-Walz this year. Vance presented himself to be a slick talker – which I was very apprehensive about because it allowed him to chameleon his way throughout the debate and he did on many instances, making Trumpism seem palatable and humane.Walz was more grounded and refused to display any outrage at what Vance said and this I think was his strong point. Instead, Walz was more polite and sometimes to a fault because he could have pounced on Vance during those instances. Walz talked more about his plans and accomplishments as Minnesota governor to solve the country’s domestic problems, something I wish voters paid attention to – especially healthcare.The final question regarding whether Trump-Vance would accept the results of the upcoming election, I believe, was the moment that had the most tension. It presented the starkest difference between the two. Vance still refuses to accept Trump’s defeat in 2020 and did not express his thoughts if the upcoming election does not go their way.
    – Wilfredo Lukban, 59, retired physician, Doylestown, Pennsylvania‘Vance and Walz were better than the presidential candidates in the last debate’It was a very civil policy-driven debate. I voted for Trump in the last election, would have voted for RFK before he dropped out but now am planning on voting for Trump. Vance and Walz both presented themselves better than the presidential candidates did in the last debate. Vance, especially, impressed with his speaking ability. It was the first time I’d heard him speak for so long. Came away feeling like Vance had a slight edge over Walz. Possibly his youth biased me towards him as well.Wish the discussion on energy had gone on longer. Vance briefly mentioned nuclear power but Walz didn’t engage with it. Vance addressing abortion was what I wish Republicans in government and Trump had been saying all along. Just because we care about the unborn doesn’t mean we’re unsympathetic to women in difficult situations. There’s room for compromise. – IT worker in his mid-20s, Arizona‘How can anyone say that Vance won the debate?’How can anyone say that Vance won the debate when he out and out lied numerous times? A smooth but completely gaslit answer is just appalling. Not to mention the times he just flat out didn’t answer the questions, just came up with gobbledy-gook.And how in the name of all that’s holy can you win a vice-presidential debate if you can’t admit that Trump lost the 2020 election? Why are you even allowed to run for office if you’re so completely out of touch with reality?
    – David, 70, photographer, North Carolina‘Vance showed his gentle side, was polished and sharp’View image in fullscreenVance did a great job of showing the public his gentle side, was polished and sharp on the subject matter. Walz was too folksy, didn’t admit to not being in China when he said he was. Too fumbly and forever taking notes.[I would have liked] specifics on how both parties will grow the economy. Especially considering the almost four years of restricting inflation. I really liked the civility throughout the debate.I almost kicked over the TV when the moderators started factchecking Vance. I thought that wasn’t allowed in this debate. Three against one, just like in the presidential debate. I voted for Donald Trump in the last two elections. Will vote for him in this one, simply because four more years of Democratic policy will do even more harm. – Rod, 70s, Wisconsin‘Neither candidate had specific answers as to how to fix some problems’No doubt Vance was a slick debater, showing his previous debate skills. Neither candidate had much substance or specific answers as to how to fix some of the problems. I wanted to see more about social security and how to keep the country from going bankrupt. Generations after mine will find it difficult to live on social security, let alone have benefits. I don’t want to see social security go bankrupt in my lifetime and possibly see benefits decrease. Everyone knows there is an issue, but neither party has a plan they are willing to discuss.In 2020 I was a staunch Republican worried about what Biden would do and believed the hype from Trump, which is why I voted for him. Little did we know how badly Trump would mangle the Covid epidemic and give tax cuts to the wealthy. He has yet to admit how bad his Covid was. I’m tired of all the lies Trump and Vance spread that cause the discourse in this country. Neither party has all the answers, but we need the Republican party to allow bipartisan solutions. I blame the rightwing facet of the party for much of the division in our country, and I never thought I would say that. I will vote for Harris this year. – Annette, retired, Arizona‘I’d have liked to know how both candidates propose to fund their programs’I was impressed at how well both candidates held their composure. They both appear like they could truly work in a bipartisan atmosphere. I do wish that Walz would have answered the few questions he danced around but all in all I think the debate was on point and informative. Both candidates proposed their plans yet did so with very little detail. With a budget deficit of $35tn I would like to know how they propose to fund these programs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI was sharing this experience with my father-in-law, a retired master carpenter who worked many hard and long hours to live the American dream. We both have a great love for our country and the constitution. In short, watching this debate were two blue-collar, working-class men concerned about the future of our country.I voted for Trump in the past. I felt we needed someone who wasn’t a career politician. Electing the same old political leaders has given us root rot. The effects one day may be devastating. I will vote for Trump again this year. Under his presidency our economy was in recovery and there were unprecedented steps taken towards peace in other hostile countries. – Britton Ramsey, 54, welder, Wisconsin‘I wanted to see Walz be more aggressive towards Vance’The debate overall was incredibly boring. I wanted to see Walz be more aggressive towards Vance. It was obvious from the beginning that the Harris campaign had leashed Walz because the only times he came alive were when he got to speak about progressive initiatives in Minnesota.I think that’s a sign the Harris campaign should move more to the left. I’ve begrudgingly voted for the Democratic candidate for president in every presidential election since I could start voting in 2012. They frequently disappoint me by capitulating to the right too often but there are no other viable options yet.– Devon, 31, web developer, Lansing, Michigan‘Both candidates addressed the big issue of this country: division’I thought Vance killed it. On issues besides 6 January, he effectively dismantled Walz’s arguments – while not being a huge jerk about it. I think that he clarified the Trump campaign’s plans on everything much better than Trump ever can. Walz did the same. He really clarified the ticket’s ideas in a respectful manner. If only these two guys were running for president!I think both candidates addressed the big issue of this country: division. The people who watched that debate saw Vance and Walz shake hands and talk to each other after the debate. They didn’t scream at each other.We all have the same problems – just different ways of solving them. Your Republican neighbor does not want the rights of women and democracy as a principle to burn, and your Democrat cousin does not want communism installed, and doesn’t want to kill all the babies in utero. This debate proved that.There were some bad parts to the debate, like Vance dodging January 6, and Walz saying the Trump campaign was going to go with Project 2025; but for the most part, it was very constructive.I wish there [had been] a longer segment on abortion rights. Both sides need to explain their stance more clearly. As a Catholic, I am pro-life; I’m trending towards Vance’s position and understand Walz’s objections.I’m currently undecided on who to vote for. I am a registered Republican, but I don’t exactly like Trump. We were relatively prosperous [under him], but I think he causes scandal. A clarification of what the Harris campaign plans to do on abortion may make me consider Harris if her position is close to the Trump ticket, or even more pro-life. However, given that she seems to be much more radical than she says she is, I would not vote for her. – William, 19, student, Pennsylvania‘Complaints about against-the-rules factchecking highlight how reliant the Trump campaign is on misinformation’I voted for Joe Biden in the last election and will be voting for Harris this year.I think it was great to have the debate to get to know the candidates better, and I appreciated how respectful they both were to each other. I think it highlights how unmanageable Donald Trump actually is, and it makes me wonder why Republican party leadership has allowed him to continue to be the face of the party.Walz was calm, clear and definitely was able to talk about his experience leading a government. JD Vance came off as all rhetoric, and he looked foolish for having been so against Trump in the past and now [being] his running mate.They actually covered the issues I wanted to hear about: energy, healthcare and foreign policy. I wish they had spent less time on immigration.My favorite moment was when JD Vance got fact-checked about the Haitian immigrant comments and the moderators said they are here legally, and JD Vance claimed that the rules were that they weren’t going to be fact-checked. I think it highlights how reliant the Trump campaign is on misinformation, and when you take that away, what are they left with? – Emma, 26, Wisconsin More

