JD Vance and Tim Walz affable at vice-presidential debate — except about Jan. 6

MANHATTAN (CN) — When Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance and Democratic Governor Tim Walz first took the debate stage in New York City Tuesday night, polling showed that many Americans weren’t overly familiar with either vice presidential hopeful.

Vance, a junior senator from Ohio, took the opportunity to introduce himself.

“I recognize that most Americans don’t know who either one of us are,” Vance said before delving into light detail about his “working class family” upbringing in Middletown, Ohio.

The format seemed immediately comfortable for Vance, who has previously been criticized for his unnatural public encounters and whose net favorability rating is “underwater,” according to experts. But unlike his running mate Donald Trump, Vance appeared poised and relaxed as he walked through even some of the most controversial aspects of the 2024 Republican platform.

Fielding a question about foreign policy, Walz was quick to draw attention away from Vance’s buttoned-up demeanor, reminding viewers what they saw from Trump just two weeks ago on a Philadelphia debate stage.

“A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment,” Walz said. “Those closest to Donald Trump understand how dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous.”

The posed question was about whether or not Israel should fire a preemptive missile strike on Iran in response to rising tensions in the Middle East. Walz said that Israel’s right to defend itself is “absolutely fundamental” before he launched into his attack on Trump. Both men accused each others’ sides of not being tough enough on Iran.

Immigration proved to be one of the more contentious issues during the debate — it’s also among the top issues for voters heading into the 2024 election.

Walz criticized Vance and Trump for their unsubstantiated claims that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, were eating other residents’ pets. He chastised them for “demonizing” the immigrants, a vast majority of whom are in the city legally, and criticized their strategy of “blaming migrants for everything.”

Vance scoffed, but did proceed to pin nearly every issue in the debate — from the housing crisis, to inflation and public safety — in one way or another, on immigration. He falsely claimed numerous times that Democrats were championing “open border” policies, despite current Democratic leadership keeping in place much of the Trump-era immigration plan.

A Trump presidency would back mass deportation, Vance confirmed Tuesday. He claimed that he would start with deporting the “criminal” migrants, of which he hypothesized there were about “a million.”

According to recent polling, Walz is the less-known, but more liked of the two vice presidential candidates. In fact, Walz’s addition to the ticket has been a largely positive one for Democrats, who enjoyed a fundraising boom after the announcement that he would be Kamala Harris’ running mate.

Vance made sure to separate Walz from Harris, appearing cordial to the former while ripping into the latter. At one point when discussing immigration, Vance said that he believed Walz to be genuine in his urge to address the border crisis — but he couldn’t say the same for Harris.

Vance’s favorability has particularly struggled among women. He received criticism for a recently resurfaced 2021 clip of him bemoaning the country being run by a “bunch of childless cat ladies.” His historical stance on abortion has also made him unpopular to female voters; he’s gone on-record saying he wants abortion outlawed nationwide.

“I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” Vance said in 2022 while he was running for his Senate seat.

But Vance strayed away from his past comments on Tuesday. In fact, he claimed he never made them at all.

“I never supported a national ban,” Vance said on the debate stage.

Walz leaned into his strong pro-choice record to counter Vance’s history. Just last year, Walz signed the right to abortion into state law in Minnesota. On Tuesday, Vance accused him and other Democrats of being “pro-abortion.”

“No we’re not,” Walz shot back. “We’re pro-women. We’re pro-freedom-to-make-your-own-choice.”

On gun violence, Walz critiqued Republicans for blaming the issue on everything but the firearms. Vance blamed gun violence on firearms trafficking from the Mexican drug cartel and said that his response to school shootings would be to make doors and windows “stronger” and increase the presence of school resource officers.

“Sometimes it is just the guns,” Walz countered, urging Americans not to “scapegoat” other issues. “It’s just the guns, and there are things you can do about it.”

For all of their differences, Walz and Vance appeared far more cordial with each other on the debate stage than their presidential counterparts. Towards the end of the evening, Walz said he was encouraged at the agreements he shared with Vance, except for one issue: the threat to democracy.

When questioned about the events of Jan. 6, 2020, Vance insisted that his side is “focused on the future.” He claimed that the bigger threat to democracy was not an event like Jan. 6, but rather the “censorship” he claimed is being encouraged by the Democratic Party on issues like Covid-era mask-wearing.

“We should debate those issues peacefully in the public square and that’s all I said and that’s all that Donald Trump has said,” Vance insisted.

Walz looked visually shocked at Vance’s glossing over of the 2020 insurrection attempt. He called the Republican senator’s recollection of events “revisionist history.”

“This one is troubling to me,” Walz said. “I think we need to tell the story.”

Walz reminded Americans of the violence that took place during the infamous riot, in which a horde of Trump supporters attempted to subvert the results of the 2020 election by storming the U.S. Capitol. The event had a chilling ripple effect throughout the country, Walz said.

“I don’t understand how it got to that point, but this thing happened,” Walz said. “I think there’s been a lot of agreement [tonight]. This is one thing we’re miles apart on.”

Fact checking was not done live at Tuesday’s debate, which led to claims like Vance’s assertion that “a million” illegal immigrants are criminals going untested. When the debate ended, Vance and Walz shook hands, and appeared to affably chat off-mic as the moderators signed off.

The debate aired live on CBS News. Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan moderated the roughly two-hour affair. It was likely the final debate of the election cycle before Americans cast their votes in November.

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