The most infuriating aspect of Trump supporters’ adoration for Trump is the answer they consistently give when asked why they like him: “Because he tells it like it is.” If pressed for specifics, supporters then jumble together words vaguely reflective of a general sentiment that government, one increasingly indiscernible no matter the party in power, is not responsive to their needs or concerns, and that Trump talks about those needs or concerns—in his own way, of course. I have written before that the stress these people face, whether real or imagined, must be so intense that they don’t have the mental energy to scrutinize the vision of the future they’re actively supporting. The nearly 80-year old Trump has successfully exploited this base into securing their support, co-opted the Republican Party in supposed service to this base, and has done what any predatory entity does with desperate people: Pretend to help all the while bleeding them dry.

I kept an open mind toward Vance—not with any intention of voting for his ticket, mind you, but to hear how he said things. My exposure to him remained minimal, though I was aware of the trending headlines and questionable things he said on the campaign trail as Trump’s running mate. Having read Hillbilly Elegy, I knew his background and published accomplishments. The few media appearances I had seen made me think he would be a competent debater. He seemed smart.

My exposure to Walz was also minimal. Prior to his winning the nomination, I was completely unaware that he existed (I wanted Buttigieg for VP). But I did watch Walz’s acceptance speech, and was impressed. I place value in people who I believe speak well, in whatever form that takes, and it was my impression that Walz could speak well.

The beginning of the debate, specifically Walz’s first half of his response to the first question, had me concerned that Walz was going to be a disaster. It looked like nerves, but he recovered himself so quickly and proceeded to answer for the rest of the night with such aplomb that my friend and I with whom I watched the debate were forced to hatch the following conspiracy theory: Walz deliberately gave an awkward first response to place Vance in a position of false security.

I’m sure there’s nothing to it.

It is the more likely case that both candidates expected to be given time for an opening statement of sorts, but instead dealt with a volley of, not what to do about the Iranian missiles that hit Israel, or how best to respond to recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene—both of which were the prelude to the eventual first question:

“Would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran? You have two minutes.” I’d be rattled, too.

Vance started strong—by which I mean, it was only for his first response that I give him any credit. As the night went on, and as I could not help but pick apart his responses to the questions asked, it became clear to me that anyone who wasn’t listening closely to Vance would be easily lulled into thinking that Vance was doing a great job. While I wasn’t surprised to see YouTube and Threads comments eat up the hologram food Vance was serving for answers, I was surprised to find that the MSNBC commentators in the immediate aftermath of the debate seemed to eat it up, too.

What follows are excerpts from the debate, taken directly from the available transcript, mostly of Vance’s answers. I endeavor to give credit to Vance where possible, but I’m mostly going to take his answers apart.

The tl;dr takeaway is that Vance’s answers were the equivalent of a student of any grade being asked to write a 2,000 word essay, who manages to do so through wantonly unnecessary verbiage and without more than surface knowledge of the topic assigned. The favorable response received from those who think he did a good job because he was, to use the since often used words to describe him—smooth, slick, and practiced orator (unbelievable)—parallels the analogy as rewarding the student’s poor paper with an A, without markups, comments, or explanations.

Like the moderators, I will lay some ground rules so as to keep the formatting consistent throughout this writing. The questions and answers that follow are copied and pasted directly from the available transcript. Nothing has been altered. The question will be denoted by italics and responses will be written in unaltered font, which is to say, just like this. I will name the parties involved simply as “Moderator,” “Vance,” or “Walz”. I will add or contrast Walz’ answers or responses with Vance’s to add better context for why Vance’s answers were awful. I will make my comments in bold font. To the extent I emphasize anything, I’ll make that clear with additional underlining in the way lawyers do (emphasis added). Let’s begin:

Moderator: Let’s turn now to Hurricane Helene. The storm could become one of the deadliest on record. More than 160 people are dead and hundreds more are missing. Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger and more deadly because of the historic rainfall. Senator Vance, according to CBS News polling, seven in ten Americans and more than 60% of Republicans under the age of 45 favor the U.S. taking steps to try and reduce climate change. Senator, what responsibility would the Trump administration have to try and reduce the impact of climate change? I’ll give you two minutes.

Vance: Sure. So first of all, let’s start with the hurricane because it’s an unbelievable, unspeakable human tragedy. I just saw today, actually, a photograph of two grandparents on a roof with a six year old child, and it was the last photograph ever taken of them because the roof collapsed and those innocent people lost their lives. And I’m sure Governor Walz joins me in saying our hearts go out to those innocent people, our prayers go out to them. And we want as robust and aggressive as a federal response as we can get to save as many lives as possible. And then, of course, afterwards, to help the people in those communities rebuild. I mean, these are communities that I love, some of them I know very personally. In Appalachia, all across the Southeast, they need their government to do their job. And I commit that when Donald Trump is president again, the government will put the citizens of this country first when they suffer from a disaster. And Norah, you asked about climate change. I think this is a very important issue. Look, a lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns. I think it’s important for us, first of all, to say Donald Trump and I support clean air, clean water. We want the environment to be cleaner and safer, but one of the things that I’ve noticed some of our democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions. This idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change. Well, let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science. Let’s just say that’s true. Well, if you believe that, what would you, what would you want to do? The answer is that you’d want to reshore as much American manufacturing as possible and you’d want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world. What have Kamala Harris’s policies actually led to? More energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business in some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world. When I say that, I mean the amount of carbon emissions they’re doing per unit of economic output. So if we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people. And unfortunately, Kamala Harris has done exactly the opposite.

Vance’s response to the question amounts to: Let’s say this weird science climate change thing is real (emphasis added), then what we want to do is deal less with the current oil and gas exporters in the Middle East and elsewhere, and instead exploit as much of America’s local oil and gas resources as possible. Sounds like a great answer. But let’s remember that “we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world[]” because we have federal environmental regulations that Republicans look to repeal or nullify at every opportunity (emphasis added). As we’ll see, Vance’s later response on the use of federal lands for exploitation of these resources give us no assurance that we wouldn’t become as supposedly dirty as the exporters we’re already dealing with.

But we catch Vance in another deflection. He says, “This idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change. Well, let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument.” First, we don’t have to pretend that’s true as a rhetorical exercise—the “weird science” behind climate change posits that the dramatic increase in carbon emissions over the last century is to blame for global heating. If Vance logically continued his point, he would say, “Then, what we would want to do is lower the carbon emissions emitted by our industries and economy so as to mitigate the harms caused by climate change.” Instead, his solution is to do nothing about carbon emissions, increase them with domestic production, and increase the world supply for oil and gas now that there’s another player in the energy stage. That’s a non-solution for dealing with the long-term effects of climate change, the realities of which are being felt now. We’ll welcome ever more powerful hurricanes with open arms.

Also, as a petty side note, Vance begins his response with the supposed image “of two grandparents on a roof with a six year old child, and it was the last photograph ever taken of them because the roof collapsed and those innocent people lost their lives.” This may be true, but Vance has admitted he’s willing to create stories and I don’t know if anyone has fact-checked this.

Vance doubles down on his non-answer on what to do about climate change in follow-up responses. See here—

Moderator: Thank you, Senator. I want to give you [Vance] an opportunity to respond there. The Governor mentioned that President Trump has called climate change a hoax. Do you agree?

Vance: Well, look, what the President has said is that if the Democrats, in particular, Kamala Harris and her leadership, if they really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America, and that’s not what they’re doing. So clearly, Kamala Harris herself doesn’t believe her own rhetoric on this. If she did, she would actually agree with Donald Trump’s energy policies. Now, something Governor Walz said, I think is important to touch upon, because when we talk about “clean energy,” I think that’s a slogan that often the Democrats will use here. I’m talking, of course, about the Democratic leadership. And the real issue is that if you’re spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of American taxpayer money on solar panels that are made in China, number one, you’re going to make the economy dirtier. We should be making more of those solar panels here in the United States of America. 

First, again, the question was: Do you agree that climate change is a hoax since Trump called it one? No answer. He then repeats his point about boosting domestic energy production, something Walz said the United States was already doing. But here’s a curious phrase:

“Now, something Governor Walz said, I think is important to touch upon, because when we talk about ‘clean energy,’ I think that’s a slogan that often the Democrats will use here.” Talk about saying the quiet part out loud because while he levels this accusation at the Democrats, we know that it is the oil and gas industry pushing the idea of “clean energy” when climate change advocates know there’s no such thing in relation to the oil and gas industry—one that is presumably also courting Republicans. Vance rightly calls the idea of “clean energy” a slogan, because it is, but it is one Republicans also use to advocate for domestic fossil fuel and energy production, while also denigrating actual clean energy efforts that utilize wind, solar, hydroelectric, etc.

Moderator: Thank you, Norah. We’re going to turn now to immigration. The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border consistently ranks as one of the top issue for American voters. Senator Vance, your campaign is pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation plan in American history and to use the U.S. military to do so. Could you be more specific about exactly how this will work? For example, would you deport parents who have entered the U.S. illegally and separate them from any of their children who were born on U.S. soil? You have two minutes. 

Vance: So first of all, Margaret, before we talk about deportations, we have to stop the bleeding. We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris started and said that she wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies. Ninety-four executive orders suspending deportations, decriminalizing illegal aliens, massively increasing the asylum fraud that exists in our system, that has opened the floodgates. And what it’s meant is that a lot of fentanyl is coming into our country. I had a mother who struggled with opioid addiction and has gotten clean. I don’t want people who are struggling with addiction to be deprived of their second chance because Kamala Harris let in fentanyl into our communities at record levels. So you’ve got to stop the bleeding. You’ve got to re-implement Donald Trump’s border policies, build the wall, re-implement deportations. And that gets me to your point, Margaret, about what do we actually do? So we’ve got 20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country. What do we do with them? I think 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. And by the way, that’ll be really good for our workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day’s work. And the final point, Margaret, is you ask about family separation. Right now in this country, Margaret, we have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost. Some of them have been sex trafficked, some of them hopefully are at homes with their families, some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is, unfortunately, Kamala Harris’s wide open southern border. And I’d ask my fellow Americans to remember when she came into office, she said she was going to do this. Real leadership would be saying, “You know what? I screwed up. We’re going to go back to Donald Trump’s border policies.” I wish that she would do that, it would be good for all of us.

Well, we got an answer about the “million of those people [who] have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally.” They’ll be deported. The prison to American Airlines pipeline will be real.

How about the other, now revised, 19 to 24 million people? And it’s here where we get the first hint of Vance’s comfort with the vision of Trump as despot—I’m talking old school, visible military presence, military parade type of “ruler”. Vance was asked about his plan, or the Trump campaign’s plan, to use the military for mass deportations. No answer. Let’s not talk about that now, we’ll see soon enough the—who would it be, the National Guard?—military drive up and cordon local apartment buildings, offices, schools, universities, anywhere “illegal aliens” might be found, and lead them out in single file and plastic handcuffs. The children born here, being American citizens, could not be so easily rounded up. But we know Vance is very optimistic about family members, presumably the non-deportable ones, stepping up for childcare duties. That assumes one exists who suddenly volunteers to take care of a child. Kamala’s child tax credit might come in handy, then.

Typical of his “blame immigrants for everything” approach, the non-answer about using the military for deportations shifted to blaming immigrants for low wages, as if illegal immigrants collectively bargained for low wages, or had any kind of leverage to use against businesses who hire them. It seems when the illegals are gone, the businesses that hired them will suddenly pay “workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day’s work.” That fair wage? Minimum wage, since the illegals who remain won’t work for less than minimum wage, according to Vance, and we know Republicans believe the minimum wage is just fine at its $7.25 level.