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      Trump falsely claims Helene victims had no federal help despite Biden-Harris sending $20m in aid – live

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      As Joe Biden visits the wreckage of Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump has been baselessly suggesting that the administration has ignored Republican victims and that federal aid is scarce because funds are being given to immigrants.“They’re dying, and they’re getting no help from our federal government because their money has been spent on people that should not be in our country,” Trump told his supporters.The Biden-Harris administration said that the government has provided $20m in “flexible, upfront funding” and deployed 5,000 federal personnel to aid in recovery.Donald Trump repeated lies about the Biden administration’s hurricane response, going so far as to claim that the president and vice-president were “stealing” Fema funds to give to immigrants.“They stole the Fema money like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” he said.Trump and his allies have been repeatedly claiming that Fema is out of money because it allocated funds to help communities receiving an influx of immigrants at the border.Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, did warn that Fema is underfunded for the remainder of hurricane season. That’s in part because the stop-gap government funding bill did not contain enough funding for Fema, which is facing a $2bn deficit.Fema’s Shelter and Services Program allocated $300m during the 2024 fiscal year to help communities “offset the costs of providing food, shelter and other supportive services after receiving an influx of migrants”. That’s a small fraction of the agency’s overall budget. For 2025, it has requested a total of $33.1bn.At his rally, Trump also claimed he “had the best four years with hurricanes”.During his tenure …

      Trump imposed a hiring freeze at the National Weather Service, resulting in more than 200 of vacancies within the agency that predicts and oversees extreme weather warnings. The Washington Post reported in 2017: “Some of those Weather Service vacancies listed in the document, obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Washington Post, were in locations that would be hit by the major hurricanes that barreled through the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.”

