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The vice presidential debate between Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio was a civil and policy-oriented affair, and it included some important developments.
Both men admitted they had been wrong on past comments.
On many things they agreed, perhaps drawing a roadmap for bipartisan efforts on issues as varied as child care, housing and the economy.
Vance also issued a somewhat stunning acknowledgment that Americans don’t trust Republicans on the issue of abortion.
Here are key lines from the debate, which was hosted by CBS News in New York City on Tuesday.
I want to answer the question, but I want to actually give an introduction to myself a little bit, because I recognize a lot of Americans don’t know who either one of us are.
Vance
Vance rattled off the short version of his own inspiring biography, which includes that he was raised by a grandmother on Social Security and that he joined the military and went to college on the GI Bill.
I want to try to convince you tonight over the next 90 minutes that if we get better leadership in the White House, if we get Donald Trump back in the White House, the American dream is going to be attainable once again.
Vance
Vance was effusive in his praise of former President Donald Trump’s leadership and argued how much better things were during the Trump administration. Walz frequently allowed those claims to go unchecked, even when they were untrue.
The first question the men answered was about whether Israel should be able to strike at Iran. Walz turned that question back to Trump’s fitness.
It’s clear, and the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago: A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment.
Walz
Walz might have preferred to have Trump on the debate stage Tuesday night. Vance said many of the things Trump says, but he did it with a control that Trump lacks. Vance said Trump was effective as a world leader because of “effective deterrence,” which basically means people were afraid of him.
It is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe, and we should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys. I think that’s the right approach to take with the Israel question.
Vance
Vance directly answered the Israel question. One wonders how he would apply the “we should support our allies” test to NATO, the alliance Trump frequently criticizes.
I’m 40 years old. When was the last time that an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out? The only answer is during the four years that Donald Trump was president.
Vance
Trump’s foreign policy was not without issues. He tried to pull the US out of Afghanistan by negotiating with the Taliban, something President Joe Biden later controversially completed. Trump negotiated, unsuccessfully, with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He undid the diplomatic agreement by which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program. He also ordered missile attacks in Syria and the killing of an Iranian official in Iraq and a terrorist leader in Syria. The world was not exactly a quiet place.
Look, a lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns. … 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.
Vance
Is that an acknowledgment by a top Republican of human-caused climate change? Hard to tell. Vance’s answer went on to make the argument that Trump’s proposals to massively increase oil production and invest in US manufacturing would help fight climate change better than Democratic proposals that acknowledge climate change.
Walz shot back that the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act had actually made investments in American manufacturing focused on the green economy:
Sen. Vance has said that there’s a climate problem in the past. Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in.
Walz
Vance probably said more about the issue of immigration than anything else. He deflected from a question about mass deportation and whether Trump would separate undocumented immigrants from their American-born children to say the US must first focus on the border. He also tried to tie immigration to inflation, housing prices, the gun violence epidemic and more.
We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris started and said that she wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies.
Vance
Walz argued that Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is tired because he did not solve the border issue or immigration while he was in the White House:
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.
Walz
Walz pointed out Trump’s role in helping to kill a bipartisan immigration bill and said there’s enough agreement in Congress to get something done. Later, Vance would say the same thing about the economy. The two men actually both repeatedly talked about how they agree on a lot of issues.
We could come together and solve this if we didn’t let Donald Trump continue to make it an issue.
Walz
Walz was critical of Trump and Vance for spreading false information about the Haitian community of immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Vance did not retreat from his claim that immigrant communities are destroying American towns:
In Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed. You’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes. The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border.
Vance
To which Walz brought out a Bible verse:
I don’t talk about my faith a lot, but Matthew 25:40 talks about, ‘To the least amongst us, you do unto me.’ I think that’s true of most Americans. They simply want order to it.
Walz
Here’s the verse, which is slightly different. It was an important moment to quote a Bible verse – a clear outreach to religious Americans on the border issue.
Following Walz’s response, one of the CBS moderators fact-checked Vance on his argument that the lives of Springfield residents are being “destroyed” by illegal immigrants. The Haitians currently in Springfield are, by and large, in the US legally.
The audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut.
Margaret Brennan, CBS debate moderator
When Vance pushed back and tried to argue the legal process is flawed and Walz pointed out the law has been on the books since 1990, they devolved into talking over each other. CBS cut the mics.
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
Vance is arguing Trump’s tax cuts that passed in 2017 caused a boom economists don’t think it caused. Cuts were focused on wealthy Americans and corporations, and the law drove deficit spending. Vance’s focus on “common sense” instead of experts like economists is something he came back to during the debate.
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.
Walz
Walz is more trusting of the experts. He also made a point about the current tax system benefiting people like Trump – who reports have shown has not paid income tax in some years – over working-class Americans.
