JD Vance

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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

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      Friendship bracelets and eyeliner: the internet reacts to the Vance-Walz debate

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      Two of social media’s most talked-about characters faced off during the vice-presidential debate. On one side: the folksy, avuncular, pet-loving Minnesota governor, Tim Walz. On the other: the Ohio senator JD Vance, whose campaign trail gaffes – awkwardly ordering doughnuts, railing against “childless cat ladies” – are top-tier meme fodder. Whatever happened on the debate stage or in the spin rooms, the most widely viewed analysis lives on social media.Right from the start, viewers and commentators noticed the difference between Walz and Vance’s debating styles. During the first question about the unfolding crisis in the Middle East, Walz came off as nervous, fumbling over talking points. Vance tried to avoid the question. Because why talk about Iran when you can remind folks you wrote the New York Times bestseller Hillbilly Elegy?“Weird science”, a reference to the 1985 John Hughes teen sci-fi flick, became one of the night’s earliest catchphrases, after Vance evoked it in reference to the climate crisis. Perhaps not the best choice of words for someone whose opponent has described as “weird” many times on the campaign trail – much to the delight of younger voters.Vance’s appearance reignited one of the most persistent conspiracy theories of this election: does the Ohio senator wear eyeliner? His wife, Usha Vance, has shot down these rumors, telling the Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman: “They’re all natural.” Even still, Twitter/X users delighted in comparing Vance’s debate night look to emo musicians or a teenage Miley Cyrus. Still, one person was impressed with Vance’s appearance: the former state representative and convicted felon George Santos, who tweeted: “Can anyone confirm Vance is on Ozempic? He’s looking thin and good!”And what about Walz? Eagle-eyed viewers spotted a friendship bracelet on the governor’s wrist. Some wondered if it was a nod to Taylor Swift, who has endorsed Kamala Harris and counts the accessory as part of her brand. The Harris campaign sells a similar style for $20. Maybe he’s ordered one.The debate moderators got time in the spotlight, too. When CBS News’s Margaret Brennan tried to move on from a question about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, Vance would not let her, instead trying to talk about a specific emergency visa. As he kept speaking over her, Brennan let out a strained: “Thank you senator for describing the legal process.” On X, many women noted Brennan’s tired delivery – relatable for those who have been spoken over or mansplained to at work.Vance also whined when moderators corrected a comment on immigration. “You said you wouldn’t fact-check me,” he groaned, as if he were angry at journalists for doing their job. Viewers at home noted the absurdity of his statement. But the conservative commentator Megyn Kelly incredulously tweeted: “F you CBS – how DARE YOU.” Meanwhile over on Truth Social, Donald Trump dismissively called the anchors “young ladies” who were “extremely biased” during his play-by-play of the debate.One of Walz biggest flubs of the night came during a question on gun control, when the governor said: “I’ve been friends with school shooters.” A slip of the tongue, but conservative social media accounts latched on to such a bonkers statement, and one of the strangest lines of the night.By the end of the night, Walz regained his friendly delivery for his planned closing statement, thanking Americans who had skipped out on watching Dancing with the Stars to view the debate, and bragging about Harris’s coalition of supporters, “from Bernie Sanders, to Dick Cheney, to Taylor Swift” – quite the lineup.As the night ended, many on social media wondered who the debate was for. Most of the people watching together online know exactly how they’ll be casting their ballots in November. One of the most compelling reasons to tune in to such a circus: to understand the next day’s memes. At least, as the moderators reminded before signing off, this was the final debate of the election season – the last time we have to go through this. More

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      JD Vance and Tim Walz keep it civil in policy-heavy vice-presidential debate – US elections live

