Vice presidential hopefuls Tim Walz and JD Vance focused their criticism on the top of the ticket on Tuesday as they engaged in a policy-heavy discussion that may be the last debate of the 2024 presidential campaign.
It was the first, and likely last, encounter between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator. It comes a month following the likely first and last debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump last month.
It comes just five weeks before Election Day and as millions of voters are now able to cast early ballots.
FACT CHECK: Fact-checking the Tim Walz - J.D. Vance VP Debate
Tuesday’s confrontation played out as the stakes of the contest rose again after Iran fired missiles into Israel, while a devastating hurricane and potentially debilitating port strike roiled the country at home. But in an age of world-class disses optimized for social media, Tuesday’s debate was a detour into substance.
Walz dug into the drafting of the Affordable Care Act when he was in the House in 2009, and pushed Vance on the senator’s claim that Trump, who tried to eliminate the law, actually helped preserve it. Vance, defending his claim that illegal immigration pushes up housing prices, cited a Federal Reserve study to back himself up. Walz talked about how Minneapolis tinkered with local regulations to boost the housing supply. Both men talked about the overlap between energy policy, trade and climate change.
It was a very different style than often seen in presidential debates over the past several election cycles.
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Here are 10 key takeaways from the night.
Who won the debate? Both campaigns weigh in
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Once the night concluded, Donald Trump Jr. described the debate as a “blowout” for Vance.
“We’re in the spin room, but there’s nothing to spin,” he said. “And I think it’s really just self-explanatory. It was an incredible performance. We’re really proud of JD. I thought it was absolutely incredible.”
The Harris-Walz campaign also praised the performance of their vice presidential nominee after the debate.
“Tonight, Governor Walz showed exactly why Vice President Harris picked him: he is a leader who cares about the issues that matter most to the American people,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “Americans got to see a real contrast: a straight talker focused on sharing real solutions, and a slick politician who spent the whole night defending Donald Trump’s division and failures."
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker also gave kudos to Walz's performance, saying the Minnesota Governor "did the Midwest proud."
His full statement can be found below:
“Gov. Tim Walz did the Midwest proud tonight, demonstrating for the nation that he will fight for working families and expand economic opportunity as our next Vice President. With Vice President Harris and Governor Tim Walz in the White House, Americans will have fierce champions for the middle class who have spent their lives lifting people up instead of tearing them down. That stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their Project 2025 agenda. From trying to strip women of their right to reproductive healthcare to giving tax breaks to the wealthiest at the expense of our middle class, Trump and Vance want to take us backwards – but we’re not going back. Tonight, Gov. Tim Walz made that clear and I’m proud to stand with him as a fellow Midwest Governor today and look forward to voting for this ticket come November.”
Illinois' GOP chair Kathy Salvi released a statement, siding with Vance and calling Walz "extreme."
"Tonight, Senator JD Vance exposed leftist Tim Walz's extreme, out-of-touch agenda with our nation and showed the importance of electing President Trump in November. Tim Walz was clear that a Harris-Walz administration is nothing more than a continuation of the disastrous Biden presidency that's seen a failed economy, open borders, and out of control crime on the rise. Illinois does not need another far-left governor serving as Vice President to help JB Pritzker raise taxes and drive families away from the Prairie State."
With Mideast in turmoil, Walz promises ‘steady leadership’ and Vance offers ’peace through strength’
Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday elicited a contrast between the Democratic and Republican tickets on foreign policy: Walz promised “steady leadership” under Harris while Vance pledged a return to “peace through strength” if Trump is returned to the White House.
The differing visions of what American leadership should look like overshadowed the sharp policy differences between the two tickets.
The Iranian threat to the region and U.S. interests around the world opened the debate, with Walz pivoting the topic to criticism of Trump.
“What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter,” Walz said, then referenced the “nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” and responding to global crises by tweet.
Vance, for his part, promised a return to “effective deterrence” under Trump against Iran, brushing back on Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her role in the Biden administration.
“Who has been the vice president for the last three and a half years and the answer is your running mate, not mine,” he said. He pointedly noted that the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, happened “during the administration of Kamala Harris.”
Few personal attacks
It was immediately clear the two prominent politicians on stage were merely proxies for their running mates, using the questions as vehicles to attack their top-of-the-ticket rivals and on many occasions going out of their way not to personally attack each other.
Walz used his first question, regarding Iran’s strikes on Israel, to hit at Trump’s age: “A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment.” He went on to assail “Donald Trump’s fickle leadership” around the world.
Vance replied, “Who has been the vice president for the last three and a half years? And the answer is your running mate, not mine. Donald Trump consistently made the world more secure.”
In the next section, about climate change, Walz hit Trump again: “Donald Trump called it a hoax, and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in.”
On immigration, Vance sidestepped when asked how Trump would carry out his mass deportation promise, and repeatedly attacking Harris: “I’ve been to the southern border more than our border czar, Kamala Harris, has been.”
Notably, both men said they believed their on-stage rival wants to solve the problem at the border, as well as other areas of policy disagreement.
“I believe Sen. Vance wants to solve this, but by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point," Walz said.
Vance replied, “I actually think I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”
The most tension between them came toward the end, when Walz asked Vance point-blank if Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance wouldn't give a straight answer, instead throwing a question back at Walz about censorship about the Covid-19 pandemic on Facebook.