But I’m not here to pick apart the entire answer! To the extent Vance was truthful and accurate about the number of unaccounted children effectively under the US’ custody, that is a serious problem that should be addressed by any administration regardless of party. Vance is not concerned. His answer is to go back to the family separation policies instituted under Trump. When the moderators followed up and asked: “Will you separate parents from their children, even if their kids are U.S. citizens?” Again, no answer.

This portion of the debate had follow up opportunities for the candidates to respond to one another, for no good reason. Walz already prophesied what Vance was going to continue to say. Here was Walz’s response to what Vance had just said:

TW: The drug mule is not true. But I will say about this, about the fentanyl, because this is a crisis of this, the opioid crisis. And the good news on this is the last twelve months saw the largest decrease in opioid deaths in our nation’s history, 30% decrease in Ohio. But there’s still more work to do. But let’s go back to this on immigration. Kamala Harris was the Attorney General of the largest state and a border state in California. She’s the only person in this race who prosecuted transnational gangs for human trafficking and drug interventions. But look, we all want to solve this. Most of us want to solve this. And that is the United States Congress. That’s the Border Patrol Agents, that’s the Chamber of Commerce. That’s most Americans out here. That’s why we had the fairest and the toughest bill on immigration that this nation’s seen. It was crafted by a conservative senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford. I know him. He’s super conservative, but he’s a man of principle, wants to get it done. Democrats and Republicans worked on this piece of legislation. The Border Patrol said, this is what we need in here. These are the experts. And the Chamber of Commerce in the Wall Street Journal said, pass this thing. Kamala Harris helped get there. Fifteen hundred new border agents, detection for drugs, DOJ money to speed up these adjudications on this. Just what America wants. But as soon as it was getting ready to pass and actually tackle this Donald Trump said “No,” told them to vote against it because it gives him a campaign issue. It gives him, what would Donald Trump talk about if we actually did some of these things? And they need to be done by the legislature. You can’t just do this through the executive branch. So, look, we have the options to do this. Donald Trump had four years. He had four years to do this. And he promised you, America, how easy it would be. I’ll build you a big, beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it. Less than 2% of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime. But here we are again, nine years after he came down that escalator, dehumanizing people and telling them what he was going to do. As far as a deportation plan, at one point, Senator Vance said it was so unworkable as to be laughable. So that’s where we’re at. Pass the bill. She’ll sign it.

“But as soon as it was getting ready to pass and actually tackle this Donald Trump said ‘No,” told them to vote against it because it gives him a campaign issue.” (Emphasis added). Bingo-bango. Vance in further responses continued to treat immigration as a campaign issue, paying no attention to the point Walz had made about the sustainable solution being with Congress, or that the bill Trump demanded sunk provided border agents with what they had been asking for. No need to talk about that when we can just resort to easily reversible Executive Orders only held in place by the indomitable will of Donald Trump. If he goes, so do the executive orders, and so does the country. Sounds like their campaign message now.

Here’s one more response from Walz on this topic that teases a theme of his own. Vance wasn’t just facing Harris/Walz—he was also facing Donald Trump. As Trump’s running mate, Vance constantly had to try to defend him, an impossible task given the things Trump has said and the record he left behind.

Moderator: Senator, your time is up. Governor, what about our CBS News polling, which does show that a majority of Americans, more than 50%, support mass deportations?

Walz: Look, we fix this issue with a bill that is necessary. But the issue on this is this is what happens when you don’t want to solve it. You demonize it. And we saw this, and Senator Vance, and it surprises me on this, talking about and saying, “I will create stories to bring attention to this.” That vilified a large number of people who were here legally in the community of Springfield. The Republican Governor said, “It’s not true. Don’t do it.” There’s consequences for this. There’s consequences. We could come together. Senator Lankford did it. We could come together and solve this if we didn’t let Donald Trump continue to make it an issue. And the consequences in Springfield were the Governor had to send state law enforcement to escort kindergarteners to school. I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this. But by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point. And when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings.

It really is that simple.

Moderator: The economy is a top concern for voters. Each of your campaigns has released an economic plan, so let’s talk about the specifics. Governor Walz, Vice President Harris unveiled a plan that includes billions in tax credits for manufacturing, housing and a renewed child tax credit. The Wharton School says your proposals will increase the nation’s deficit by $1.2 trillion. How would you pay for that without ballooning the deficit? Governor, I’ll give you two minutes.

Walz: Yeah. Thank you. And Kamala Harris and I do believe in the middle class because that’s where we come from. We both grew up in that. We understand. So those of you out there listening tonight, you’re hearing a lot of stuff back and forth. And it’s good. It’s healthy. That’s what this is supposed to happen. You should be listening. “How’s this going to impact me?” The bold forward plan that Kamala Harris put out there is, one, is talking about this housing issue. The one thing is there’s 3 million new houses proposed under this plan with down payment assistance on the front end. To get you in a house. A house is much more than just an asset to be traded somewhere. It’s foundational to where you’re at. And then making sure that the things you buy every day, whether they be prescription drugs or other things, that there’s fairness in that. Look, the $35 insulin is a good thing, but it costs $5 to make insulin. They were charging $800 before this law went into effect. As far as the housing goes, I’ve seen it in Minnesota, 12% more houses in Minneapolis, prices went down on rent, 4%. It’s working. And then making sure tax cuts go to the middle class, $6,000 child tax credit. We have one in Minnesota, reduces childhood poverty by a third. We save money in the long run and we do the right thing for families and then getting businesses off the ground. The law, as it stands right now, is $5,000 tax credit for small business, increasing that to $50,000. Now, this is a philosophical difference between us. Donald Trump made a promise, and I’ll give you this. He kept it. He took folks to Mar-a-Lago. He said, “You’re rich as hell. I’m going to give you a tax cut.” He gave the tax cuts that predominantly went to the top caste. What happened there was an $8 trillion increase in the national debt, the largest ever. Now he’s proposing a 20% consumption or sales tax on everything we bring in. Everyone agrees, including businesses. It would be destabilizing it. It would increase inflation and potentially lead to a recession. Look, this is simple for you. Where are we going? Kamala Harris has said to do the things she wants to do. We’ll just ask the wealthiest to pay their fair share. When you do that, our system works best. More people are participating in it, and folks have the things that they need. 

Moderator: Senator, I want to give you a moment to respond on that. But similarly, the Wharton School has done an analysis of the Trump plan and says it would increase the nation’s deficit by 5.8 trillion. My question is the same for you. How do you pay for all that without ballooning the deficit? I’ll give you two minutes.

Vance: Well, first of all, you’re going to hear a lot from Tim Walz this evening, and you just heard it in the answer, a lot of what Kamala Harris proposes to do. And some of it, I’ll be honest with you, it even sounds pretty good. Here’s what you won’t hear, is that Kamala Harris has already done it. Because she’s been the Vice President for three and a half years, she had the opportunity to enact all of these great policies. And what she’s actually done instead is drive the cost of food higher by 25%, drive the cost of housing higher by about 60%, open the American southern border and make middle class life unaffordable for a large number of Americans. If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle class problems, then she ought to do them now, not when asking for a promotion, but in the job the American people gave her three and a half years ago. And the fact that she isn’t, tells you a lot about how much you can trust her actual plans. Now, Donald Trump’s economic plan is not just a plan, but it’s also a record. A lot of those same economists attack Donald Trump’s plans, and they have PhDs, but they don’t have common sense and they don’t have wisdom, because Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered the highest take home pay in a generation in this country, 1.5% inflation, and to boot, peace and security all over the world. So when people say that Donald Trump’s economic plan doesn’t make sense, I say “Look at the record he delivered: rising take home pay for American workers.” Now, Tim admirably admits that they want to undo the Trump tax cuts. But if you look at what was so different about Donald Trump’s tax cuts, even from previous Republican tax cut plans, is that a lot of those resources went to giving more take home pay to middle class and working class Americans. It was passed in 2017, and you saw an American economic boom unlike we’ve seen in a generation in this country. That is a record that I’m proud to run on and we’re going to get back to that common sense wisdom so that you can afford to live the American Dream again. I know a lot of you are struggling. I know a lot of you are worried about paying the bills. It’s going to stop when Donald Trump brings back common sense to this country.

Vance has to first cast Minor Illusion and make the listener believe that President Joe Biden was Vice President Harris all along. Not only that, Vance also has to make you believe that President Biden, who was Vice President Harris all along, also had the control of government that Trump had.

The Vice Presidency, Vance wants you to believe, is not just a placeholder position—it’s actually the presidency, itself, because if it weren’t, Harris would already have enacted her economic plan. For a guy who won’t concede that Trump won, my question would be: What’s stopped Trump from enacting his economic policies over the last four years? I’m really just trying to back Vance into a corner so he’s forced to acknowledge that Trump hasn’t enacted his economic policies over the last four years because Trump is not president and Trump is not president because? Because he lost the 2020 election.

But also, who would have thought the gatekeeper of “common sense wisdom” would be the Trump campaign? Orwell, for one.

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” -George Orwell, 1984

Pay no mind to the same Wharton School that Trump graduated from valuating Harris’ economic plan at $1.2 trillion, but the Trump economic plan at $5.8 trillion. Those elites with their PhDs “don’t have common sense and they don’t have wisdom,” but you, the American people, remember the take home pay Vance is talking about (I don’t, but it’s possible others did). It’s also possible for two things to be true at once: that take home pay was higher, and that the Trump tax cuts ballooned the deficit. The debt clock gives credence to the latter, while the former is bound to be anecdotal.

But wait, wait, I’m getting nit-picky again. The question was “How do you pay for [the Trump plan] without ballooning the deficit?” Walz at least responded with the ever-nebulous, miracle panacea of “asking the wealthiest to pay their fair share.” Vance’s answer seems to be to re-enact the Trump tax cuts. Walz’s response already pointed out that the Trump tax cuts led to “an $8 trillion increase in the national debt, the largest ever.” Again, Vance has no response other than, yep, and we’ll do it again!

But what follows is at the root of why Vance wrote his memoir, and why Trump gained the popularity that he did in the first place: grievances laid at the feet of globalization. Here is the rest of this exchange, so we can all follow along.

Moderator: Governor, do you want to respond to that? What has Kamala Harris done for the middle class?

Walz: Yeah. Yeah, well, Kamala Harris’ day one was Donald Trump’s failure on COVID that led to the collapse of our economy. We were already before COVID, in a manufacturing recession. But 10 million people out of work, largest percentage since the Great Depression, 9 million jobs closed on that. That was day one. Whether it was the Infrastructure Act or other things, we moved. Now, you made a question about experts, said this, I made a note of this. “Economists don’t, can’t be trusted. Science can’t be trusted. National security folks can’t be trusted.” Look, if you’re going to be President, you don’t have all the answers. Donald Trump believes he does. My pro tip of the day is this, if you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump. And the same thing goes with this and I ask you out there, teachers, nurses, truck drivers, whatever, how is it fair that you’re paying your taxes every year and Donald Trump hasn’t paid any Federal Tax 10 to last 15 years, in the last year as President? That’s what’s wrong with the system. There’s a way around it. And he’s bragged about that. We’re just asking for fairness in it, and that’s all you want.

Moderator You have a minute.

Vance: Governor, you say trust the experts, but those same experts for 40 years said that if we shipped our manufacturing base off to China, we’d get cheaper goods. They lied about that. They said if we shipped our industrial base off to other countries, to Mexico and elsewhere, it would make the middle class stronger. They were wrong about that. They were wrong about the idea that if we made America less self-reliant, less productive in our own Nation, that it would somehow make us better off. And they were wrong about it. And for the first time in a generation, Donald Trump had the wisdom and the courage to say to that bipartisan consensus, we’re not doing it anymore. We’re bringing American manufacturing back. We’re unleashing American energy. We’re going to make more of our own stuff. And this isn’t just an economic issue. I mean, I’ve got three beautiful little kids at home: seven, four and two. And I love them very much. And I hope they’re in bed right now. But look, so many of the drugs, the pharmaceuticals that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop. And we’re not going to stop it by listening to experts. We’re going to stop it by listening to common sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.

