Updated 12:26 pm, October 2, 2024
12 months ago
From Jack Birle
This concludes the Washington Examiner’s coverage of the vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz.
The debate Tuesday is likely the last of any type for the presidential race, with only 34 days remaining until Election Day. Read more from the Washington Examiner here.
12 months ago
From Jack Birle
The vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz went through significantly more policy than other debates this cycle but still left many viewers with more questions than answers.
Prior to and during the debate, people across the country were searching on Google about topics at the center of the presidential election, including crime, social security, and abortion.
Google Trends found several specific queries that were widely searched during the 90-minute debate on Tuesday night, with the most searched issue in all 50 states being abortion.
Several of the questions people searched included: “Why was the border bill rejected?” “What percentage of solar panels are made in china?” and “Why is daycare so expensive?” Queries about a fact check for the debate, abortion laws in Minnesota and Texas, and gun laws in Finland, were also widely searched, according to Google Trends.
12 months ago
From Asher Notheis
Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called on Walz to explain a comment he made about becoming “friends with school shooters,” a statement she said she considers “incredibly odd.”
Walz made the remark during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate against Vance when providing an answer on gun violence within the nation. The Minnesota governor’s comment on becoming friends with school shooters has been highlighted by many on social media, with Leavitt wondering if Walz misspoke.
“I have yet to hear him correct the record on that,” Leavitt said on Newsmax’s The National Report. “He should because if he is truly friends with school shooters, I think that disqualifies him from being vice president of the United States. But his whole answer on that issue, the Second Amendment, was terrible. You heard him at the end there saying, ‘Sometimes it’s just the guns.’ I’m sorry, what? People have to pull the trigger of the gun.”
Click here to read more.
12 months ago
From Andi Shae Napier
The two Midwestern vice presidential candidates surprisingly agreed on seven different topics throughout the night.
On American manufacturing, Vance said the Trump administration would bring energy and industry back to the United States rather than receive it from trade deals overseas. Walz agreed that was the way forward for workers.
“Much of what the senator said right there, I’m in agreement with him on this,” Walz said. “We’re in agreement that we bring those home.”
Read the six other times they agreed on policy, including immigration, abortion, and school shootings.
12 months ago
From Mabinty Quarshie
With roughly five weeks left until Election Day, the Haley Voters for Harris group launched a seven-figure digital ad campaign Wednesday afternoon, targeting center-right voters in seven battleground states.
National campaign director Craig Snyder said the campaign will emphasize the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin but will also target voters in the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia.
“We believe our messaging will be an important factor in 25-40 percent of Haley voters and like-minded voters joining a broad, big-tent coalition to elect Harris,” Snyder said in a statement.
Click here to read more.
12 months ago
From Asher Notheis
Vance reflected that Walz was given “a very tough job” in defending Harris at Tuesday’s debate.
Trump’s running mate explained his goal for the debate was to discuss “substance” with voters and explain how the country’s current leadership has failed them. When asked if he believed Walz looked nervous at all, Vance said he did not notice since he was nervous himself and was focused on what his opponent was saying.
“To be fair to Tim Walz, he had a very tough job, and that is to defend the policies of Kamala Harris,” Vance said in his first post-debate interview on Fox News’s Hannity. “He does, and look, Kamala Harris has done this. Her policy failures have made food, housing, energy unaffordable. We just need a change in this country. We need to get back to the commonsense leadership of Donald Trump. I’m not surprised that Tim couldn’t defend that record. Who could?”
Click here to read more of Vance’s comments about the debate.
12 months ago
From Keely Bastow
Walz will begin a media spree today that will run through next week.
Walz will embark on a bus tour of central Pennsylvania today, then head to Ohio on Saturday, then visit the West coast for stops in California, Washington, and Nevada, the Washington Post reported.
In addition, he’s booked for multiple media spots on national news network and late-night shows. Walz was very active with news interviews when Harris was announced as the successor on the Democratic presidential ticket this summer. Once he was picked as her vice presidential running mate, however, the frequency of his media appearances slowed to a crawl — not unlike Harris’s.
12 months ago
From W. James Antle III
Vance dominated the debate against Walz, most importantly showcasing a softer side in a series of surprisingly civil exchanges.
Vance entered the debate confronting a paradox: He has probably been the most effective of the four major-party ticket nominees on the campaign trail, and he has certainly done the most interviews of the bunch, many of them adversarial. But polling also showed Vance to be the least liked.
Now the question is whether public attitudes about Vance are malleable enough to change at this point in the campaign. It is no surprise that the Hillbilly Elegy author and erstwhile commentator was a capable debater, whereas Walz reportedly warned Democrats he was not the strongest debater during the vice presidential selection process.
Read more post-debate analysis here.
