- Tim Walz and JD Vance are debating on Tuesday night for the first and only time.
- It’s likely to be the last faceoff of the 2024 election. Trump has refused to debate Harris again.
- Here are the biggest takeaways from the debate so far.
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota met on Tuesday night for the first and only vice presidential debate.
It’s the third general election debate of the 2024 campaign, following the June 27 debate that triggered President Joe Biden’s eventual dropping out of the race and the September debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
It’s likely to be the last of the 2024 campaign. Trump has refused to debate Harris again.
Tuesday night’s faceoff represents an opportunity for both Walz and Vance to introduce themselves to their biggest audience yet while reinforcing their respective running mates’ campaign messages.
Here’s how to watch the debate — and here are the biggest takeaways so far.
Vance appeared more polished than Walz out of the gate
The first question of the debate was about the Middle East in light of an Iranian missile attack on Israel earlier on Tuesday. Both men were asked whether they would support a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran.
Walz appeared to stumble over his words at first as he affirmed Democrats’ standard line on Israel — that they support the Jewish state’s right to defend itself while acknowledging the humanitarian suffering in Gaza.
At one point, the Minnesota governor declared that the “expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute fundamental necessity for the United States,” seemingly confusing Israel with Iran, a country whose proxies include Hamas and Hezbollah.
Walz then pivoted to attacking Trump, saying that “a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment.” He did not directly address the question about an Israeli strike.
Vance, on the other hand, started with his biography. “I recognize a lot of Americans don’t know who either one of us are,” he said, recounting the life story that he first detailed in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
The Ohio senator later addressed the question by saying that he would support an Israeli strike if that’s what Israel decided to do, saying the country should do “what they think they need to do to keep their country safe.” He also argued that Trump kept the world safe by “establishing effective deterrence” and that “people were afraid of stepping out of line.”
Walz and Vance clash over climate change
Both Walz and Vance acknowledged the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene, which caused catastrophic flooding throughout parts of the Southeast, especially in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
However, the two men then diverged sharply on the issue of climate change, which Democrats have overwhelmingly championed as a defining issue of our time, while many GOP lawmakers have generally dismissed it as one that’s been overstated.
At first, Vance’s message appeared to acknowledge climate change.
“A lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns,” he said. “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 then the Ohioan questioned whether carbon emissions are the main driver of climate change. He then remarked that the US needed to produce more energy within its borders.
Walz responded by praising the Inflation Reduction Act — which made big clean energy investments — and hammered the Trump-Vance ticket over what he said was their record on the climate.
“My farmers know climate change is real,” Walz said, tying the issue to his experience as a Midwestern governor. “They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods — back-to-back.”
Walz then sought to elevate the Biden-Harris record on energy production.
“We are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have,” the governor said. “We’re also producing more clean energy. So the solution for us is to continue to move forward. That climate change is real.”
Vance largely dodged on immigration — and eventually, mics were cut
In a portion of the debate about immigration policy, Vance was asked to be more specific about Trump’s plan for mass deportations — specifically whether his administration would separate families in the case where parents entered the country illegally, but the children are citizens.
He largely avoided and deflected on the question. “We already have massive child separations thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border,” Vance said, pointing to what he said were instances of possible sex trafficking.
Vance also largely dodged a question about Congress’s role in immigration policy as Walz argued for the merits of a bipartisan immigration bill that Trump and Republicans moved to tank earlier this year.
“Most of this is about the president and the vice president empowering our law enforcement to say, ‘If you try to come across the border illegally, you’ve got to stay in Mexico,'” Vance said.
Eventually, the Ohio town of Springfield came up — and things got testy when the moderators noted that the bulk of the Haitian migrants in the city are in the country legally.
That led Vance to begin arguing with the moderators. As he began describing the asylum process, the moderators cut him off, eventually cutting both his and Walz’s microphones.
A discussion about the economy turned into a debate over the wisdom of experts
When asked about their economic plans, each candidate made their standard pitch. Walz touted Harris’s “Opportunity Economy” policies, including an expanded child tax credit and encouraging the construction of more housing.
Vance argued that voters should consider the state of the economy under Trump, which he said was largely strong until the pandemic. He then argued against the experts who’ve said Trump’s plan would increase the deficit.
“They have PhDs, but they don’t have common sense and they don’t have wisdom,” Vance said.
That led Walz to make an appeal to the power of experts. “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.”
Vance then retorted, claiming that experts “lied” about the impact of offshoring US manufacturing.
“Governor, you say trust the experts,” Vance said. “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.”
Walz was pressed about his Tiananmen Square claims
Walz has previously claimed to have been in Hong Kong both before and during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, according to CNN, despite contemporaneous newspaper reports indicating that he did not travel to the territory until after the massacre. Walz made those claims in a 2019 radio interview and during a 2014 congressional hearing.
The Minnesota governor was pressed about that discrepancy during the debate, and he largely turned to his biography.
“I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times,” Walz said. “Many times, I will talk a lot, and I will get caught up in the rhetoric.”
When pressed further, he said: “I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just say that’s what I’ve said. I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests.”
Vance explained his shift toward a ‘states rights’ abortion position
The Ohio senator was pressed about his shift from supporting federal restrictions on abortion to the “states rights” approach favored by his running mate, Donald Trump.
Vance pointed specifically to the results of a 2023 referendum in Ohio in which the Buckeye State voted to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. “The people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position,” he said.
Vance said, as he has before, that Republicans have “got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust” on the issues.
“So many young women would love to have families,” Vance said. “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.”
The two VP candidates shared a moment of comity over gun violence
In a debate that was already strikingly collegial, the two candidates shared a rare moment of empathy over gun violence.
It came after Walz mentioned that his 17-year-old son Gus witnessed a shooting in a community center while playing volleyball.
“First of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting. I’m sorry about that,” Vance said when it was his turn to speak. “Christ have mercy.”
The two otherwise stuck to their respective partisan positions on gun violence, with Walz arguing for gun-control laws as Vance promoted school security measures.
“We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger,” Vance said. “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.”
“Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?” Walz later said.
