Highlights from the Vance-Walz vice presidential debate

The two men trained the bulk of their attacks not on their on-stage rivals, but on the running mates who weren’t in the room.

Both vice presidential nominees sought to convey a genial mien as they lobbed criticism at Harris and Trump, respectively.

It was a reflection of the fact that most voters don’t cast a ballot based on the vice president, and on a vice presidential nominee’s historic role in serving as the attack dog for their running mates.

Walz pointedly attacked Trump for failing to meet his pledge of building a physical barrier across the entire U.S.-Mexico border at the country’s southern neighbor’s expense.

“Less than 2% of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime,” Walz said.

Underscoring the focus on the top of the ticket, during a back-and-forth about immigration, Vance said to his opponent: “I think that you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”

▶ Read more takeaways from tonight’s debate

In an age of world-class disses optimized for social media, Tuesday’s debate was a detour into substance. Both candidates took a low-key approach and both enthusiastically delved into the minutiae.

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.

▶ Read more takeaways from tonight’s debate

About 50 people attended a watch party held in the student union of Oakland University in the Detroit suburb of Rochester, Michigan.

Several student groups were represented at the event, including members of college Republican and Democratic clubs. Attendees were given red and green flags to wave or hold aloft if they either agreed or disagreed with a candidate’s point.

“I think they both did well to present the points that they wanted to make. I think Sen. Vance did what President Trump wanted to do, which was present his points -- as inaccurate as they may have been -- calmly without devolving into the chaos we witnessed (at the presidential debate),” said Marcus Johnson, a 20-year-old junior political science major from Southfield, Michigan.

Gio Liotti, a senior communication major, said the debate didn’t change her mind.

“I still am hoping that Harris and Walz will win, and my vote will definitely be for them,” the 25-year-old said. “But I am hoping that it did change other people’s minds, hopefully for the same side that I’m leaning.”

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.

▶ Read more takeaways from tonight’s debate

Vance explained his strategy as he talked to Fox News’ Sean Hannity after the debate.

“One of the things that I tried to do, Sean, obviously, was criticize Kamala Harris’ record,” Vance said, “but also remind the American people that Donald Trump is not the caricature that Kamala Harris and the media have made him out to be, that he was an incredibly effective president for four years in the Oval Office, that he actually solved problems.”

The Harris-Walz campaign is praising 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.

The family of Amber Thurman, a Georgia mother who died while waiting for an emergency room to treat medical complications after she took abortion pills, thanked Walz for mentioning her during Tuesday’s debate.

Thurman died in 2022, weeks after Georgia enacted a strict abortion ban, according to reporting by ProPublica. She waited roughly 20 hours, even developing sepsis, before emergency room doctors agreed to perform the medical procedure known as a D&C that she needed after developing complications from taking abortion pills.

“The fight for justice for Amber is a fight for every woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and access the medical care she needs,” the family said in a statement released through an attorney. “We will not stop until these dangerous laws are repealed, and no more lives are lost.”

Walz popped into Justino’s, a pizza shop across the street from the CBS Studios in New York, after the debate.

As the cameras cut off after the debate, Walz and Vance stared straight ahead with their hands clasped on the podium. They then shook hands and chatted.

Walz patted Vance on the side of his arm, and Vance gave Walz a pat on the back. At one point, Vance gavea hearty laugh.

Their wives soon entered the room. Usha Vance gave her husband a warm hug, while Gwen and Tim Walz chatted at the podium. Vance then introduced Usha to the moderators. “Thank you guys for hosting,” he said.

The Walzes also chatted with the moderators. “Really nice to meet you,” Gwen said. Walz then carefully led his wife out, gently telling her to watch her head from a hanging camera.

During the debate, Trump felt said that he would veto a federal abortion ban if it landed on his desk.

“EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!),” he wrote in all caps on Truth Social.

Trump had repeatedly declined to say during his own debate if he would veto an abortion ban if elected again. The question has lingered as the GOP nominee has shifted his stances on this key issue.

Vance had previously said that the former president would veto a ban. But during the presidential debate, Trump said he “didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness. And I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I don’t think he was speaking for me.”