Walz admits he flubbed Tiananmen Square story
Walz had a nervous first answer before getting into a rhythm later. But he stumbled a few times when asked about falsely claiming he visited Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989, when a report by Minnesota Public Radio said he was in fact there later in the year.
Walz initially dodged the question: “I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said, while giving a long and meandering answer about his upbringing and expressing his commitment to Minnesotans through his career.
When a moderator followed up, Walz conceded: “I got there that summer and misspoke.”
It's the type of question digging into past statements that national political candidates get a lot — but Walz has largely avoided media interviews and therefore hasn't dealt with many questions since becoming the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
Vance stays on the defensive on abortion
Walz pounced on Vance repeatedly over abortion access and reproductive rights as the Ohio senator tried to argue that a state-by-state matrix of abortion laws is the ideal approach for the United States. Walz countered that a “basic right” for a woman should not be determined “by geography.”
“This is a very simple proposition: These are women’s decisions,” Walz said. “We trust women. We trust doctors.”
Walz sought to personalize the issue by referencing the death of Amber Thurman, who waited more than 20 hours at the hospital for a routine medical procedure known as a D&C to clear out remaining tissue after taking abortion pills. She developed sepsis and died.
Rather than sidestep the reference, Vance at one point agreed with Walz that “Amber Thurman should still be alive.”
Vance steered the conversation to the GOP ticket’s proposals he said would help women and children economically, thus avoiding the need for terminating pregnancies. But Walz retorted that such policies — tax credits, expanded childcare aid, a more even economy — can be pursued while still allowing women to make their own decisions about abortion.
Both candidates put a domestic spin on climate change
In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Vance took a question about climate change and gave an answer about jobs and manufacturing, taking a detour around Trump’s past claims that global warming is a “hoax.”
Vance contended that the best way to fight climate change was to move more manufacturing to the United States, because the country has the world’s cleanest energy economy. It was a distinctly domestic spin on a global crisis, especially after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the international Paris climate accords during his administration.
Walz also kept the climate change focus domestic, touting the Biden administration’s renewable energy investments as well as record levels of oil and natural gas production. “You can see us becoming an energy superpower in the future,” Walz said.
It was a decidedly optimistic take on a pervasive and grim global problem.
Walz, Vance each blame opposing presidential candidate for immigration stalemate
The two running mates agreed that the number of migrants in the U.S. illegally is a problem. But each laid the blame on the opposing presidential nominee.
Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris the “border czar” and suggested that she, as vice president, single-handedly rolled back the immigration restrictions Trump had imposed as president. The result, in Vance’s telling, is an unchecked flow of fentanyl, strain on state and local resources and increased housing prices around the country.
Harris was never asked to be the “border czar” and she was never specifically given the responsibility for security on the border. She was tasked by Biden in March 2021 with tackling the “root causes” of migration from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and pushing leaders there and in Mexico to enforce immigration laws. Harris was not empowered to set U.S. immigration policy — only the president can sign executive orders and Harris was not empowered as Biden’s proxy in negotiations with Congress on immigration law.
Walz advanced Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly killed a bipartisan Senate deal to tighten border security and boost the processing system for immigrants and asylum seekers. Republicans backed off the deal, Walz noted, only after Trump said it wasn’t good enough.
Both use tried-and-true debate tactics — including not answering tough questions
Asked directly whether Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants would remove parents of U.S.-born children, Vance never answered the question. Instead, the senator tried to put his best spin on Trump’s plan to use the military to help with deportations and pivot to attacking Harris for a porous border. Asked to respond to Trump’s having called climate change a “hoax,” Vance also avoided a response.
The debate kicked off with Walz being asked if he’d support a preemptive strike by Israel against Iran. Walz praised Harris’ foreign policy leadership but never answered that question, either.
And at the end of the debate, Vance would not answer Walz’s direct question of whether Trump indeed lost the 2020 election.
Walz, Vance pick through their running mates' economic records
Walz came equipped with an argument to attack Trump on the economy, which is one of the GOP nominee's strongest issues, according to polls that ask voters who they trust to handle it.
"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 — about 10 million people at work, largest percentage since the Great Depression," Walz said.
Vance responded by attacking the Biden-Harris economic record as “atrocious” and defending Trump.
“Honestly, Tim, I think you got a tough job here, because you got to play Whac-A-Mole,” he said, accusing Walz of having to “pretend” that Trump’s economy improved wages and had lower inflation.
Walz also attacked Trump on taxes and trade policy.
"If you're listening tonight and you want billionaires get tax cuts," Trump is your candidate, Walz told voters while looking through the TV screen. “How is it fair that you’re paying your taxes every year and Donald Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in the last 15 years?”
Vance on Jan. 6 insurrection
The candidates went out of their way to be polite to each other until the very end, when Vance refused to back down from his statements that he wouldn’t have certified Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Vance tried to turn the issue to claims that the “much bigger threat to democracy” was Democrats trying to censor people on social media. But Walz wouldn’t let go.
“This one is troubling to me,” said Walz, noting that he’d just been praising some of Vance’s answers. He rattled off the ways Trump tried to overturn his 2020 loss and noted that the candidate still insists he won that contest. Then Walz asked Vance if Trump actually lost the election.
Vance responded by asking if Harris censored people.
“That is a damning non-answer,” said Walz, noting that Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, wasn’t on the debate stage because he stood up to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, and presided over Congress’ certification of the former president’s loss.
“America,” Walz concluded, “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.”