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. We’re not going to stop by listening to experts. We’re going to stop it by listening to common sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.
Vance
It’s not too far a leap from here to the vaccine skepticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has endorsed Trump. But the anti-elitism of ignoring “experts” continues. Pharmaceuticals were a subject of conversation later in the debate, when Walz argued Harris should get credit for the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress giving Medicare new power to lower drug costs by negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies.
All I said on this was, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just – that’s what I’ve said.
Walz
Walz has several times during his career talked about being in Hong Kong when democracy protests occurred in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. There’s evidence suggesting he wasn’t in the region until later that year, after the protests took place.
The misstatements feed a narrative that he can misspeak on key details. It also plays into scrutiny by Republicans of his time in China. This admission came after he first failed to answer a question from one of the debate moderators about the discrepancy and instead talked about his time leading school trips to China.
Separately, Vance was asked why people should trust him now after his many previous criticisms of Trump and Trump’s policies. Now he’s a true believer:
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.
Vance
Vance also acknowledged that Republicans need to regain the trust of Americans on the issue of abortion. He has previously supported severe restrictions on abortion rights, a position he said voters don’t share:
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, Nora, is that we’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust.
Vance
Walz said women want to have rights from Roe v. Wade restored:
Just mind your own business on this. Things worked best when Roe v. Wade was in place.
Walz
Walz also referenced multiple women by name who have been impacted by Roe’s overturning and forcefully argued that women should have control over their bodies across the country. He referenced Amber Thurman, a woman who died in Georgia after waiting too long for care after Georgia’s six-week abortion ban went into effect. A state judge this week struck down that law in Georgia.
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?
Walz
On guns, Vance argued Americans should focus on school safety since guns are here to stay.
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.
Vance
Walz said his son once witnessed a shooting at a community center. Experiences like that and meeting with parents who lost children in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting while he was a member of Congress have changed Walz’s tune as gun owner. At one point, Walz misspoke and said he was friends with school shooters. He presumably meant victims of school shootings.
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.
Walz
Vance said the difference between the US and other countries with high rates of gun ownership, like Finland, is a mental health crisis. Walz said it’s dangerous to simply blame mental health.
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.
Walz
Vance found many opportunities to bring the conversation back to undocumented immigrants.
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, which does drive up costs.
Vance
Both Walz and Vance offered up ideas on how to solve the housing crisis. One thing Walz and Harris want to do is give $25,000 credits to first-time homebuyers, something Walz disputed would just drive up prices. Vance tried to explain Trump’s idea to just build housing on federal land, an idea for which there are few specifics.
Vance also tried to give Trump credit for Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, even though Trump tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to kill the law. After years of defeat, he allowed some changes to be made.
I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which is doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.
Vance
Now Trump says he still wants to replace the Affordable Care Act and he has “a concept” of a plan, but he has not released specifics. Vance said it would be silly to talk about a new proposal at the debate.
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.
Vance
The issues of child and family care were a moment for some bipartisan agreement. Both men seemed optimistic about a federal family leave program, although such a plan has eluded both the Trump and Biden administrations.
A federal program of paid family medical leave and help with this will enhance our workforce, enhance our families, and make it easier to have the children that you want.
Walz
Vance complained that women feel too much pressure to work rather than freedom to have families.
Cultural pressure on young families and especially young women, I think, makes it really hard for people to choose the family model they want.
Vance
Vance struggled to explain Trump’s claim that tariffs would pay for a new child care benefit. It wasn’t clear if Vance was talking about the government or individuals paying more money for better child care.
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.
Vance
Child care was another of the issues on which the two men saw some agreement.
I don’t think that Sen. Vance and I are that far apart. I’m not opposed to what he’s talking about on options.
Walz
But there was a wide gulf between the men on the issue of democracy. Vance tried to argue that Trump’s role on and leading up to January 6, 2021, was peaceful – a take that is the opposite of what federal prosecutors and the House January 6 committee have found. He tried to argue that discouraging misinformation is a bigger threat to democracy.
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 6.
Vance
Trump did much more than tell protesters to peacefully protest. But the very next words out of Walz’s mouth were:
I’ve enjoyed tonight’s debate, and I think there was a lot of commonality here. And I’m sympathetic to misspeaking on things.
Walz
That was a prelude to him trying to say that Vance was completely wrong about the threat to democracy posed by Trump, which Walz said is still alive:
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.
Walz
Trump has shown no indication he will accept the election results if he loses. Vance seemed to say it doesn’t matter if Trump accepts the results or not, or whether he tries to overthrow the election or not, as long as power transfers on Inauguration Day.
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.
Vance
Walz asked Vance if he would agree that Trump lost the 2020 election, to which Vance said he’s focused on the future. Walz called that a “damning non-answer.” It was one of Walz’s stronger moments but came at the end of the debate.
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.
Walz