“[T]hose same experts for 40 years said that if we shipped our manufacturing base off to China, we’d get cheaper goods.” We did get cheaper goods, and quite plentiful, too. But from where does this 40-year figure come from? We are in 2024 of the Year of Our Lord. 40 years ago puts us at 1984, which I’m sure is just a coincidence, Vance’s penchant for conjuring Orwellian nightmares notwithstanding. It awkwardly also puts us at the year that Ronald Reagan was president. That might be because this is the man, Ronald Reagan, that Donald Trump has stepped on, on his ascent and control of the Republican Party.

But I digress.

These are what are called the “populist” grievances. Donald Trump heard, channeled, and championed the grievances of his voting class, particularly of those who didn’t feel so well off, despite America’s obvious prosperity. The ever mysterious “they,” unhelpfully narrowed down to “the experts,” treated your lives like a little experiment to be proven by their theory, argues Vance, much to your detriment.

The thing is, Vance leaves out other developmental markers that should have occurred, such as the job market becoming more high-labor; industries becoming modernized; and skills becoming specialized. The reasons behind that non-occurrence largely depend on what your political ideology is willing to accept, though Walz provided some reasons in his following response (again, how palatable/acceptable those reasons are largely depend on your political ideology). Vance is channeling the words of every frustrated Economics student: “They lied about competitive advantages! What could be more efficient than me being a monopoly, as far as my own interests are concerned?”

The concept of globalization, of capitalistic driven modernization of society, is not a creation that suddenly appeared in 1984. It’s more a creation closer to 1914, its early manifestations reflected in the League of Nations, and later the U.N., along with other global organizations such as the World Trade Organization and World Bank that managed and set rule making for the global economy. It is in that era that America delivered The Greatest Generation, who simply had to step up in exactly the manner that they did for this country to continue to exist in the face of authoritarian threats from abroad. The conditions that gave rise to that Greatest Generation were in the service of capitalistic driven modernization of society. Those are the conditions Vance now decries and that the Trump administration actively ran away from, or sought concessions from. Of course, the Trump/Vance view is woefully simplistic because it amounts to globalization = bad. They refuse to wrestle with what specific aspects of globalization, or global trade, or corporate favoritism should be reevaluated.

What is the connection, other than racism or xenophobia, for Vance’s following statement?

“But look, so many of the drugs, the pharmaceuticals that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop.”

Which nations might those be? It’s quite the accusation to foreign producers of these “hateful” countries that the drugs they manufacture are killing our children. Vance might be talking about fentanyl here, but he made it sound like over the counter cough medicine from China was actively harmful to America’s youth. It’s not like fentanyl is inherently, or instantly, harmful or fatal, either. Vance more sounds like he’s saying all foreign made drugs, and if not all, then those “manufactured by nations that hate us,” whoever that might be, are inherently defective. He’s gone beyond suspecting and instead concluded that these drugs are dangerous because of the country’s foreign policy relation to the United States. That puts him in the xenophobic category.

“And we’re not going to stop it by listening to experts. We’re going to stop it by listening to common sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.” Vance is not beating the Trump-will-be-a-despot allegations. The expert is the enemy. The university class is the enemy. Not only does Trump know best, but he’s the only one who knows best. At least that’s what we need to tell him.

Moderator: Senator, your time is up. Governor Walz, can you address that? I mean, voters say they trust Donald Trump on the economy more. Why?

Walz: If you’re listening tonight, and you want billionaires to get tax cuts, you heard what the numbers were. Look, I’m a union guy on this. I’m not a guy who wanted to ship things overseas, but I understand that, look, we produce soybeans and corn. We need to have fair trading partners. That’s something that we believe in. I think the thing that most concerns me on this is, is Donald Trump was the guy who created the largest trade deficit in American history with China. So the rhetoric is good. Much of what the senator said right there, I’m in agreement with him on this. I watched it happen, too. I watched it in my communities and we talked about that. But we had people undercutting the right to collectively bargain. We had right to work states made it more difficult. We had companies that were willing to ship it over, and we saw people profit. Folks that, folks that are venture capital, in some cases, putting money into companies that were overseas, we’re in agreement that we bring those home. The issue is Donald Trump is talking about it. Kamala Harris has a record. Two hundred fifty thousand more manufacturing jobs just out of the IRA. 

Vance: May I respond to that? 

Moderator: Yes. 

Vance: So, appreciate that. So if you notice, what Governor Walz just did is he said, “First of all, Donald Trump has to listen to the experts.” And then when he acknowledged that the experts screwed up, he said, well, “Donald Trump didn’t do nearly as good of a job as the statistics show that he did.” 

Walz: No, that’s a gross generalization. 

Vance: So what Tim Walz is doing. And I honestly, Tim, I think you got a tough job here because you’ve got to play whack-a-mole. 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’ve simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries, and housing unaffordable for American citizens. I was raised by a woman who would sometimes go into medical debt so that she could put food on the table in our household. I know what it’s like to not be able to afford the things that you need to afford. We can do so much better. To all of you watching, we can get back to an America that’s affordable again. We just got to get back to common sense, economic principles.

Walz: I hope we have a conversation on health care then.

Moderator: Senator. Governor.

Vance: Please.

First, to go back to the previous point of economic developmental markers that should have happened, or happened more prevalently to combat the loss of jobs, Walz provided the following response: “[W]e had people undercutting the right to collectively bargain. We had right to work states made it more difficult. We had companies that were willing to ship it over, and we saw people profit. Folks that, folks that are venture capital, in some cases, putting money into companies that were overseas[.]” Rather than strengthen America’s workforce and improve its resilience, the drivers of capitalism took one of the two roads available to them: either improve your own business’s stability and resilience with strong worker retention and education of your own—and utilize competitive advantages to free up your own resources so as to make even more profit, though with the help of trade partners—or  continue to find the cheapest labor that markets will allow. If cheap labor isn’t as plentiful as you’d hope, work through legislative and judicial arms to make that happen. That’s how we ended up with more workers remaining at the mercy of their employer, and employers more interested in their bottom line, however temporary that profit-charged existence might be.

I remember that prior to hearing Vance’s answer in this last exchange, I thought to myself that Vance had a tough job in this debate, because not only was he facing Harris and Walz, but he was also having to defend Trump’s antics and record. Vance employed a trick often seen used by Trump: accuse your enemies of doing the bad thing you’re already doing. He tried to turn the table on Walz, saying that he is in fact the one who has to do an impossible juggling act by defending Harris.

I have no clarity as to how Trump’s economic policies led to supposedly higher take home pay. All I know is that Vance is proposing as the fix for America’s supposed economic woes another round of, or maintaining, the Trump tax cuts. Whatever Trump’s economic plan actually is, we know that it’ll increase deficit spending by about five times over what Harris is proposing. But that’s what the experts say, Vance would counter. He’s already dismissed their input on any topic—and, he would argue, so should you.

In the next exchange, Walz gave a bumbling answer about being in Tiananmen Square when he wasn’t that eventually found its natural stopping point when he said: “I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, that’s what I’ve said[,]” before then awkwardly adding: “So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, went in, and from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”

Turning to Vance, here is his lead up:

Moderator: Thank you, governor. Senator Vance, in 2016, you called your running mate, Donald Trump, unfit for the nation’s highest office, and you said he could be America’s Hitler. I know you’ve said, you’ve been asked many times, and you’ve said you regret those comments and explained, you then voted for Donald Trump in 2020. But the Washington Post reported new messages last week in which you also disparaged Trump’s economic record while he was President. Writing to someone in 2020, quote, “Trump thoroughly failed to deliver his economic populism.” You’re now his running mate, and you’ve shifted many of your policy stances to align with his. If you become Vice President, why should Americans trust that you will give Donald Trump the advice he needs to hear, and not just the advice he wants to hear? You have two minutes.

Vance: Well, first of all, Margaret, because I’ve always been open and sometimes, of course, I’ve disagreed with the President, but I’ve also been extremely open about the fact that I was wrong about Donald Trump. I was wrong, first of all, because I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record. But most importantly, Donald Trump delivered for the American people rising wages, rising take home pay, an economy that worked for normal Americans. A secure southern border. A lot of things, frankly, that I didn’t think he’d be able to deliver on. And yeah, when you screw up, when you misspeak, when you get something wrong and you change your mind, you ought to be honest with the American people about it. It’s one of the reasons, Margaret, why I’ve done so many interviews is because I think it’s important to actually explain to the American people where I come down on the issues and what changed.  Now you pointed out to messages from 2020. Margaret, I’ve been extremely consistent that I think there were a lot of things that we could have done better in the Trump administration the first round, if Congress was doing its job. I strongly believe, and I’ve been a United States Senator, that Congress is not just a high-class debating society. It’s not just a forum for senators and congressmen to whine about problems. It’s a forum to govern. So there were a lot of things on the border, on tariffs, for example, where I think that we could have done so much more if the Republican Congress and the Democrats in Congress had been a little bit better about how they governed the country. They were so obsessed with impeaching Donald Trump, they couldn’t actually govern. And I want to talk about this tariff issue in particular, Margaret, because, you know, Tim just accused this of being a national sales tax. Look, the one thing, and you’re not probably surprised to hear me praising Joe Biden, but the one thing that Joe Biden did is he continued some of the Trump tariffs that protected American manufacturing jobs. And it’s the one issue, the most pro-worker part of the Biden administration. It’s the one issue where Kamala Harris has run away from Joe Biden’s record. Think about this. If you’re trying to employ slave laborers in China at $3 a day, you’re going to do that and undercut the wages of American workers unless our country stands up for itself and says you’re not accessing our markets unless you’re paying middle class Americans a fair wage.

It’s good to admit when you’re wrong. It’s also good to acknowledge when and why someone has a change of heart with regards to any topic. Vance’s problem, in my opinion, is that his change of heart doesn’t come across as genuine, but rather as opportunistic. In order to have the kind of change of heart one could have about Trump, one would need to ignore so much about Trump that gives Democrats, Independents, and Republicans pause, if not outright revulsion. So much revulsion that lifelong Republicans are now backing Harris over Trump, because of the perceived threat against American democracy that Trump supposedly presents.

It is in this context that Vance decides to blame Congress for what he, at the time, regarded as Trump’s failure. Even though previous exchanges about immigration asked Vance about the ultimate answer lying with Congress, which he rejected in the context of immigration, now suddenly Congress is to blame for Trump’s failures. What’s more damning for his party is that the criticism he levels at Congress at the time of Trump’s presidency applies today, to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Vance said: “They were so obsessed with impeaching Donald Trump, they couldn’t actually govern.” Switch out Trump for Biden, or Mayorkas, or prosecuting Hunter Biden, or “grilling” Fauci, or failing to elect their own Speaker for fifteen rounds, before shortly jettisoning him anyway, and the same sentiment of failed governance applies with Republicans as the common denominator between administrations.

“If you’re trying to employ slave laborers in China at $3 a day, you’re going to do that and undercut the wages of American workers unless our country stands up for itself and says you’re not accessing our markets unless you’re paying middle class Americans a fair wage.” Who is the “you” Vance is referring to, here? You, Chinese company selling goods in the US? If they’re just selling goods made with cheap, Chinese labor, why would they need to pay middle class Americans a fair wage?

Maybe the You is You, Chinese company employing Americans. If that’s the case, presumably the Chinese company would have to abide by federal minimum wage laws, at a minimum, so it would already be paying “a fair wage”.