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      Good morning and welcome to the blog as we wake up to reaction to Tim Walz and JD Vance’s vice-presidential debate which offered revealing differences on abortion, school shootings, and immigration.It was a debate that was surprisingly civil in the final stretch of an ugly election campaign marred by inflammatory rhetoric and two assassination attempts.The two rivals, who have forcefully attacked each other on the campaign trail, mostly struck a cordial tone, instead saving their fire for the candidates at the top of their tickets, democratic vice-president Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump.The most tense exchange occurred near the end of the debate, when Vance – who has said he would not have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election – avoided a question about whether he would challenge this year’s vote if Trump loses.Walz responded by blaming Trump’s false claims of voter fraud for instigating the 6 January 2021, mob that attacked the US Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election.“He is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said, before turning to Vance. “Did he lose the 2020 election?”Vance again sidestepped the question, instead accusing Harris of pursuing online censorship of opposing viewpoints. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.Meanwhile, CNN’s snap poll has viewers split over who won the debate – but Vance narrowly wins. The poll of 574 registered voters saw 51% say that Vance won the debate, with 49% choosing Walz.Polled before the debate, 54% of voters thought Walz was likelier to win.JD Vance refused to say whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and continued to sidestep questions over whether he would certify a Trump loss this fall during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday.The exchange brought out some of the sharpest attacks from Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor, in what was otherwise a muted and civil back-and-forth with the Ohio senator.Walz asked Vance directly whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance responded: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” Walz then cut in with one of his most aggressive attack lines of the evening: “That is a damning non-answer.”Vance has previously said that he would have asked states to submit alternative slates of electors to Congress to continue to debate allegations of election irregularities in 2020. By the time Congress met during the last election to consider electoral votes, courts, state officials and the US supreme court had all turned away efforts to block legitimate slates of electors from being sent to Congress.Pressed by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell on whether he would again refuse to certify the vote this year, Vance declined to answer.“What President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square,” Vance said. “And that’s all I’ve said and that’s all that Donald Trump has said.” He later said that if Walz won the election with Harris, Walz would have his support.Trump has warned of a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win the election. He has also said supporters won’t have to vote anymore if he wins in November. Both the Trump campaign and Republican allies are seeding the ground to contest a possible election loss in November.Donald Trump’s senior aides saw JD Vance as having a slick debate performance over Tim Walz, according to people close to Trump, that made his campaign appear palatable despite the former president’s increasingly caustic threats such as vowing to prosecute his perceived enemies.The campaign aides also believed that Vance reset the narrative over his image and likely came across in a more favorable light to undecided voters after a brutal few months of being hammered for making disparaging remarks about women as “childless cat ladies”.Vance’s favorability issue was perhaps the principal priority for Trump’s senior aides because they saw it as potentially fixable and if so, beneficial to the Trump campaign with fewer than five weeks until election day in what has become a vanishingly close race against Kamala Harris.Afterwards, Trump predictably claimed Vance won the debate, but a CBS News poll confirmed how vice-presidential​ debates matter increasingly less in close elections compared to ground game efforts to drive turnout.In the post-debate poll, 42% of respondents said Vance won the debate, 41% gave the win to Walz, while 17% said it was tied – suggesting the main takeaway remains that it is unlikely to play any material role in which campaign wins each of the seven battleground states in November.Tim Walz and JD Vance took to the stage on Tuesday night for a vice-presidential debate that served up less drama than September’s presidential debate, but offered revealing differences on abortion, school shootings, and immigration.Three weeks ago Kamala Harris and Donald Trump had endured a contentious hour-and-a-half, with an emotional Trump being goaded into ranting about the number of people who attend his rallies and declaring the vice-president to be a “Marxist”, before reportedly threatening to sue one of the debate moderators. Harris enjoyed a brief polling uptick from that performance.But on Tuesday, Walz and Vance largely avoided attacks on each other, and instead concentrated their fire on each other’s running mates. It was a more policy-driven discussion than that of their running mates’, but one with a few gaffes that might overshadow some of the substance in coming days.In a key exchange over abortion, Walz, the governor of Minnesota, followed Harris’s lead in using personal stories.Trump “brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v Wade”, Walz said. He noted the case of Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion in Texas despite serious health complications during pregnancy – Zurawski is now part of a group of women suing the state of Texas – and a girl in Kentucky who as a child was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant.“If you don’t know [women like this], you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said, which Vance contested.Walz also criticized the Trump-Vance position that states should decide whether women have access to abortion.“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,” he said.Good morning and welcome to the blog as we wake up to reaction to Tim Walz and JD Vance’s vice-presidential debate which offered revealing differences on abortion, school shootings, and immigration.It was a debate that was surprisingly civil in the final stretch of an ugly election campaign marred by inflammatory rhetoric and two assassination attempts.The two rivals, who have forcefully attacked each other on the campaign trail, mostly struck a cordial tone, instead saving their fire for the candidates at the top of their tickets, democratic vice-president Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump.The most tense exchange occurred near the end of the debate, when Vance – who has said he would not have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election – avoided a question about whether he would challenge this year’s vote if Trump loses.Walz responded by blaming Trump’s false claims of voter fraud for instigating the 6 January 2021, mob that attacked the US Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election.“He is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said, before turning to Vance. “Did he lose the 2020 election?”Vance again sidestepped the question, instead accusing Harris of pursuing online censorship of opposing viewpoints. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.Meanwhile, CNN’s snap poll has viewers split over who won the debate – but Vance narrowly wins. The poll of 574 registered voters saw 51% say that Vance won the debate, with 49% choosing Walz.Polled before the debate, 54% of voters thought Walz was likelier to win. More