      Trump falsely claimed that Hurricane Maria’s death toll was being inflated by his Democratic rivals. In fact, studies suggest that far more people died than the official death toll suggested at the time. A report by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health estimates up to 4,600 people were killed.

      In 2021, a report by the housing department’s office of the inspector general found that Trump administration delayed more than $20bn in hurricane relief aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

      An internal report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency also found that it failed to properly prepare for hurricane season.
      In a review of Trump’s record responding to natural disasters, E&E also found a discrepency in aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which primarily affected Florida; and Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
      On March 9, 2019, Trump signed an order directing FEMA to pay 100 percent of most disaster costs in Florida. As a result, FEMA paid roughly $350 million more than it would have without Trump’s intervention, according to an E&E News analysis.
      But less than two months earlier, Trump threatened to veto a disaster-aid measure in Congress that would have FEMA pay 100 percent of all disaster costs in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria killed more than 3,000 people.
      According to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s book, Trump said: “They love me in the Panhandle … I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?”The voting habits of residents did play into Donald Trump’s decision-making about disaster relief when he was president, reports E&E News.The outlet interviewed Mark Harvey, Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council, who revealed that the former president refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018.From E&E:
      But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.
      ‘We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,’ said Harvey, who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris alongside more than 100 other Republican former national security officials.
      California’s governor Gavin Newsom, reacted to the report on Twitter/X, calling it a “glimpse into the future” if Trump is re-elected.Joe Biden, meanwhile, wrote: “You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you. It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it.”As Joe Biden visits the wreckage of Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump has been baselessly suggesting that the administration has ignored Republican victims and that federal aid is scarce because funds are being given to immigrants.“They’re dying, and they’re getting no help from our federal government because their money has been spent on people that should not be in our country,” Trump told his supporters.The Biden-Harris administration said that the government has provided $20m in “flexible, upfront funding” and deployed 5,000 federal personnel to aid in recovery.“His competition that night? He cannot be president. He cannot be president of the United States,” Donald Trump said of JD Vance’s vice-presidential opponent, Tim Walz.“How good did JD Vance do the other night?” Trump added, praising his running mate as the crowd descended into a cheers of “JD! JD!”“I drafted the best athlete,” Trump continued.Donald Trump pledged to bring back drilling in the Alaska arctic wildlife refuge if he becomes president.Trump said:
      We would have supplied the entire Asian continent. We would have supplied Asia. We would have supplied everybody. But we’ll have it redone very quickly … I actually got it approved in Congress as part of …the biggest tax cuts in history for this country. I got that approved in Congress. We got ANWR [Alaska National Wildlife Refuge] so they didn’t kill it in Congress, and I don’t think they ever could. So we’ll get it back very quickly. It’s going to be back very fast.
      Trump added:
      And it would have been great for Alaska but it would have also … been great for our country but we’ll have it approved very quickly.
      In 2021, Trump’s administration auctioned off portions of ANWR to oil drillers but failed to attract much bidders.Donald Trump has switched his attacks on Joe Biden, calling him “the worst foreign policy president”.The former president then went on to say: “We have to be too big to rig” before going on to repeat the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.The crowd, highly energized, descended into a chant of “Trump! Trump! Trump!”Donald Trump has walked on stage to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.“We’re going to make America great again,” Trump said in his opening remarks before launching into a tirade against Kamala Harris, calling her a slew of names including “Lying Kamala”.Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a rally shortly in Saginaw, Michigan.Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates.Here are some images coming through the news wires of Hurricane Helene and its aftermath across the country:The Biden administration has provided nearly $4m directly to individuals and families in need of critical financial assistance, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said onboard an Air Force One gaggle as the president was en route to Tallahassee, Florida.She went on to add:
      Yesterday, we announced that the president approved 100% federal cost share for emergency response activities in Florida and Georgia, as well as Tallahassee [Tennessee] and North Carolina. This means that the federal government will cover 100% of the costs associated with things like debris removal, first responders, search and rescue, shelters, and mass feeding.
      This latest announcement builds the president’s previously approved requests for major disaster declarations from the governors of Florida and Georgia, which unlocked additional assistance for residents on their road to recovery. More