Neither of those make sense, and neither make sense because Vance is conflating two different things: American companies who “employ slave laborers in China at $3 a day” (I don’t concede that the laborers are slaves or that their wages are $3, but both are beside the point), and China’s access to the American market—again, his statement is only explainable as yet another xenophobic sentiment. Vance’s whole thing against globalization is that it’s “the experts’” fault that the drivers of capitalism worked as efficiently as they did in seeking ever cheaper labor, either in the form of wages and/or protections—businesses who outsourced labor and shut down manufacturing plants are not to blame for their actions in response to economic incentives, no, it’s “the experts’” fault for telling them to do it, I guess.

The disconnect is between what American companies willingly do in pursuit of their own profits, facilitated by weakening labor protections in the American job market, and why China somehow is to blame for what are objectively domestic policies.

Moderator: Thank you. Now to the issue of reproductive rights. Governor Walz, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, you signed a bill into law that made Minnesota one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion. Former President Trump said in the last debate that. You believe abortion, quote, in the 9th month is absolutely fine. Yes or no? Is that what you support? I’ll give you two minutes.

Walz: That’s not what the bill says. But look, this issue is what’s on everyone’s mind. 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. It’s a beautiful thing. Amanda Zaworski would disagree with you on it’s a beautiful thing. A young bride in Texas waiting for their child at 18 weeks. She has a complication, a tear in the membrane. She needs to go in. The medical care at that point needs to be decided by the doctor. And that would have been an abortion. But in Texas, that would have put them in legal jeopardy. She went home, got sepsis, nearly dies, and now she may have difficulty having children. Or in Kentucky, Hadley Duvall, a twelve year old child raped and impregnated by her stepfather. Those are horrific. Now, when got asked about that, Senator Vance said, two wrongs don’t make a right. There is no right in this. So in Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade. We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care. But look, this is not what, if you don’t know Amanda or a Hadley, you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies. It’s going to make it more difficult, if not impossible to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access to infertility treatments. For so many of you out there listening, me included, infertility treatments are why I have a child. That’s nobody else’s business. But those things are being proposed, and the catchall on this is, is, well, the states will decide what’s right for Texas might not be right for Washington. That’s not how this works. This is basic human right. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. This is about health care. In Minnesota, we are ranked first in health care for a reason. We trust women. We trust doctors.

A quick note here to put the basic issue of abortion in clear terms: “[T]he states will decide what’s right for Texas might not be right for Washington. That’s not how this works. This is a basic human right.” It really is that simple. Think back to slavery, the states’ rights argument was the same—slavery makes sense in agrarian societies, went the argument (never mind how the enslaved might feel about it), so even though you industrial elites don’t like it, or don’t have it, we should have it. A war was ultimately fought over this, hopefully it doesn’t happen again here.

Moderator: Senator, do you want to respond to the governor’s claim? Will you create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency?

Vance: No, Norah, certainly we won’t. And I want to talk about this issue because I know a lot of Americans care about it, and I know a lot of Americans don’t agree with everything that I’ve ever said on this topic. And, you know, I grew up in a working class family in a neighborhood where I knew a lot of young women who had unplanned pregnancies and decided to terminate those pregnancies because they feel like they didn’t have any other options. And, you know, one of them is actually very dear to me. And I know she’s watching tonight, and I love you. And she told me something a couple years ago that she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship. And I think that what I take from that, as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable is that my party, 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. I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want it to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options. Now, of course, Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country and it’s diverse. And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia. Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona. And the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy. And I think that’s what makes the most sense in a very big, a very diverse, and let’s be honest, sometimes a very, very messy and divided country.

Whatever love Vance has for whoever he was talking to—sounds like a close friend or family member who shared that story with Vance in order to get him to back off of this issue—he sympathizes, we’re told, but ultimately doesn’t care. That person told Vance “she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship. And I think that what I take from that, as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable is that my party, 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.” You just gave an example of how you completely disregarded the personal story of someone who confided in you about this particular issue. Your takeaway was not “Oh wow, maybe there should be some federal abortion protections.” Instead your takeaway was “Okay, but trust me—an abortion ban might have ruined your life, but it might somehow be okay for someone else who felt exactly the same as you.”

Moderator: Governor, would you like to respond and also answer the question about restrictions?

Walz: Yeah. Well, the question got asked, and Donald Trump made the accusation that wasn’t true about Minnesota. Well, let me tell you about this idea that there’s diverse states. There’s a young woman named Amber Thurmond. She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth. The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography? There’s a very real chance, had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today. That’s why the restoration of Roe v. Wade. When you listen to Vice President Harris talk about this subject, and you hear me talk about it, you hear us talking exactly the same. Donald Trump is trying to figure out how to get the political right of this. I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what’s happening. His running mate, though, does not. And that’s the problem.

Moderator: Governor, your time is up. Senator, let me ask you about that. He mentioned it was, I think, referring to a national ban. In the past, you have supported a Federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. In fact, you said if someone can’t support legislation like that, quote, you are making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world. My question is, why have you changed your position?

Vance: Well, Norah, first of all, I never supported a national ban. I did during, when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial birth abortion ban in this, in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody’s trying to get rid of that, or at least I hope not, though I know that Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance. But, Norah, you know, one of the things that changed is in the state of Ohio, we had a referendum in 2023, and the people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position. And I think that what I learned from that, Norah, is that we’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust. So many young women would love to have families. So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships. And we have got to earn people’s trust back. And that’s why Donald Trump and I are committed to pursuing pro-family policies. Making childcare more accessible, making fertility treatments more accessible, because we’ve got to do a better job at that. And that’s what real leadership is.

What even was this answer, honestly? I’ll ignore the story a close family member or friend told me. I’ll ignore my own constituents who “voted overwhelmingly … against my position.” Why is your takeaway not “Okay, I’ll back off,” rather than “[w]e’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust.”

Why is the next thing you say to, “So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships[,]” that the Republican Party has “got to earn people’s trust back[]”? There’s no denial that an unplanned pregnancy is going to destroy their livelihood, or their education, or their relationship. Like the story from the friend/family member, there’s acknowledgment but no change in course.

I’m time traveling a bit, but Walz did highlight the difficulty Trump has had talking about this issue and the inconsistencies behind his position. Without needing to move to a time after this debate, Trump by this point was already of the opinion that it was right to send this issue back to the states, for them to individually decide what kind of abortion restriction, if any, they would have. But in a recent Fox news town hall, when confronted with the fact that states have enacted very restrictive abortion bans, Trump essentially said, “Yeah, but those policies are going to be overturned when the people actually vote.” If we go back to having Roe protections on a federal level, or across all states now enshrined as state constitutional protections, the names of the women who didn’t have to die as a result of the overturn of Roe should be laid squarely at the feet of the Republican Party. Vance might continue to reflect on how to win people’s trust back on this issue.

The candidates trade one final volley on this topic, and you’ll see it’s another instance of Walz cutting through the bullshit that Vance was going to try anyway, once again.

Moderator: Governor, your response? 

Walz: I’m going to respond on the pro-abortion piece of that. No, we’re not. We’re pro-women. We’re pro-freedom to make your own choice. We know what the implications are to not be that women having miscarriages, women not getting the care, physicians feeling like they may be prosecuted for providing that care. And as far as making sure that we’re educating our children and giving them options. Minnesota’s a state with one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates. We understand that, too. We know that the options need to be available, and we make that true. We also make it, we’re a top three state for the best place to raise children. But these two things to try and say that we’re pro-children but we don’t like this or, or you guys are pro-abortion, that’s not the case at all. We are pro-freedoms for women to make their choices. And we’re going, and Kamala Harris is making the case to make options for children more affordable. A $6,000 child tax credit. But we’re not going to base out on the backs of making someone like Amber Thurmond drive 600 miles to try and get health care.

I have to admit that I like this pro-women, pro-freedom argument that the Democrats have been using this election cycle. The votes to enshrine abortion protections in state constitutions bears that out. It remains to be seen how helpful this formulation will be for the Democrats come the presidential election and results from congressional races, but how confused must it make the MAGA folks to hear Democrats be so anti-big government. MAGA folks find themselves backing the man who says that, actually, the government can and will and should get in the way of women making abortion decisions. That sounds frightening to me. For a crowd that so often employs slippery slope logic, if you let the government make abortion decisions, next they’ll be -insert illogical fearmongering here- next.

I also appreciate Walz reminding folks that the solutions to these issues are not binary. You don’t need to restrict abortion first, and then make it easier to raise a family. Both things can be done—or if you’re a Democrat, one thing will not be done and the other things will.

Moderator: Senator. 

Vance: May I respond to that? First of all, Governor, I agree with you. Amber Thurmond should still be alive. And there are a lot of people who should still be alive, and I certainly wish that she was. And maybe, you’re free to disagree with me on this and explain this to me, but as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion, where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late term abortion. That is, I think, whether it’s not pro-choice or pro-abortion, that is fundamentally barbaric. And that’s why I use that word, Norah, is because some of what we’ve seen, do you want to force catholic hospitals to perform abortions against their will? Because Kamala Harris has supported suing catholic nuns to violate their freedom of conscience? We can be a big and diverse country where we respect people’s freedom of conscience. And make the country more pro-baby and pro-family. But please.

“First of all, Governor, I agree with you. Amber Thurmond should still be alive. And there are a lot of people who should still be alive, and I certainly wish that she was.” And why aren’t they alive, Senator Vance? You’ve heard of three such stories in the span of two minutes. But for the overturn of Roe, none of the women mentioned in Walz’s answer would have died from abortion related complications (at least not from the kind experienced).

Vance then pivots to talking about some Minnesota law and we know he’s a liar so I tuned the rest out. But a quick note on Democrats needing to temper expectations as far as abortion restrictions go. The actual policy goal of the Democrats on this topic is to reinstate the protections of Roe. The Democrats’ rhetoric on this topic, however, has given the impressions that no restrictions should be placed on abortion. It’s more likely the case that there will be some temporal restrictions as before, with exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

Moderator: Yes, Governor, please respond. 

Walz: Look, this is one where there’s always something there. This is a very simple proposition. These are women’s decisions to make about their healthcare decisions and the physicians who know best when they need to do this, trying to distort the way a law is written, to try and make a point. That’s not it at all.

Vance: What was I wrong about? Governor, please tell me. What was I wrong about?

Walz: That is not the way the law is written. Look, I’ve given.

Vance: But how.

Walz: I’ve given this advice on a lot of things that getting involved, getting, that’s been misread. And it was fact checked at the last debate. But the point on this is, is there’s a continuation of these guys to try and tell women or to get involved. I use this line on this. Just mind your own business on this. Things worked best when Roe v. Wade was in place. When we do a restoration of Roe, that works best. That doesn’t preclude us from increasing funding for children. It doesn’t increase us from making sure that once that child’s born, like in Minnesota, they get meals, they get early childhood education, they get healthcare. So the hiding behind we’re going to do all these other things when you’re not proposing them in your budget? Kamala Harris is proposing them. She’s proposing all those things to make life easier for families.

Vance: I asked a specific question, Governor. And you gave me a slogan as a response.

Walz: It’s not the case. It’s not true. That’s not what the law says. So they fact checked it with President Trump.

Again, Vance wants to argue about a law that no one has reference to, and he just wants you to take his word for it that it says whatever horrible thing it says or does. It does turn out to be another running theme of his, to either just believe him or believe Trump because everyone else has proven themselves to be either liars or wrong. But we don’t live in their world quite yet, and so we know the Trump/Vance ticket is not the bastion of truth and fact they’d like to believe that it is.

And now, the second segment.

Moderator: Welcome back to the CBS News vice presidential debate. We want to turn now to America’s gun violence epidemic, the leading cause of death for children and teens in America is by firearms. Senator Vance, you oppose most gun legislation that Democrats claim would curb gun violence. You oppose red flag gun laws and legislation to ban certain semi automatic rifles, including AR-15s. So let me ask you. Earlier this year, for the first time, the parents of a school shooter were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison. Do you think holding parents responsible could curb mass shootings? I’ll give you two minutes. 