12 months ago
From Byron York
“I guess we now know the story about Walz being nervous and a bad debater wasn’t an expectation-lowering exercise — it was a leak,” said one top Republican leaving the just-concluded vice presidential debate late Tuesday night. Indeed, when the debate began at 9 p.m., it was clear from its first moments that Walz was just what the stories had said — nervous and a bad debater. It was also clear that Vance was going to win the debate decisively.
Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of the Trump campaign, said he could tell what was happening almost immediately. When I asked what the key moment of the debate was, LaCivita quickly answered, “The first 20 seconds.” Why was that? “Because the first question out of the gate is dealing with leadership on the world stage, everything going on in the Middle East, and Tim Walz comes up onstage and he’s completely rattled. He does not project the image of the type of leadership that you want in the White House. So right then and there framed the whole thing.”
Yes, it did. Walz’s shaky start cast a pall over the night for Democrats, and even when he got better, which he did, Walz still wasn’t as good as Vance.
Read more of Byron’s analysis of last night’s debate.
12 months ago
From Mike Brest
Walz and Vance expressed support for Israel but criticized the other side for the tension permeating throughout the Middle East.
Tuesday’s vice presidential debate came just hours after Iran carried out a significant aerial attack on Israel, firing about 200 ballistic missiles from Iranian soil toward Israel. Israel’s air defenses were able to intercept most of the missiles with the help of the U.S. military, and Israel’s leaders have vowed to retaliate.
Walz did not directly answer the first question asked of him by the moderators, which was whether each candidate would support an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran, while Vance countered that he would defer to Israel for how it would respond.
“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 fighting the bad guys,” the Ohio senator said.
Read more of our debate coverage here.
12 months ago
From Washington Examiner Staff
This post marks the end of the Washington Examiner‘s live coverage of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate. Check back in tomorrow for more coverage of the showdown between Vance and Walz.
12 months ago
From Mabinty Quarshie
The vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz featured far fewer fireworks than the presidential debate between Trump and Harris.
The two running mates lobbied most of their attacks against their rival presidential candidates, opting to refrain from attacking each other harshly.
But it was Vance’s smooth performance, pivoting away from his more pugnacious attacks that won him plaudits post-debate, as experts wondered where Walz’s famous Midwestern dad energy had gone.
Click here to read the full story.
12 months ago
From Naomi Lim
Vice presidential nominees Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) had one responsibility during their first and only debate and possibly the last head-to-head of the 2024 election.
That responsibility was to “do no harm” to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump one month before voters cast their final ballots when the two presidential nominees are within the margin of error nationally and the cycle’s seven battleground states.
Pollster Berwood Yost underscored how vice presidents try to help the top of the ticket during their debate, while putting down their opponents, with their success measured against how well they communicated their campaign’s messaging and priorities, in addition to any new concerns they raise about their opponent’s policies or capacity to lead the country.
Click here to read the full story.
12 months ago
From Jack Birle
The Harris-Walz campaign renewed its call for Harris and Trump to face off in another presidential debate before Election Day.
Trump had offered three debates, the ABC debate the two participated in last month, along with Fox News and NBC debates in September, which Harris declined. Harris’s campaign has pitched a CNN debate on Oct. 23, which Trump has declined so far.
In a statement claiming victory in the vice presidential debate, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Haris-Walz campaign chairwoman, said, “Harris believes that the American people deserve to see her and Trump on the stage one more time.” O’Malley Dillon said Harris will be in Atlanta on Oct. 23, challenging Trump to do the same.
INBOX: Harris campaign's post-VP debate statement calls for another debate with Trump with just one month left until election day pic.twitter.com/ITONa0yFBc
— Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) October 2, 2024
Trump responded shortly after, saying it is “too far down the line” and that voting has already begun in several states.
“Lyin’ Kamala just put out a request for another Debate because they lost so badly tonight — Again, it’s like the fighter who lost, gets up and says, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ I beat Biden, I then beat her, and I’m not looking to do it again, too far down the line. Votes are already cast — And I’m leading BIG in the Polls. I’ll MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, she’s incapable of it!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
12 months ago
From Jack Birle
Vance blamed Harris for Iran’s attack on Israel Tuesday, arguing that Iran feels empowered to do so because they do not know where she stands on the Middle East.
The Ohio senator, speaking on Fox News after the debate on Tuesday, blasted her policy toward Israel – specifically with the Jewish State’s ability to defend itself. He also took aim at Biden’s handling of the Middle East as president.
“You talk about how they have cozied up to this weird pro-Hamas wing within their own party. Well they’re doing that of course because of political reasons, but it shows that confusion that comes out of that policy invites a lot of aggression, and invites a lot of bad guys doing terrible things,” Vance said. “And it also motivates a lot of really stupid policy.”