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      Seth Meyers on JD Vance’s debate performance: ‘Brazen and shameless’

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      Late-night hosts talk JD Vance’s many lies during the vice-presidential debate and a new special counsel report detailing how Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election.Seth MeyersDonald Trump is “a bad liar”, said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night, but he chose as his running mate “someone who is much more polished at it”. JD Vance, Ohio senator, is “brazen and shameless, but he’s admittedly very smooth. He’s like a slick used car dealer, and can be very convincing until you remember the car he’s trying to sell you is an AMC Gremlin with raccoons in the engine.”For instance, during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday evening, Vance claimed that he was not in favor of a national abortion ban, but did support a “minimum national standard”.“That’s a ban,” Meyers corrected. “A ‘minimum national standard’ is just a bullshit way of describing a national abortion ban. It’s like when I go to the coffee shop on my block and they say they sell all-natural, gluten-free breakfast biscuits. That’s a cookie, dude. Except now you’ve guaranteed that my kids won’t stop asking me why they can’t have it.”Vance has said multiple times that he favors a national abortion ban. On a rightwing podcast in 2022, he said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”“That’s what happens when you say yes to every rightwing podcast in the universe,” said Meyers. “JD Vance is on record contradicting every thing he says now. Politicians used to be worried about being caught on a hot mic. But now they go into every McMansion basement they can find like they’re on a hot mic scavenger hunt.”Vance also refused to say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. When asked point blank by his opponent, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, Vance deflected with: “I’m focused on the future.”“If you ask someone a straightforward question and they say ‘I’m focused on the future’ that’s how you know they’re caught in a lie,” said Meyers. “Vance may have delivered a slick performance last night, but it was just that – a performance.”Stephen Colbert“We are all still struggling to digest last night’s vice-presidential debate – which is surprising, because usually I have no trouble eating two slices of white bread,” joked Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night.The Late Show host described the debate as a “frosty cup of ZzzQuil”, as the two politicians performed civility and appeared to frequently agree with each other.The Atlantic described the debate as “a vision of what American politics could be without the distorting gravitational field generated by Donald Trump”.“I would love that,” said Colbert, “but here’s the thing: Donald Trump hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still the main character. This is like a scene from It without Pennywise on camera, and everyone is suddenly like, ‘Welp, guess there’s no more scary clowns in Derry. Ooh, free sewer balloon!’”Colbert took particular aim at Vance’s answer to a question on Obamacare, which Trump tried to destroy numerous times: “I think you could make a really good argument that [Trump] salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.”“That kind of junior high debate team sophistry is exactly the worst kind of behavior that intelligent people use to justify evil,” added Colbert. “You know, when you think about it, it could be argued that Godzilla really spearheaded Tokyo’s urban renewal.”Colbert was also incensed at Vance’s characterization of January 6: “It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.”“Yeah, 14 days after his plot to overthrow the election ended in a violent coup that failed,” said Colbert. “That’s like saying to your ex: ‘Barbara, I think it’s rich that you’re calling me psychotically obsessed with our relationship, when I left your and Brad’s wedding peacefully. You’re the one who won’t stop talking about me setting fire to the DJ.’”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked ahead to election day: “We are 34 days away from Trump saying the election was rigged, just as he did four years ago.” Trump’s efforts to overturn the election four years ago are detailed in a new report from special counsel Jack Smith.The judge overseeing the January 6 case in Washington unsealed a 165-page court filing containing a “mountain” of testimony and evidence against Trump. “All the stuff we know happened, we now have in writing,” said Kimmel.The filing lays out “the increasingly desperate ways Trump tried to steal the election”, Kimmel explained. “You know, sometimes I would wonder, does Trump really believe that this election was stolen from him? And the answer is no, he doesn’t. The plan all along was to declare himself the winner even he if wasn’t, which he did. And then when he realized he was going to lose, he made up these claims of fraud.“He called governors and election officials,” he continued. “He hammered Mike Pence. He deliberately spread lies, even though he privately admitted they were crazy lies. He was directly involved in the fake elector scheme. And he stole all the Oreos from the White House snack cabinet.”The report also detailed just how many times Trump pressured Mike Pence to try to decertify the election, though he had no authority to do so. “There were meetings, phone calls, text messages – Pence was basically Trump’s Baby Reindeer,” Kimmel joked. More