Vance: Yeah. Well, Norah, on that particular case, I don’t know the full details, but I certainly trust local law enforcement and local authorities to make those decisions. I think in some cases the answer is going to be yes, and in some cases the answer is going to be no. And the details really matter here. Of course. For example, if a kid steals a gun, that’s going to be different than if a parent hands over a gun knowing that their kid is potentially dangerous. Look, I want to just sort of speak as a father of three beautiful little kids, and our oldest is now in second grade. And like a lot of parents, we send our kids to school with such hope and such joy and such pride at their little faces on the first day of school. And we know, unfortunately, that a lot of kids are going to experience this terrible epidemic of gun violence. And of course, our hearts go out to the families that are affected by this terrible stuff. And we do have to do better. And I think that Governor Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this. The question is just how do we actually do it? Now, here’s something that really bothers me and worries me about this epidemic of violence. The gross majority, close to 90%, and some of the statistics I’ve seen of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms. And while we’re on that topic, we know that thanks to Kamala Harris’s open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel. So that number, the amount of illegal guns in our country is higher today than it was three and a half years ago. But what do we do about the schools? What do we do to protect our kids? And I think the answer is, and I say this not loving the answer because I don’t want my kids to go to school and a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of security. But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger. And of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience. So we’ve got to make our schools safer, and I think we’ve got to have some common sense, bipartisan solutions for how to do that.

Another awful answer, at least he knew part of it was awful this time. So, he’s ready to discuss the intricacies of immigration and abortion legislation on air but “doesn’t know the full details” behind the first shooting that resulted in parents being held criminally liable for the act of their school shooter son. Sure.

But what’s this difference we’re drawing here about instances when it might be okay to hold parents responsible and not? Vance says “if a kid steals a gun, that’s going to be different than if a parent hands over a gun knowing that their kid is potentially dangerous.” We’re talking about school shootings, Senator Vance. If a kid steals a gun and shoots up a school, I at the very least would want to know what the parents knew about their child’s behavior—but my guess would be that they knew, alarms were likely ringing, about what their child might do. So I see no difference between this scenario and the one where the “parent hands over a gun knowing that their kid is potentially dangerous.” The overall point is that all guns should be secured (so as not to be stolen), and, more importantly, that kids shouldn’t be around guns in the first place! Vance has nothing more to offer school shooting victims than condolences.

But he can try to connect it to immigration. And indeed he does. Another trick, like before where he conflated what American businesses were doing in the pursuit of profit, with denying China access to the American market, now he’s conflating the total number of gun crimes and of illegal guns that have come through the border, with the occurrence of school shootings. He says: “Now, here’s something that really bothers me and worries me about this epidemic of violence. The gross majority, close to 90%, and some of the statistics I’ve seen of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms. And while we’re on that topic, we know that thanks to Kamala Harris’s open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel. So that number, the amount of illegal guns in our country is higher today than it was three and a half years ago.”

It looks like he dropped a random gun violence statistic, but because the topic is on school shooting, the implicit connection is “More guns have come through the open border, which has increased the epidemic of gun violence, and it’s because of that open border and the influx of guns that we have the instances of school shootings.” Vance is not going to do anything about the guns, nothing with regards to their access, nothing with regards to their availability. The Mexican Los Zetas gang is responsible for all manner of barbaric crimes, but they cannot be blamed for school shootings perpetrated by boys who accessed their family’s arsenal.

But Bruno, you’re being unfair—Vance does give an answer to what might curb mass shootings: “But what do we do about the schools? What do we do to protect our kids? And I think the answer is, and I say this not loving the answer because I don’t want my kids to go to school and a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of security. But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger. And of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience.” Make the school more like a prison. Increase security, make the doors lock better, make the doors stronger, make the windows stronger, and have more school resource officers. The problem isn’t the guns, or the ease with which a child might access one—no, the issue is that schools aren’t run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Sounds like a reasonable substitute once the Department of Education is abolished.

Vance doesn’t like the idea of the Correctional Facility for K-12, but because he’s completely resigned to the prevalence of gun violence, particularly of school shootings, he accepts this evolution in schooling infrastructure as an inevitability and as a necessity.

Moderator: Governor, you have two minutes. 

Walz: Well, I think all the parents watching tonight, this is your biggest nightmare. Look, I got a, I got a 17 year old, and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don’t leave you.

Vance: Awful.

Walz: As a member of Congress. I sat in my office surrounded by dozens of the Sandy Oak parents, and they were looking at my seven year old picture on the wall. Their seven year old were dead. And they were asking us to do something. And look, I’m a hunter. I own firearms. The Vice President is. We understand that the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out. In Minnesota, we’ve enacted enhanced red flag laws, enhanced background checks, and we can start to get data. But here’s the problem. If we really want to solve this, we’ve got folks that won’t allow research to be even done on gun violence. And this idea that we should just live with it. And I, here’s what I do think and this is a good start to the conversation. I 100% believe that Senator Vance hates it when these kids, it’s abhorrent, and it breaks your heart. I agree with that. But that’s not far enough when we know there are things that worked. I’ve spent time in Finland and seen some Finnish schools. They don’t have this happen even though they have a high gun ownership rate in the country. There are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference. It’s not infringing on your Second Amendment. And the idea to have some of these weapons out there. It just doesn’t make any sense. Kamala Harris, as an Attorney General, worked on this issue. She knows that it’s there. No one’s trying to scaremonger and say, we’re taking your guns. But I ask all of you out there, do you want your school’s hardened to look like a fort? Is that what we have to go… when we know there’s countries around the world that their children aren’t practicing these types of drills? They’re being kids. We owe it to them to get a fix. These are things that shouldn’t be that difficult. You can still keep your firearms, and we can make a difference. We have to. If you’re listening tonight, this breaks your heart. 

Again, props to Walz for saying it as clearly as he said it here.

Moderator: Senator?

Vance: Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that your 17 year old witnessed the shooting. And I’m sorry about that. And I hope,

Walz: I appreciate that.

Vance: Christ, have mercy. It is awful. And I appreciate what Tim said, actually, about Finland. ‘Cause I do think it illustrates some of the, frankly weird differences between our own country’s gun violence problem and Finland is. Okay, first of all, we have way higher rates of mental health abuse or mental health substance abuse. We have way higher rates of depression, way higher rates of anxiety. We, unfortunately, have a mental health crisis in this country that I really do think that we need to get to the root causes of because I don’t think it’s the whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem. But I do think it’s a big piece of it. Another driver of the gun violence epidemic, especially that affecting our kids. It doesn’t earn as many headlines, but is the terrible gun violence problem in a lot of our big cities. And this is why we have to empower law enforcement to arrest the bad guys, put them away, and take gun offenders off the streets. I think there’s a whole host of things that we can do here, but I do think at our schools, we’ve got to talk about more security.

Under a Trump administration, your kid’s school is going to look like a prison. That’s what it comes down to with Vance because we have no specifics on anything else. And we see an entire news cycle reaction to a school shooting in Vance’s response: First, offer your condolences and sympathize with victims; second, blame immigration or city violence, or the media; third, raise the issue of mental illness as the real culprit behind school shootings so nothing gets done on gun legislation. Vance walked us through all of these stages before Walz once again cut through the nonsense.

Moderator: Senator, thank you. Governor, you previously opposed an assault weapons ban, but only later in your political career did you change your position. Why? 

Walz: Yeah. I sat in that office with those Sandy Hook parents. I’ve become friends with school shooters. I’ve seen it. Look, the NRA. I was the NRA guy for a long time. They used to teach gun safety. I’m of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice. That’s not where we live today. And several things I want to mention on this is talking about cities and where it’s at. The number one, where the most firearm deaths happen in Minnesota are rural suicides. And we have an epidemic of children getting guns and shooting themselves. And so we have, and we should look at all of the issues, making sure folks have healthcare and all that. But I want to be very careful. This idea of stigmatizing mental health, just because you have a mental health issue doesn’t mean you’re violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it just is the guns. It’s just the guns. And there are things that you can do about it. But I do think that this is one, and I think this is a healthy conversation. I think there’s a capacity to find solutions on this that work, protect Second Amendment, protect our children. That’s our priority.

“Sometimes it just is the guns. It’s just the guns.” Bullseye.

Moderator: Thank you, Norah. Let’s turn now to the top contributor to inflation, the high cost of housing and rent. There’s a shortage of more than 4 million homes in the United States and this contributes to the high housing crisis. Governor Walz, the Harris campaign promises a $25,000 down payment assistance for first time homebuyers and a $10,000 tax credit. They also promise to build 3 million new homes. Where are you building these new homes and won’t handing out that kind of money just drive up prices higher?

Walz: No, it’s not handing out. First, let me say this, this issue of housing. And I think those of you listening on this. The problem we’ve had is that we’ve got a lot of folks that see housing as another commodity. It can be bought up. It can be shifted. It can be moved around. Those are not folks living in those houses. Those of you listening tonight, that house is a big deal. I bought and owned one house in my life. My mom still lives in the house where I was. And when I think of a house, I’m thinking of Christmas services after midnight Mass, where you go with your family. We need to make it more affordable. And one of the things, as I said, this program that the Vice President is pushing forward and bringing a new way of approaching. This is something we’re doing in Minnesota from that lead. We in the state invested in making sure our housing was the biggest investment that we’d ever made in housing. It starts to make it easier. We cut some of the red tape. Local folks, look, we can’t do at the Federal level, but local folks make it easier to build those homes. And then that down payment assistance. I can tell all of you out there, one of the, certainly for me, using the GI bill was one thing, but a veteran’s home loan, the big thing about a veteran’s home loan is you don’t have to pay the down payment. Those are things that make it there. Now, look, you’re going to pay it back and you’re going to pay your mortgage. Those are things that we know in the long run, the appreciated value, the generational wealth that’s created from it. And I will give Minneapolis an example. Minneapolis is the one city where we’ve seen the lowest inflation rates. We’ve seen a 12% increase in stock because we put some of these things in. And we’re implementing a state program to make sure we give some of that down payment assistance. We get it back from people, because here’s what we know. People with stable housing end up with stable jobs. People with stable housing have their kids able to get to school. All of those things in the long run, end up saving our money. And that’s the thing that I think we should be able to find some common ground in. But we can’t blame immigrants for the only reason that’s not the case that’s happening in many cities. The fact of the matter is, is that we don’t have enough naturally affordable housing, but we can make sure that the government’s there to help kickstart it, create that, create that base.

Moderator: Governor, your time is up. Senator Vance, as far as your campaign’s position, the promise is to seize federal lands to build homes, remove regulation, provide tax breaks, and cut back on immigration, which you say pushes up prices. Where are you going to build all the new homes you’re promising? And what part of any of this plan will provide immediate relief? You have two minutes.

Vance: Well, first of all, Tim just said something that I agree with. We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices. But we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country…

Walz: Pass the bill.

A quick interruption of my own here, and a minor spoiler. Vance just said “We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices.” Two sentences later, he does just that. Read on.

Vance: …which does drive up costs, Tim. Twenty-five million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It’s why we have massive increases in home prices that have happened right alongside massive increases in illegal alien, alien populations under Kamala Harris’s leadership. Now, Tim just mentioned a bunch of ideas. Now, some of those ideas I actually think are halfway decent, and some of them I disagree with. But the most important thing here is Kamala Harris is not running as a newcomer to politics. She is the sitting Vice President. If she wants to enact all of these policies to make housing more affordable, I invite her to use the office that the American people already gave her, not sit around and campaign and do nothing while Americans find the American Dream of home ownership completely unaffordable. Now, you asked Margaret what would immediately change the equation for American citizens? If you lower energy prices. As Donald Trump says, “Drill, baby, drill.” One of the biggest drivers of housing costs, aside from illegal immigration, is think about it: if a truck driver is paying 40% more for diesel, then the lumber he’s delivering to the job site to build the house is also going to become a lot more expensive. If we open up American energy, you will get immediate pricing release, relief, for American citizens, not, by the way, just in housing, but in a whole host of other economic goods too.

