In what is likely to be the final debate of the 2024 election, Sen. J.D. Vance and Gov. Tim Walz engaged in a proxy fight on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on the top issues voters say they care about five weeks from the election.
Mr. Vance framed Ms. Harris as a vice president who presided over an open border, soaring gas, food and housing prices, and foreign policy decisions that have led the world to the edge of World War III.
Mr. Walz called Mr. Trump a “fickle” leader eager to embrace Russian and North Korean despots, who failed to secure the border while he was president, and was responsible for draconian abortion bans that have harmed and even killed women.
Mr. Walz attacked Mr. Vance on abortion, an issue on which the Trump-Vance ticket is arguably weakest among voters. He said the abortion limits that followed the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade have led to deadly consequences for women unable to obtain care for miscarriages or abortions.
“Donald Trump put this all into motion. He brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe versus Wade, 52 years of personal autonomy. And then he tells us, oh, we send it to the states and it’s a beautiful thing,” Mr. Walz said.
Mr. Vance, once a vocal opponent of abortion, said he has evolved on his views on the issue and said Mr. Trump’s policy is to make it easier to have children and afford them.
SEE ALSO: Walz dodges questions about China by calling himself ‘a knucklehead’
He said he does not support a national abortion ban, which he once did.
“We’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us. And I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do,” Mr. Vance said.
Mr. Vance took aim at Ms. Harris on the economy and at Mr. Walz as he struggled to answer how the vice president has helped the middle class.
“I think you got a tough job here because you’ve got to play Whack-a-Mole,” Mr. Vance said. “You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver rising take home pay, which, of course he did. You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver lower inflation, which of course he did. And then you simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’ atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries and housing unaffordable for American citizens.”
CBS News moderated the debate from New York City and, following criticism about fact checking during the two presidential debates, gave viewers a link to fact checking online by CBS reporters.
CBS made another big switch from the past two debates: Microphones were never muted, allowing the two candidates to occasionally interrupt and fact-check each other, though Mr. Vance’s microphone was muted when he went after a fact-check on immigration that the moderators aimed at him.
SEE ALSO: Vance blames illegal immigration for rising housing costs
Between themselves, the two men were cordial and there were few personal attacks.
Instead, they argued about policy, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump’s records, and what they propose to do if elected.
Foreign policy questions led the debate, which took place hours after Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles into Israel in retaliation for Israel’s efforts to wipe out the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Mr. Walz said the world is safer under Ms. Harris, who he said projects “a calmness that is able to be able to draw on the coalitions to bring them together, understanding that our allies matter,” while Mr. Trump is unpredictable.
Mr. Vance responded by putting the blame for Tuesday’s missile attack squarely on the Biden-Harris administration, which unfroze $100 billion in Iranian assets that he said the country used to fund the weapons fired at Israel.
“Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line,” Mr. Vance said.
Mr. Vance, 40, and Mr. Walz, 60, were tapped as the Republican and Democratic vice presidential nominees in July and August, respectively.
Mr. Walz, as governor of Minnesota, has implemented a mostly liberal agenda. Mr. Vance, serving in his first term in the U.S. Senate, has built a reputation as a firebrand conservative.
Since the two began running for vice president, approval ratings have been more favorable for Mr. Walz than Mr. Vance, who may try to use the debate to increase his likability among voters.
Mr. Vance frequently spoke directly to the camera and sought to appeal to viewers, giving an introduction to himself before answering the first question’s substance on the Middle East, saying “because I recognize a lot of Americans don’t know who either one of us are.”
The two candidates took the debate stage in the final weeks of an extremely close race for the White House, where Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump are either a few points apart or tied in all the key swing states.
While the impact of vice presidential debates on past election outcomes is largely considered by historians to be insignificant, the razor-thin margin between the Trump and Harris tickets means even the performance of Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance could make a difference, however small the impact.
The two clashed on how to restore security at the southern border, and Mr. Walz repeated the pledge that Ms. Harris would sign a border security bill that would provide more personnel to deal with the influx of migrants and speed up adjudication of asylum cases.
He blamed Mr. Trump for failing to build the border wall or getting Mexico to pay for it, as he promised during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr. Vance blamed the Biden-Harris administration for reversing more than 90 executive actions Mr. Trump put in place to deter illegal immigration. Moderators pressed Mr. Vance on how the Trump-Vance administration would deport illegals, as Mr. Trump has promised.
“The first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants. About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally. I think you start with deportations on those folks, and then I think you make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers. A lot of people will go home if they can’t work for less than minimum wage in our own country,” Mr. Vance said.
Before deporting anyone, he said, Mr. Trump’s previous border policies should be put back in place and the border wall must be completed.
“You’ve got to stop the bleeding,” he said.
There were few gotcha moments but Mr. Walz dodged and then stumbled when moderator Norah O’Donnell asked him about a false claim he made about being in Hong Kong during Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989.
Mr. Walz responded by providing biographical information about himself, including his upbringing in a rural Nebraska, his military service, and his trips to China, that included leading a program to bring high school students there.
He was pressed to explain the lie.
“All I said on this was as I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, just … that’s what I’ve said. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests. And from that I learned a lot of what needed to be learned in governance.”
Mr. Walz also stumbled a couple of times, misidentifying Iran and Israel in one early question and later saying he’d become friends with school shooters, clearly meaning victims of school shootings.
Correction: In a previous version of the story, a quote about abortion was misattributed to Gov. Tim Walz. Sen. J.D. Vance said, “We’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us. And I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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