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      JD Vance is the handpicked leader of the antidemocracy movement in America | Robert Reich

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      JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice-president, will almost certainly be the Republican presidential candidate in 2028, regardless of whether Donald Trump wins in November.But who is JD Vance, really? An opportunist chameleon who once viewed Donald Trump as “Hitler” and is now his pit bull?Or does Vance have an agenda over and above mere political ambition?In one of the most important exchanges of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, Vance refused to say that the former president lost the 2020 election, and he downplayed the violent events of January 6. Vance also declined to rule out challenging the outcome of the upcoming election even if votes were certified by every state leader as legitimate.Trump picked Vance as his running mate because Vance publicly stated he’d do what Mike Pence refused to do – overturn democracy and place the US under Maga control.In response to a question ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Vance last February – “Had you been vice-president on January 6th, would you have certified the election results?” – Vance said: “If I had been vice-president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there.”In 2020, Vance alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country”. In 2022, he suggested that Democrats were attempting to “transform the electorate” amid an immigrant “invasion”.Echoing the so-called “great replacement theory”, Vance told voters, “You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again.”In contrast to Trump, who has no ideology except accumulating power and wealth for himself and taking revenge on those who would deny these to him, Vance does have an ideology. He’s the emerging leader of the anti-democracy movement in the US.Vance would never have become a senator from Ohio in 2022 were it not for the billionaire tech financier Peter Thiel, who staked $15m on Vance’s election – a major portion of all the funds that went into Vance’s race.Thiel knew what he was buying. Vance had worked for Thiel’s California venture capital firm before running for the Senate and was part of Thiel’s libertarian community of rich crypto bros, tech executives, back-to-the-landers and disaffected far-right intellectuals.Because Thiel had been a major funder of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, he had significant influence with Trump when urging him to pick Vance for his vice-president.Why has Thiel been such a strong sponsor of Vance? Because Thiel sees in his protege a future leader of a political movement to turn the US away from democracy. “For Peter,” said one of the people familiar with his thinking, “Vance is a generational bet.”Thiel is a self-styled libertarian who once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”Hello? Freedom is incompatible with democracy only if you view democracy as a potential constraint on your wealth and power.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat’s the point. Thiel and Vance – along with Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone, blogger Curtis Yarvin, and others in the anti-democracy movement – believe that the only way true libertarians can win in the US is for a Caesar-like figure to wrest power from the US establishment and install a monarchical regime, run like a startup.Yarvin comes as close as anyone as being the intellectual godfather of the anti-democracy movement. He has written that real political power in the United States is held by a liberal amalgam of universities and the mainstream press, whose commitment to equality and justice is eroding social order.In Yarvin’s view, democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful; they should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose major “shareholders” select an executive with total power, who serves at their pleasure. Yarvin refers to the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime.How to achieve Yarvin’s vision? The first step, as Vance offered in a 2021 podcast, is to replace “every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state … with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say” – as did Andrew Jackson – that “the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”Vance has been anointed by Thiel and the rest of the anti-democracy movement as the post-Trump president, tasked with replacing the US establishment with an authoritarian regime.Make no mistake: the foundation for the US’s first anti-democracy president is being laid right now.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      JD Vance takes victory lap and mocks Tim Walz over debate gaffe