We don’t want to blame immigrants, Vance says, then bases almost his entire response around blaming immigrants, with a brief shoutout to energy prices, which to his credit was at least an answer to the latter question asked: “Where are you going to build all the new homes you’re promising? And what part of any of this plan will provide immediate relief?”

I want to highlight Walz’s response here, as a contrast, particularly his point that there are economic players who treat housing as a commodity. Speaking from personal experience, which I realize is anecdotal and so is more useful as storytelling rather than as a presentation of singular, objective fact, I have rented four houses and may continue on the renting track. The house I currently rent belongs to a lady that owns at least three houses: the one I live in, the house directly next door, and the house she and her husband live in. We are not competing with immigrants.

Scarcity on this part of the world is driven by the few houseowners who generate profit by buying up houses solely to use as rental properties. Moreover, there has been plenty of reporting of venture capital firms buying up housing to use for the same purpose as my landlord: rental properties. We know from services like Airbnb and Vrbo that there are plenty of housing options out there going unused, that could otherwise be put to a better economic purpose.

I understand property rights are paramount to just about anything else in a capitalistic model, but we do place limits on what one can do with property. It seems sensible, to me at least, to place limits on how many houses can be bought up by a single person or entity for the sole purpose of using them as rental properties. The legislative solution will no doubt be a tough one to try to plug the loopholes that will inevitably arise, but this partly seems like a question of decency.  

One more thing, if Trump/Vance win, and some plan of theirs doesn’t get enacted or accomplished, we should remind Vance of his answer here: “If she wants to enact all of these policies to make housing more affordable, I invite her to use the office that the American people already gave her, not sit around and campaign and do nothing while Americans find the American Dream of home ownership completely unaffordable.” Her office is constitutionally incapable of enacting policies, but Vance seems to think otherwise. I’d give him credit if he meant she has a mini bully pulpit, but even that might be a stretch given that she’s not going to do things independent of the Biden administration. I know the race is against Kamala, but the better framing here would have been to paint the Democrats in general as uninterested in solving this issue, and we know they’re uninterested because the Biden/Harris administration has done nothing—I don’t know that this is true, but it’s this kind of simple messaging that has a place in these debates (and then someone smarter than me fact checks it, but only after some damage has already been done).

Moderator: Senator Vance, you still have 23 seconds there. Do you want to answer?

Walz: Can I have it?

Moderator: Where, Governor, we will get to you in a moment. But, Senator, where are you going to seize the federal lands. Can you clarify?

Vance: Well, what Donald Trump has said is we have a lot of federal lands that aren’t being used for anything. They’re not being used for national parks. They’re not being used. And they could be places where we build a lot of housing. And I do think that we should be opening up building in this country. We have a lot of land that could be used. We have a lot of Americans that need homes. We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should be building more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here.

The question was “[W]here are you going to seize the federal lands.” No answer. What his answer does reflect, however, is the economic viewpoint that property or land that isn’t generating revenue of some sort is being wasted—it couldn’t possibly be useful otherwise. What this economic viewpoint then suggests is that considerations for health, water, or air quality will always take a backseat to whatever real estate interests have the ear of the Trump administration.

Moderator: Senator, your time is up. Governor, I do want to let you respond to the allegation that the Vice President is letting in migrants.

Walz: Well, of course, that’s not true. And again, you have the facts. I guess we agreed not to fact check. I’ll check it. That, look, crossings are down compared to when Donald Trump left office. But it’s, again, blaming and not trying to find the solution. I was going to ask, though, on this question, are we going to drill and build houses in the same federal land. And I think when people hear federal lands, these are really important pieces of land. Now, Minnesota doesn’t have a lot of federal lands. I know in the western part of the countries we do. There’s not a lot of federal lands in and around Minneapolis, for example. So the issue is, I don’t understand the federal lands issue unless we see this. And I worry about this as someone who cares deeply about our national parks and our federal lands. Look, Minnesota, we protect these things. We’ve got about 20% of the world’s fresh water. These lands protect. They’re there for a reason. They belong to all of us. But again, this is when you view housing and you view these things as commodities, like there’s a chance to make money here. Let’s take this federal land and let’s sell it to people for that. I think there’s better ways to do this. We’ve seen it in Minnesota. We’re able to refurbish some of these houses. We’re able to make some investments, that gets people in. And I’m still on the fact, on this, economist, Senator Vance, you said you don’t like the economist, which economists are saying that it is immigrants that’s adding to the cost.

Moderator: Governor, governor, your time is, your time is up.

Walz: Sorry.

Moderator: But, Senator, on that point, I’d like for you to clarify. There are many contributing factors to high housing costs. What evidence do you have that migrants are part of this problem?

Vance: Well, there’s a Federal Reserve study that we’re happy to share after the debate. We’ll put it up on social media. Actually, that really drills down on the connection between increased levels of migration, especially illegal immigration, and higher housing prices. Now, of course, Margaret, that’s not the entire driver of higher housing prices. It’s also the regulatory regime of Kamala Harris. Look, we are a country of builders. We’re a country of doers. We’re a country of explorers. But we increasingly have a Federal administration that makes it harder to develop our resources, makes it harder to build things, and wants to throw people in jail for not doing everything exactly as Kamala Harris says that they have to do. And what that means is that you have a lot of people who would love to build homes who aren’t able to build homes. I actually agree with Tim Walz. We should get out of this idea of housing as a commodity. But the thing that has most turned housing into a commodity is giving it away to millions upon millions of people who have no legal right to be here. 

I’m glad Vance agrees that “We should get out of this idea of housing as a commodity.” I don’t understand why he would agree with that point—using one’s property as one pleases is a foundational capitalistic principle, but we know that Vance’s gravitation toward protectionist policies means he’s not a subscriber to free-market capitalism. I just would love to know where these “millions upon millions” of people are who are getting houses, or housing. Sign me up.

Walz: What are the federal regulations? I deal with this as a Governor. 

MB: You can very quickly reply.

Walz: I’m sorry. I get this as a Governor, and I don’t necessarily disagree with that, that in some cases, many of those are local, many of them are state. I don’t know which ones are federal, but I think whenever we talk regulations, people think they can get rid of them. I think you want to be able to get out of your house in a fire. I think you want to make sure that it’s fireproof and those types of things. So which are the regulations? Because the vice president’s not responsible for those. Congress writes those.

This entire exchange was an exchange of generalities, mostly on Vance’s side—of demonizing generalities. We got no clarity on the federal lands that would be seized or what regulations would be cut or how they’d strive to tackle the idea that housing should not be viewed as a commodity.

Moderator: Thank you. One of the top problems facing Americans is the high cost of health care. Senator Vance, at the last Presidential debate, former President Trump was asked about replacing the Affordable Care act. In response, he said, I have concepts of a plan. Since then, Senator, you’ve talked about changing how chronically ill Americans get health insurance. Can you explain how that would work? And can you guarantee that Americans with pre-existing conditions won’t pay more? I’ll give you two minutes.

Vance: Well, of course, we’re going to cover Americans with pre-existing conditions. In fact, a lot of my family members have gotten health care, I believe, you know, members of my family actually got private health insurance, at least, for the first time, switched off of Medicaid onto private insurance for the first time, under Donald Trump’s leadership. And I think that, you know, a lot of people have criticized this “concepts of a plan” remark. I think it’s very simple common sense. I think, as Tim Walz knows from twelve years in Congress, you’re not going to propose a 900 page bill standing on a debate stage. It would bore everybody to tears and it wouldn’t actually mean anything because part of this is the give and take of bipartisan negotiation. Now, when Donald Trump was actually President, and again, he has a record to be proud of, prescription drugs fell in 2018 for the first time in a very long time. Under Kamala Harris’s leadership, prescription drugs are up about 7%. Under Donald Trump’s entire four years, they were up about one and a half percent. He introduced pricing transparency. Think about healthcare. You go into a hospital, you try to buy something, and nobody knows what it actually costs. That price transparency will actually give American consumers a little bit more choice and will also drive down costs. And we talked about, you know, the reinsurance regulations is what I was talking about. Look, Donald Trump has said that if we allow states to experiment a little bit on how to cover both the chronically ill, but the non chronically ill. It’s not just a plan. He actually implemented some of these regulations when he was President of the United States. And I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along. I think this is an important point about President Trump. Of course, you don’t have to agree with everything that President Trump has ever said or ever done, but when Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and healthcare costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care. It’s not perfect, of course, and there’s so much more that we can do. But I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to put in place some better healthcare policies. He’s earned it because he did it successfully the first time. 

Huh? There was enough here to leave you dumbfounded, chiefly the claim that Trump saved Obamacare. For a Republican candidate, that doesn’t sound like the right thing to brag about given the number of times they’ve tried repealing it—and Trump himself saying he would.

“I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to put in place some better healthcare policies.” Such as? You don’t want bore us with a 900-page proposal no one asked for, so all we have are the “concepts of a plan” that seems to amount to little more than to “allow states to experiment a little bit on how to cover both the chronically ill, [and] the non chronically ill.”

I remember watching a “debate” between Senators Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, where Bernie blew through the smoke that was Cruz’s argument that Americans will have access to healthcare. In his lawyerly way, Cruz championed the Republican ideal to always provide access, but he did it to suggest that healthcare would be attainable. Bernie drew the distinction that access did not guarantee affordability, or even reasonable affordability. Vance does the same thing here. The question was:

“[C]an you guarantee that Americans with pre-existing conditions won’t pay more?” (Emphasis added).

Vance’s response: “Well, of course, we’re going to cover Americans with pre-existing conditions.” (Emphasis added). The access will be there, that much can be guaranteed. But the question was about cost. The one detail Vance provides is about states “experimenting” with coverage between the chronically ill and those who are not. This suggests whatever Trump’s healthcare plans are, they’ll hide behind the access in order to avoid accountability as to cost premiums.

Moderator: Governor.

Walz: All right, here’s where being an old guy gives you some history. I was there at the creation of the ACA, and the reason it was so important is I come from a major healthcare state, home of the Mayo Clinic, home to Medical Alley, 3M, Medtronic, all of those. We understand healthcare. It’s why we’re ranked first on affordability and accessibility and quality of health care. And so what I know is under Kamala Harris, more people are covered than they have before. Those of you listening, this is critical to you. Now, Donald Trump all of a sudden wants you… go back and remember this. He ran on, the first thing he was going to do on day one, was to repeal Obamacare. On day one, he tried to sign an executive order to repeal the ACA. He signed onto a lawsuit to repeal the ACA, but lost at the Supreme Court. And he would have repealed the ACA had it not been for the courage of John McCain to save that bill. Now fast forward. What that means to you is you lose your pre-existing conditions if you’re sitting at home and you got asthma, too bad. If you’re a woman, probably not. Broke your foot during football, might kick you out. Your kids get kicked out when they’re 26. Kamala Harris negotiated drug prices for the first time with Medicare. We have ten drugs that will come online, the most common ones that’ll be there. But look, this issue, and when Donald Trump said, “I’ve got a concept of a plan,” it cracked me up as a fourth grade teacher because my kids would have never given me that. But what Senator Vance just explained might be worse than a concept, because what he explained is pre-Obamacare. And I’ll make this as simple as possible because I have done this for a long time. What they’re saying is if you’re healthy, why should you be paying more? So what they’re going to do is let insurance companies pick who they insure. Because guess what happens? You pay your premium. It’s not much. They figure they’re not going to have to pay out to you. But those of you a little older, gray, you know, got cancer? You’re going to get kicked out of it. That’s why the system didn’t work. Kamala Harris will protect and enhance the ACA.

