Vice presidential nominees Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz met in New York City on Tuesday night for what will likely be the final debate between the Trump and Harris campaigns before the Nov. 5 election.
Hosted by CBS News, with Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan serving as moderators, the candidates spent 88 minutes clashing over policy issues from two very different American perspectives.
The debate opened with a question about whether or not the candidates would support an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran. Walz did not say whether he would support a preemptive strike. He called for the hostages to be returned, for the humanitarian situation in Gaza to be resolved, and for standing with Israel after it was attacked by Iranian missiles.
Vance said it’s Israel’s decision on what it should do to respond to Iran after it launched a massive attack on Israel earlier in the day.
Immigration
The moderators pressed Vance on details for Trump’s immigration plans, which the senator said will involve deporting “criminal migrants” and will “make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers.”
Vance then went on to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris, who some have described as Biden’s border czar, for 320,000 migrant children that the Department of Homeland Security has allegedly lost.
“We have to stop the bleeding. We have a historic immigration crisis,” said Vance, adding that many of these lost children are subject to sex trafficking and are potentially working as drug mules.
When moderators asked Walz about recently unearthed claims that he was not in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, as he once claimed, the governor launched into his life story and admitted he’s “a knucklehead, at times,” and said he often “will get caught up in the rhetoric.”
After he was pushed again to answer the question, Walz said he “misspoke” about the timeline, but defended his travel experience, and said, “I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”
When asked why voters say they trust Trump on the economy more, Walz said, “I’m a union guy on this. I’m not a guy who wanted to ship things overseas,” and then accused Trump’s China trade policies of being ineffective.
The conversation got heated when it shifted to abortion, with Vance denying he ever supported a national ban.
Finding himself in a surprising position as Trump’s running mate just a few years after being outspokenly anti-MAGA, Vance was asked to explain why he changed his views on the former president.
When questioned about his past criticism of Trump, Vance admitted he was wrong about the 45th president and said he feels differently now. “When you misspeak, when you get something wrong, you oughta be honest with the American people about it,” he said.
Contrasting Styles
A contrast in style was apparent in both men’s behavior, as Walz appeared to be taking notes all throughout, while Vance did not.
In a statement released after the debate, the Harris campaign said, “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.”
Meanwhile, Trump gave a glowing review of Vance’s debate performance. “JD crushed it!” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform.
He described Walz’s performance as a “disaster” and added that “Our Country would never be able to recover from an Administration of these two,” referring to Walz and Harris.