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      JD Vance took a self-proclaimed victory lap after his vice-presidential debate against the Democrat Tim Walz, appearing on Wednesday at a campaign rally in the crucial battleground state of Michigan.Vance told supporters in Auburn Hills that he thought the debate went “pretty well” on Tuesday, as snap polls showed viewers considered it to be a tie between the two vice-presidential candidates.Departing from the generally civil tone of the debate, Vance mocked Walz over his biggest gaffe of the night, in which the Democratic governor said he was friends with school shooters. (Walz seemingly meant to say he was friends with victims of school shootings.)“That was probably only the third or fourth dumbest comment Tim Walz made that night,” Vance said. “I’ve got to be honest, I feel a little bad for Governor Walz. And the reason I feel bad for him is because he has to defend the indefensible, and that is the record of Kamala Harris.”In his prepared remarks, Vance did not touch on his weakest moment in the debate, when he refused to acknowledge Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential race. But when Vance took questions from the media after his speech, a reporter did ask him about the exchange, and he again sidestepped the question.“The media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago. I’m focused on the election of 33 days from now because I want to throw Kamala Harris out of office and get back to commonsense economic policies,” Vance said.Vance then pivoted to discussing the issue of non-citizen voting, which has become a rallying cry among Trump and his supporters. Research has uncovered little evidence to substantiate Republicans’ concerns, as voting in a federal election is already illegal for non-citizens.“We’re going to talk about election integrity because I believe that every vote ought to count, but only the legally cast votes, and that’s why we fight for election integrity,” Vance said in Michigan.Vance focused most of his remarks on attacking Harris over her economic policy proposals, blaming her for the high inflation seen earlier in Joe Biden’s presidency and accusing her of avoiding tough questions about her record. Echoing comments he made during the debate, Vance referenced his background growing up in a low-income family in Ohio to relate to Americans struggling to pay their bills.“She’s afraid of interviews, so she doesn’t talk to people, and she doesn’t realize that her economic policies are making it harder on American families,” Vance said. “If you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to afford a good life for your family, and that’s what Donald Trump and I are going to fight for every single day for the next four years.”Vance then linked Trump’s economic policies to his proposals on immigration, as the former president has called for the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. An analysis released on Wednesday by the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, concluded that Trump’s mass deportation program could cost the federal government as much as $88bn a year on average.“The American media – and especially Kamala Harris and Tim Walz – they don’t want to talk about how this illegal immigration crisis is a theft of the American dream from American citizens,” Vance said. “Here’s the Donald Trump plan, and here’s the Donald Trump message to illegal aliens in this country: in six months, pack your bags because you’re going home.”Despite rehashing some of Trump’s most divisive talking points, Vance made a point to reach out to Democrats who may still be undecided in the election. Trump will probably need some of those voters’ support to carry Michigan, a state that Biden won by 3 points in 2020.“As a person who was raised by a couple of working-class, blue-collar Democrats, I want to say to every Democrat who’s watching at home [and] every Democrat who’s in this room: you are more than welcome in Donald Trump’s Republican party,” Vance said. “We’re the party of common sense. We’ve got a big tent, and you’re welcome in our movement.”And yet, when asked by a reporter how he and Trump would work to unite Americans in the face of political division if they win the election in November, Vance again lashed out against Harris.“Why do we have so much division, and why do we have so much rancor in this country’s political debate? It’s because Kamala Harris and her allies are trying to silence the American people rather than engage with them,” Vance said. “When you try to censor your fellow citizens, when you try to shut them up, you breed division and hatred.”Given Trump’s tendency to deploy personal insults and degrading nicknames against his political opponents, that explanation may not sit well with voters. Trump now has just one month left to convince Americans that he deserves another four years in the White House. More

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      Walz says Vance was ‘gaslighting’ public about Trump’s record in debate

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      The day after the only vice-presidential debate this year, Democrat Tim Walz called his Republican challenger, JD Vance, a “slick talker” who was trying to rewrite history and gaslight people about Donald Trump’s record.During a rally in York, Pennsylvania, Walz made his first public comments on the debate, which polls show was essentially a tie between the two vice-presidential candidates. The Minnesota governor was on a tour through the swing state on Wednesday.Walz said the two men “had a civil but spirited debate” and that he didn’t underestimate Vance’s debate skills.But, he added: “You can’t rewrite history and trying to mislead us about Donald Trump’s record. That’s gaslighting. That’s gaslighting, on the economy, reproductive freedom, housing, gun violence.”He brought up the question he posed to Vance during the debate about whether Trump lost the 2020 election. The Republican vice-presidential nominee dodged, saying he was focused on the future, which Walz called “a damning non-answer”.Every American should be able to answer that question simply, Walz said on Wednesday. He noted, as he did on the debate stage, that Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president in his first term, isn’t on the ticket this year because he stood up for the election results in defiance of Trump.View image in fullscreen“With that damning non-answer, Senator Vance made it clear he will always make a different choice than Mike Pence made,” Walz said on Wednesday. “And as I said then, and I will say now, that should be absolutely disqualifying if you’re asking to be the vice-president.”He also dinged Vance for claiming Trump saved the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, when “he spent his entire presidency trying to eliminate it.”Walz said that he saw the debate as a way to speak directly to the American people as they decide whether to entrust him and Kamala Harris with the White House. Vance, on the other hand, “was speaking to an audience of one”, Walz said, referring to Trump.“Campaigns are supposed to be about giving a vision. And last night, you saw two very different visions for the future this country,” he said. More

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      Underwhelming Walz and a more presentable Vance: the VP debate – podcast

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      Joan E Greve and Leah Wright Rigueur discuss JD Vance and Tim Walz’s clash on the debate stage in New York City on Tuesday night. Although Walz gave a solid performance, it was described as underwhelming, while Vance attempted to reset his image and get on the front foot. Will this debate have moved the needle at all? And as the situation in the Middle East escalates, where do Trump and Harris stand on foreign policy?