I swear I’m not looking at Walz’s response for tips on how to structure my own, in response to what Vance said. Walz was just that good at picking up on the sometimes word salad, sometimes absurdities, that Walz was giving and rightly pushing back.

Moderator: Governor, thank you. Senator, you have not yet explained how you would protect people with preexisting conditions, or laid out that plan.

Vance: Well, look, we currently have laws and regulations in place, in place right now that protect people with preexisting conditions. We want to keep those regulations in place, but we also want to make the health insurance marketplace function a little bit better. Now, what Governor Walz just said is actually not true. A lot of what happened and the reason that Obamacare was crushing under its own weight is that a lot of young and healthy people were leaving the exchanges. Donald Trump actually helped address that problem, and he did so in a way that preserved people’s access to coverage who had preexisting conditions. But again, something that these guys do, is they make a lot of claims about if Donald Trump becomes President, all of these terrible consequences are going to ensue. But in reality, Donald Trump was President. Inflation was low, take home pay was higher, and he saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership. He did his job, which is govern in a bipartisan way and get results, not just complain about problems, but actually solve them.

I’ll just re-paste the moderator’s statement: “Senator, you have not yet explained how you would protect people with preexisting conditions, or laid out that plan.”

The Trump administration is going to keep the laws (Affordable Care Act) and regulations in place that protect people with preexisting conditions, “but we also want to make the health insurance marketplace function a little bit better.” The way they’ll do that is with state experimentation, I guess, which is the same issue with abortion. You might be priced out of treatment in Texas, but you might have been able to pay for treatment and receive necessary care in Minnesota. No one could say you didn’t have access in Texas, though.

Walz gives a follow-up response that Vance tries to also respond to, but the moderators move on. Given the time Vance has already had on this subject, and the paucity of his responses, I think that was the right move.

Moderator: Governor, your time is up. Senator, do you support a national paid leave program? And if so, for how long should employers be mandated to pay their employees while they are home taking care of their newborn? You have two minutes.

Vance: Yeah. Well, first of all, Margaret, a number of my Republican colleagues and some Democrats, too, have worked on this issue, and I think there is a bipartisan solution here because a lot of us care about this issue. I mean, look, I speak from this very personally because I’m married to a beautiful woman who is an incredible mother to our three beautiful kids, but is also a very, very brilliant corporate litigator, and I’m so proud of her. But being a working mom, even for somebody with all of the advantages of my wife, is extraordinarily difficult. And it’s not just difficult from a policy perspective. She actually had access to paid family leave because she worked for a bigger company. But the cultural pressure on young families, and especially young women, I think, makes it really hard for people to choose the family model they want. A lot of young women would like to go back to work immediately. Some would like to spend a little time home with the kids. Some would like to spend longer at home with the kids. We should have a family care model that makes choice possible. And I think this is a very important substantive difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s approach. I mean, look, if you look at the Federal programs that we have that support paid family leave right now, the community development block grant, and there’s another block grant program that spends a lot of money from the federal government. These programs only go to one kind of childcare model. Let’s say you’d like your church, maybe, to help you out with child care. Maybe you live in a rural area or an urban area, and you’d like to get together with families in your neighborhood to provide childcare in the way that makes the most sense. You don’t get access to any of these federal monies. We want to promote choice in how we deliver family care and how we promote childcare because, look, it is unacceptable. And, you know, of course, Tim and I have been on the campaign trail a lot the past seven or eight weeks. And one of the biggest complaints I hear from young families is people who feel like they don’t have options, like they’re choosing between going to work or taking care for their kids. That is an incredible burden to put on American families. We’re the only country that does it. I think we could do a heck of a lot better.

Republicans love to hide behind access and choice (except Pro-Choice, of course). The question was:

“[D]o you support a national paid leave program?”

Vance’s answer was: “We should have a family care model that makes choice possible.” A national paid leave program presumably would not be mandatory. No one would be forcing the young mother who wants “to go back to work immediately” to stay with her newborn. Even if she were forced not to work, through some impossible mechanism, that doesn’t mean she must assume childcare responsibilities if she didn’t want to.

By the way, Vance’s response completely omits whatever benefits there might be for fathers under a national paid leave program, probably because Vance just assumes they wouldn’t stop working. His entire response is about young women, those who want to work immediately, those who want to stay a little with their kid(s), and those who want to stay with their kids longer. Of course fathers wouldn’t stop working.

What Vance is really driving at, with his “choice,” is (1) making federal money available for church-run childcare centers, and (2) lowering the regulatory threshold or requirements for federal funding, for whatever random neighborhood decides to get in the childcare business.

Vance says: “[O]ne of the biggest complaints I hear from young families is people who feel like they don’t have options, like they’re choosing between going to work or taking care for their kids. That is an incredible burden to put on American families.” So…a national paid family leave plan would be a good thing. Next question.

Moderator: Senator, thank you. You have also said, Senator Vance, many things about the American family. The Federal Reserve says parents will spend nearly as much on childcare as they do on housing each month. So I want to get your thoughts on this. President Trump recently said, as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kinds of numbers we’ll be taking in. Is President Trump committed to the $5,000 per child tax credit that you have described? You have 1 minute.

Vance: Well, what President Trump said, Margaret, I just want to defend my running mate here a little bit, is that we’re going to be taking in a lot of money by penalizing companies for shipping jobs overseas and penalizing countries who employ slave laborers and then ship their products back into our country and undercut the wages of American workers. It’s the heart of the Donald Trump economic plan. Cut taxes for American workers and American families. Cut taxes for businesses that are hiring and building companies in the United States of America. But penalize companies and countries that are shipping jobs overseas. That’s the heart of the economic proposal. And I think what President Trump is saying is that when we bring in this additional revenue with higher economic growth, we’re going to be able to provide paid family leave, childcare options that are viable and workable for a lot of American families.

There he goes again, pretending that it’s foreign companies who are to blame for Americans’ low wages. He later cleans up the comment to what I think he means, which is to “Cut taxes for businesses that are hiring and building companies in the United States of America. But penalize companies and countries that are shipping jobs overseas.” But it’s still not a clean answer. I’m not looking for perfection here, just something cogent. His focus is presumably on American companies who should be rewarded, through cut taxes, for hiring American workers and building companies in America. Why the United States would punish, let’s say, Indonesia, for shipping jobs to Ghana is beyond me. But all of this is beyond the point—the question was whether Trump would commit to a $5,000 per child tax credit. I suppose the answer is, of course, because we’ll be so rich.

Moderator: Can you clarify how that will solve the childcare shortage? 

Vance: Well, because, as Tim said, a lot of the childcare shortages, we just don’t have enough resources going into the multiple people who could be providing family care options. And we’re going to have to, unfortunately, look, we’re going to have to spend more money. We’re going to have to induce more people to want to provide child care options for American families because the reason it’s so expensive right now is because you’ve got way too few people providing this very essential service.

Let’s follow Vance’s answer, presented as an argument. The Trump administration is going to provide tax breaks to [American] companies or foreign companies who employ Americans and build in America. This will presumably bring or keep business in America, which will make us richer. This new richness will pay for the $5,000 per child tax credit. Our new wealth will also allow us to incentivize people to found childcare businesses, to fill the lack of supply that needs to meet demand. That’s me cleaning up and deciphering what I think the argument should be.

But what it seems to really be is what he said before: (1) direct federal monies to church-run programs; (2) lower regulations and/or requirements for childcare businesses to be eligible for federal monies; and (3) make available for the moms and pops and grandmas and pop-pops who are babysitting, as these seem to be “the multiple people who could be providing family care options[]” he’s implicitly referring to, based on an answer he gave in a previous interview.

And I’ll let Walz’s answer speak for itself:

Moderator: Thank you, Senator. Governor Walz, your ticket also has some childcare tax credit proposals. Do you think Congress will agree to the $6,000 credit for newborns and $3,000 credit for children over the age of six, as your campaign has promised? Is that realistic?

Walz: Well, well, if these members of Congress are listening to anybody, I can tell you, and this is the biggest issue everybody listening tonight knows. I mean, I’m sure they were shocked to hear it’s not that expensive. And let’s be clear whether it’s $5000 or $6000, that pays you about three or four months. Let’s be clear of where we’re at on this. It’s because we got out of an imbalance on this. We thought we were going to get by by not paying people. I don’t think Senator Vance and I are that far apart. I’m not opposed to what he’s talking about on options. We’ve done scholarships, types of things. I think we need to be open to making the case. But the issue here is, the question you asked is you’re not going to pay for it with these tariffs. That’s just adding another $4,000 on the family and taking less. So not only do they not get the money to pay for that, they’re $4,000 in the hole. That’s Wharton School. That’s his alma mater. And so I think the issue here is those members of Congress, I can’t believe they’re not here. When I go to businesses, sure, they’ll talk about taxes sometimes. But they will lead with childcare and they will lead with housing, because we know the problem is, especially in a state like Minnesota, we need more workers because our economy is growing, but we need the workforce.

What follows is what ended up being the highlight of the night, as far as the media was concerned. Don’t get me wrong, people can’t be allowed to forget about January 6^th, and particularly of Trump’s role in planning for it and instigating it. The purpose of this writing, however, was to reflect my opinion that Vance’s awful answers, throughout the whole night, should have been the highlight. His following responses simply added to my thesis.

Moderator: Let’s talk about the State of Democracy, the top issue for Americans after the economy and inflation. After the 2020 election, President Trump’s campaign and others filed 62 lawsuits contesting the results. Judges, including those appointed by President Trump and other Republican Presidents looked at the evidence and said there was no widespread fraud. The Governors of every state in the nation, Republicans and Democrats, certified the 2020 election results and sent a legal slate of electors to Congress for January 6th. Senator Vance, you have said you would not have certified the last Presidential election and would have asked the states to submit alternative electors. That has been called unconstitutional and illegal. Would you again seek to challenge this year’s election results, even if every Governor certifies the results? I’ll give you two minutes.

Vance: Well, Norah, first of all, I think that we’re focused on the future. We need to figure out how to solve the inflation crisis caused by Kamala Harris’s policies. Make housing affordable, make groceries affordable, and that’s what we’re focused on. But I want to answer your question because you did ask it. Look, 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. And that’s all I’ve said. And that’s all that Donald Trump has said. Remember, he said that on January 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully. And on January 20th, what happened? Joe Biden became the President. Donald Trump left the White House. And now, of course, unfortunately, we have all of the negative policies that have come from the Harris-Biden administration. I believe that we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country, but unfortunately, it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship. It’s Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics. It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens. And it’s Kamala Harris saying that rather than debate and persuade her fellow Americans, she’d like to censor people who engage in misinformation. I think that is a much bigger threat to democracy than anything that we’ve seen in this country in the last four years, in the last 40 years. Now I’m really proud, especially given that I was raised by two lifelong blue collar Democrats to have the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, lifelong leaders in the democratic coalition. And of course, they don’t agree with me and Donald Trump on every issue. We don’t have to agree on every issue, but we’re united behind a basic American First Amendment principle that we ought to debate our differences. We ought to argue about them. We ought to try to persuade our fellow Americans. Kamala Harris is engaged in censorship at an industrial scale. She did it during COVID, she’s done it over a number of other issues. And that, to me, is a much bigger threat to democracy than what Donald Trump said when he said that protesters should peacefully protest on January 6th.

No harm, no foul. Trump didn’t benefit from the actions of January 6^th (though he intended to), and by January 20^th peacefully moved aside, and so there was a peaceful transition of power. Trump never conceded that he lost, however. Every now and then we get a rare acknowledgment that sounds like a concession, but he quickly drowns out the possibility with more election lies.