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      JD Vance is trying hard not to be weird – and it’s making him seem more menacing still | Emma Brockes

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      The overriding and at times darkly comic impression, watching JD Vance’s exchange with Tim Walz in the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, was that Vance’s top-line imperative was to demonstrate to America just how extravagantly not-weird he is. Nothing to see here! Just a guy with a placid expression, nice manners, a noble desire to find “common sense, bipartisan solutions”, and a lovely little quiff. His affect was so relaxed, so urbane, that at points during the debate he could have been twirling a cane and slinking around a corner like Top Cat.And while the event itself is unlikely to move the election needle, the performance of the two contenders for vice-president was a useful measure of where each campaign thinks its weaknesses lie. Both men were required to perform sincerity, a tough call in such a rehearsed and high-pressure setting, but only Vance was tasked with having to perform normality – which he did, up to a point. Walz, meanwhile, had to struggle to back up his charm with something steelier and more purposeful than relatability. Whereas a candidate for president can be all flamboyance and jazz hands, it is the role of the vice-president to be a sober voice in the room – and for 90 minutes, both men tried to out-grownup each other.The result was, to some extent, a gratifyingly low-drama exchange in which each man was lavishly courteous to the other. When Walz mentioned his son had witnessed a shooting at a community centre, Vance absolutely nailed a tone he customarily struggles with – being recognisably human – and immediately offered his sympathy. Walz, meanwhile, was conciliatory on the subject of how to prevent another school shooting and allowed that his opponent was, at least in principle, broadly against the murder of small children. For Walz, however, the debate was a harder proposition from the get-go, given just how low the expectations were for his rival.And in the first instance Walz did seem to fluff things. He is, he has said, not a natural debater, happier charming voters while buying a doughnut or holding a cat than facing someone on stage. Vance, by contrast, is absolutely the champion debater you remember from college, right down to his dead shark little eyes and his resting smug face. (Walz’s resting face ranged from gimme-a-break incredulity to full blown oh-god-we’re-all-going-to-die fright eyes, and by the end of the debate, the corners of his mouth drooped so heavily he looked like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.)Given the biases we bring to the party at this stage, I tried, for the sake of argument, to allow for the possibility that Vance’s reasonable air connotes a reasonable outlook and to see Walz’s under-energised performance through the eyes of those sympathetic to Trump. Maybe Walz’s folksy charm is a smokescreen for something more mercenary? Maybe Vance isn’t as bad as he has seemed until now? But then he got going on how restricting abortion is a way of “giving women more options” and I thought: “You creepy little putz,” and was back to square one.This is the crux of the matter with politicians such as Vance, whose job it is to put a civilised face on Trumpist extremism. In calm, measured tones he defended creating the conditions in which, denied adequate healthcare in their locality, miscarrying women die while travelling across state lines. Pleasantly, he suggested that school shootings in the US might be countered by making the “doors” and “windows” of schools “stronger”. He argued that the real victims of the US immigration crisis are the border patrol agents “who just want to be empowered to do their job”.And when Walz asked him point blank if he believed Trump lost the 2020 election, he dodged the question entirely. “I’m pretty shocked,” Walz said, and he looked it. There is something arguably weirder about presenting fanatical, life-endangering positions in the urbane tones of someone offering us all a great deal, and yet, at times during the debate, the more superficial oddness of Vance was still visible. I laughed out loud when he described Usha, his wife, as a “beautiful woman who’s an incredible mother to our three beautiful kids and also a very, very brilliant corporate litigator”. The bottom line? Vance really is creepy.He is also, of course, dangerous. There was a single, fleeting moment when I thought Vance dropped his mask, and that was 30 minutes in, when Walz mentioned Springfield, Ohio, in reference to Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants eating pets. Walz, playing the more-gracious-than-thou game, allowed that Senator Vance is genuinely interested in solving the immigration problem, but that, “by standing with Donald Trump” he was only making it worse. It was as close to accusing the man of stark, self-interested, near-psychopathic venality as the tone of the exchange would allow. A flash of anger crossed Vance’s face before the banality of his demeanour returned.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      JD Vance’s debate lines were so polished you could forget they made no sense | Moira Donegan

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      Maybe he thought the pink tie could help. JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, clearly set out to make himself seem less creepy at Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, and a major target of this project was aimed at convincing women voters to like him. Vance, after all, has what pollsters call “high unfavorables”, which is a polite way of saying that people hate his guts.Much of this stems from Vance’s extreme and inflexible views on abortion, his hostility to childless women, and his creepy statements about families and childrearing. He had to convince women that he’s not out to hurt them or monitor their menstrual cycles; he had to try and seem kindly, empathetic, gentle. The resulting 90 minutes felt like watching a remarkably lifelike robot try to imitate normal human emotion. He smiled. He cooed. He spoke of an anonymous woman he knew whom he said was watching, and told her: “Love ya”. And occasionally, when he was fact-checked or received pushback on his falsehoods or distortions, the eyes of his stiff, fixed face flashed with an incandescent rage.A generous characterization of Vance’s performance might be to call it “slick”. Vance delivered practiced answers to questions on healthcare, abortion rights and childcare that were dense with lies and euphemism. Asked about his call for a national abortion ban, Vance insisted that what he wanted was a national “standard” – a standard, that is, to ban it at 15 weeks.He spoke in what was probably supposed to be empathetic terms about a woman he had grown up with who had told him that she felt she had had to have the abortion she got when they were younger, because it allowed her to leave her abusive relationship – without clarifying that the laws that Vance supports would have compelled that woman he purports to care about to carry her abuser’s child to term, and likely become trapped with him.He claimed that Americans didn’t “trust” Republicans on the abortion issue, but did not mention that they don’t trust Republicans because those are the ones taking their rights away.When asked about childcare, Vance spoke in eerily imprecise terms about encouraging people to choose their preferred “family model”, without specifying exactly which “model” he had in mind. He spoke of the “multiple people who could be providing family care options” but did not specify if these “people” had anything in common with each other. In media appearances throughout his career, Vance has been more explicit: he means that women will perform childcare for free – dropping out of paid work in the public sphere to do so, if necessary.Vance was confident and smiling as he delivered these lines; he had the greasy self-assurance of someone who is used to lying to people he thinks are stupider than him. He sounded every bit like the Yale Law lawyer that he is. Even when he was not degrading women’s dignity or condescending to the two female moderators, his answers were often delivered with a polish that seemed intended to conceal the fact that they made no sense.Asked about the housing crisis, for instance, he said that mass deportations – a horrific ethnic-cleansing operation proposed by the Trump campaign that would ruin communities, families and lives – would lower prices by decreasing demand. It was a kind of repeat of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, but this time it wasn’t satire. He also suggested that the government could build housing on federal lands – but neglected to mention that most of those lands are in the vast, rural, empty Mountain West, in regions with lots of tumbleweeds and absolutely no jobs.Perhaps Vance’s quintessential moment of the night came early, when he was attempting to further his smears of the Haitian immigrant community of Springfield, Ohio, whom he had previously targeted with lies that they eat pets. Vance was cut off by the moderators, but talked over them insistently. “Margaret. Margaret. Margaret. Margaret”, he said repeatedly, trying to strong-arm one of the women into letting him talk. As they corrected his misstatements, he whined to the women: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!”Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, reportedly told Kamala Harris when he was being vetted for the job that he does not consider himself a good debater. Going in, expectations for him were low. And indeed Walz had an uneven night, sometimes appearing flustered or nervous. An early answer on foreign policy, in particular, was confused and unconvincing. But Walz visibly gained confidence throughout the debate, issuing more forceful answers, attacking Trump and Vance’s record, and emphasizing himself, often successfully, as a homespun purveyor of goodwill and common sense.He was most convincing on what seems to be, for him, the most morally animating issues: healthcare and abortion. Walz named Amber Thurman, a woman killed by an abortion ban, as someone whose life could have been saved were it not for Trump’s policies; he spoke with passion and clarity of how Trump’s plan to reverse the Affordable Care Act would kick millions off their insurance.But perhaps Walz’s best moment came near the end of the debate, in a conversation about democracy, when he pointedly asked JD Vance to say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance dodged.“That’s a damning non-answer,” Walz said. It could have summarized Vance’s whole performance.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More