The question was: “Would you again seek to challenge this year’s election results, even if every Governor certifies the results?” (Emphasis added). By all indications, the answer is likely that Vance would again challenge this year’s election results. He didn’t outright say he would; he didn’t outright say he wouldn’t. Instead, he went on a diatribe about friendships lost over political differences; about censorship, a part of the whole that is democracy. Kamala Harris would “like to censor people who engage in misinformation.” And this is a problem, because…? Vance may be a free speech absolutist—I don’t know that he is—but the United States does not share the same viewpoint. We have restrictions on speech. We have libel laws, defamation laws; assault can be found purely through oral threats. A true free speech absolutist would recognize all of these things would have to be eliminated so that everyone could freely say whatever they wanted.

Moderator: Governor.

Walz: Well, I’ve enjoyed tonight’s debate, and I think there was a lot of commonality here. And I’m sympathetic to misspeaking on things. And I think I might have with the Senator, but…

Vance: Me too, man.

Walz: There’s one, there’s one, though, that this one is troubling to me. And I say that because I think we need to tell the story. Donald Trump refused to acknowledge this. And the fact is, is that I don’t think we can be the frog in the pot and let the boiling water go up. He was very clear. I mean, he lost this election, and he said he didn’t. One hundred and forty police officers were beaten at the Capitol that day, some with the American flag. Several later died. And it wasn’t just in there. In Minnesota, a group gathered on the state capitol grounds in St. Paul and said we’re marching to the Governor’s residence and there may be casualties. The only person there was my son and his dog, who was rushed out crying by state police. That issue. And Mike Pence standing there as they were chanting, hang Mike Pence. Mike Pence made the right decision. So, Senator, it was adjudicated over and over and over. I worked with kids long enough to know, and I said, as a football coach, sometimes you really want to win, but the democracy is bigger than winning an election. You shake hands and then you try and do everything you can to help the other side win. That’s, that’s what was at stake here. Now, the thing I’m most concerned about is the idea that imprisoning your political opponents already laying the groundwork for people not accepting this. And a President’s words matter. A President’s words matter. People hear that. So I think this issue of settling our differences at the ballot box, shaking hands when we lose, being honest about it, but to deny what happened on January 6, the first time in American history that a President or anyone tried to overturn a fair election and the peaceful transfer of power. And here we are four years later in the same boat. I will tell you this, that when this is over, we need to shake hands, this election, and the winner needs to be the winner. This has got to stop. It’s tearing our country apart.

Moderator: Senator Vance, did you want to respond to that?

Vance: Yeah, well, look, Tim, first of all, 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, as we have done for 250 years in this country. We are going to shake hands after this debate and after this election. And of course, I hope that we win, and I think we’re going to win. But if Tim Walz is the next vice president, he’ll have my prayers, he’ll have my best wishes, and he’ll have my help whenever he wants it. But we have to remember that for years in this country, Democrats protested the results of elections. Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought, like, $500,000 worth of Facebook ads. This has been going on for a long time. And if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I’m on board. But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had. I don’t buy that.

Vance’s what about-ism that does not compare to January 6^th. Anyone who did not vote for Trump endured the four years of his administration and worked to remove him through the democratic process by turning out for Joe Biden. Trump and his people, by contrast, saw that they lost, did not accept the results, gathered at the Capitol in response to Trump’s call—it will be wild, he said—and literally stormed the Capitol. The mob’s violence interrupted and delayed the certification process. Congress members had to be evacuated. Some Congress members had the good sense to table their objections in light of what had just occurred—others went ahead with their objections, consciously and purposefully deciding to fly in the face of the evidence before their eyes.

No one is saying objections can’t be made. The hope is that the person making the objection does so in good faith, rather than as a live indictment of their judgment.

Moderator: Governor.

Walz: January 6th was not Facebook ads. And I think a revisionist history on this. Look, I don’t understand how we got to this point, but the issue was that happened. Donald Trump can even do it. And all of us say there’s no place for this. It has massive repercussions. This idea that there’s censorship to stop people from doing, threatening to kill someone, threatening to do something, that’s not censorship. Censorship is book banning. We’ve seen that. We’ve seen that brought up. I just think for everyone tonight, and I’m going to thank Senator Vance. I think this is the conversation they want to hear, and I think there’s a lot of agreement. But this is one that we are miles apart on. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say, he is still saying he didn’t lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?

Vance: Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?

Walz: That is a damning. That is a damning non answer.

Vance: It’s a damning non answer for you to not talk about censorship. Obviously, Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020. We’ve talked about it. I’m happy to talk about it further. But you guys attack us for not believing in democracy. The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment. You yourself have said there’s no First Amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris wants to use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this present political moment. I would like Democrats and Republicans to both reject censorship. Let’s persuade one another. Let’s argue about ideas, and then let’s come together afterwards.

Walz: You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme court test.

Vance: Tim. Fire in a crowded theater. You guys wanted to kick people off of Facebook for saying that toddlers should not wear masks.

Moderator: Senator, the governor does have the floor.

Walz: Sorry.

Vance: That’s not fire in a crowded theater. That is criticizing the policies of the government, which is the right of every American.

Moderator: Senator, the governor does have the floor for 1 minute to respond to you.

Walz: Please. Yeah, well, I don’t run Facebook. What I do know is I see a candidate out there who refused, and now again. And this, I’m pretty shocked by this. He lost the election. This is not a debate. It’s not anything anywhere other than in Donald Trump’s world, because, look, when Mike Pence made that decision to certify that election, that’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage. What I’m concerned about is where is the firewall with Donald Trump? Where is the firewall if he knows he could do anything, including taking an election and his Vice President’s not going to stand to it. That’s what we’re asking you, America. Will you stand up? Will you keep your oath of office even if the President doesn’t? And I think Kamala Harris would agree. She wouldn’t have picked me if she didn’t think I would do that because, of course, that’s what we would do. So, America, I think you’ve got a really clear choice on this election of who’s going to honor that democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump.

The key question to ask Vance is: Did Donald Trump, as a condition to being his running mate, ask you whether or not you would do what he said on matters of election integrity, regardless of Constitutional constraints to the contrary?

Trump has made it very clear that he regrets placing people in his administration who were not completely loyal to him. It seems to be his idea that, if the people elect someone like him, with fascist intentions, then they want a fascist. But the people vote for, and expect, a president bound by the constraints of the Constitution. Trump’s behavior and statements make it clear to me that not only does he not share that sentiment, but also that he doesn’t think his supporters do.

On to the closing statements.

Moderator: Welcome back to the CBS News vice presidential Debate. It is now time for the closing statement. Senator Vance won the virtual coin toss and elected to go last. So, Governor Walz, you are first. You have two minutes.

Walz: Well, thank you, Senator Vance. Thank you to CBS News. And most importantly, thank you to all of you. If you’re still up and the folks who miss Dancing with the Stars, I appreciate it. But look, the support of the democracy matters. It matters that you’re here. And I’m as surprised as anybody of this coalition that Kamala Harris has built. From Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift and a whole bunch of folks in between there. And they don’t all agree on everything, but they are truly optimistic people. They believe in a positive future of this country. And one where our politics can be better than it is. And I have to tell you that, that better than it is is the sense of optimism that there can be an opportunity economy that works for everyone, not just to get by, but to get ahead. And the idea that freedom really means something. Not the freedom of government to be in your bedroom or exam room, but the freedom for you to make choices about yourself. Now, look, we all know who Donald Trump is. He’s told us. And as Maya Angelou said, “Believe him when he told you that.” His first inaugural address talked about American carnage and then he spent four years trying to maybe do that. Senator Vance tonight made it clear he will stand with Donald Trump’s agenda. He will continue to push down that road. Excuse me. Kamala Harris gives us a different option. Now, I have to tell you, I’m going to be careful about the quotes, but there’s one that Senator Vance said that does resonate with me. He said, “Donald Trump makes the people I care about afraid.” A lot of America feels that way. We don’t need to be afraid. Franklin Roosevelt was right. “All we have to fear is fear itself.” Kamala Harris is bringing us a new way forward. She’s bringing us a politics of joy. She’s bringing real solutions for the middle class. And she’s centering you at the heart of that, all the while asking everyone, “Join this movement. Make your voices heard. Let’s look for a new day where everybody gets that opportunity and everybody gets a chance to thrive.” I humbly ask for your vote on November 5 for Kamala Harris.

Moderator: Governor Walz. Thank you. Senator Vance, your closing statement.

Vance: Well, I want to thank Governor Walz, you folks at CBS and, of course, the American people for tuning in this evening. And one of the issues we didn’t talk about was energy. And I remember when I was being raised by my grandmother, when she didn’t have enough money to turn on the heat some nights because Ohio gets pretty cold at night and because money was often very tight. And I believe, as a person who wants to be your next Vice President, that we are a rich and prosperous enough country where every American, whether they’re rich or poor, ought to be able to turn on their heat in the middle of a cold winter night. That’s gotten more difficult thanks to Kamala Harris’s energy policies. I believe that whether you’re rich or poor, you ought to be able to afford a nice meal for your family. That’s gotten harder because of Kamala Harris’s policies. I believe that whether you’re rich or poor you ought to be able to afford to buy a house. You ought to be able to live in safe neighborhoods. You ought to not have your communities flooded with fentanyl. And that, too, has gotten harder with Kamala, because of Kamala Harris’s policies. Now, I’ve been in politics long enough to do what Kamala Harris does when she stands before the American people and says that on day one she’s gonna work on all these challenges I just listed. She’s been the Vice President for three and a half years. Day one was 1400 days ago. And her policies have made these problems worse. Now I believe that we have the most beautiful country in the world. I meet people on the campaign trail who can’t afford food, but have the grace and generosity to ask me how I’m doing and to tell me they’re praying for my family. What that has taught me is that we have the greatest country, the most beautiful country, the most incredible people anywhere in the world. But they’re not going to be able to achieve their full dreams with the broken leadership that we have in Washington. They’re not going to be able to live their American Dream if we do the same thing that we’ve been doing for the last three and a half years. We need change. We need a new direction. We need a President who has already done this once before and did it well. Please vote for Donald Trump. And whether you vote for me or vote for Tim Walz, I just want to say I’m so proud to be doing this, and I’m rooting for you. God bless you and good night.

A warm hearth and bread for every home, never mind Trump’s desire to be a dictator. Your schools will look like prisons because we’re not touching the guns; the deficit will balloon by more than it would otherwise under Kamala’s plan; our domestic oil and gas production may lower your energy bill at the cost of degraded air, water, and soil quality, to say nothing of future climate change; the immigrants we deport will create a labor shortage that supposedly will be filled by American citizens who will suddenly be paid at least $7.25 by the businesses that likely paid less before, jeopardizing the output and stability of both; a woman’s ability to get an abortion will depend on the state she lives in; your ability to receive adequate medical coverage will depend on the state you live in; federal lands will be exploited for energy and housing; and regulations will be cut so we can funnel more of your tax money into religious institutions and childcare businesses with little oversight; oh, and we’ll turn our back on alliances we depend on—China and Russia will love to deal with us when all we do is bad mouth them but do nothing to curtail their influence.

It would have been the easier and more accurate statement to say that the Biden Administration, of which Kamala Harris is a part, is responsible for all the horrible things Vance alleges it is responsible for. Instead, he again paints Kamala as being Biden all along, with the same power as the president—and seemingly even of Congress—because Vance seems to think the president can just enact whatever policies they want. This only makes sense when you’re running under the assumption that a Trump presidency will have the unchecked and absolute power that Vance seems to think Harris already has. There was no mention of working with Congress, working in a bipartisan manner, reaching across the aisle as necessary—no, what you need is Donald Trump.

And if we put it into Americans’ heads that the presidency has the power we say it does, that objectively goes beyond what is constitutionally permitted,  they might just agree with us.

I’d at some point like to ponder J.D. Vance, as a singular figure in history, in a Hannibal Lecter pose–leaning forward, fingers crossed. But the above told me he knows how to fool people.