Donald Trump Jr. is describing the debate as a “blowout” for Vance.

“We’re in the spin room, but there’s nothing to spin,” he says. “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.”

In response to a question on whether Vance would seek to challenge the results of this year’s election, the two men sparred over the state of American democracy. Vance said he was looking to the future, but Walz brought the discussion back to Trump’s incorrect disputing of the 2020 election.

Here was Walz:

And here was Vance:

Walz got through nearly two hours of debate without using the political catchphrase that made him most famous in national Democratic circles.

The Minnesota governor’s decrying Trump and top Republicans as “weird” was cheered by Democrats and helped Harris choose him as her running mate. But during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Walz never said his opponent, Trump or any other Republican was “weird.”

In fact, the only time the word came up was when Vance appeared to dismiss climate change as “weird science.”

Any Americans wondering about the two men’s foreign policy positions are still wondering after this debate.

Despite a turbulent week of attacks and counterattacks that had U.S. forces shooting down Iranian missiles Tuesday, moderators asked just one foreign-policy question. Vice presidents do get deputized for foreign policy missions, often weigh in on vital foreign policy decisions, and even sometimes become presidents, so it’s helpful to know their views.

The vice presidential debate has come to a close, and with it, very likely the entire 2024 debate season.

Over the course of nearly two hours, Walz and Vance tussled over a number of issues, including economic concerns, gun violence in schools, abortion and election integrity.

They also, for the most part, kept things civil, with each suggesting at different points that they believed their opponent would personally work toward solutions on key issues like immigration and health care.

But on a question toward the end about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, both candidates became impassioned and less collegial than they had been at other points.

There are no other upcoming debates on the calendar for either Vance and Walz or Trump and Harris.

Vance did not answer when Walz asked him directly if Trump lost in 2020.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said.

Walz responded: “That is a damning nonanswer.”

He noted that Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, is not on stage. Trump was furious at Pence for his refusal to go along with a plan to block the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Walz touted the coalition Kamala Harris has built “from Bernie Sanders, to Dick Cheney, to Taylor Swift.”

It’s time for closing statements, and Walz is going first.

Those watching the debate still didn’t get a clear answer on Trump’s plan for the Affordable Care Act, a program that more than 21 million people rely on for health insurance.

Vance appeared to backtrack on his recent comments suggesting that a Trump administration would undo protections for people with preexisting conditions, a crowning achievement of the law that was championed by President Barack Obama. Vance recently said that the marketplace should create different risk pools for Americans, based on their health and age. That plan could make health care coverage effectively unaffordable for the sickest Americans.

Right now, insurers are prohibited from charging more or refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

On Tuesday, Vance said, “We want to keep those regulations in place.”

Cutting away to commercial break, the moderators said the debate would continue.

The vice presidential debate has gone past the 90 minutes initially laid out for its duration.

When candidates are having an active back and forth, often networks will keep the program going, and that’s what’s happening on CBS News.

Vance repeatedly said Trump told people to “peacefully” protest on Jan. 6, 2021.

It’s true that Trump told the crowd gathered near the White House: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

But he ignored the other incendiary language Trump used throughout his speech, during which he urged the crowd to march to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify President Biden’s victory. Trump told the crowd: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” That’s after his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, declared: “Let’s have trial by combat.”

Vance has long argued policymakers should make it easier for two-parent households to be able to live on a single wage so that one of the parents can stay home and raise their children. He has criticized the Biden administration for policies he claims encourage parents to go back into the workforce, forgetting about those who prefer to care for their kids at home.

“Being a working mom, even for somebody with all of the advantages of my wife, is extraordinarily difficult,” Vance said at the debate. “The cultural pressure on young families, and especially young women, I think, makes it really hard for people to choose the family model they want.

“We should have a family care model that makes choice possible,” he said.

His tone was more measured than in past interviews before he joined the GOP ticket. He once said “the ruling class is obsessed with their jobs. Even though they hate a lot of their jobs, they are obsessed with their credentials and they want strangers to raise their kids.”
Vance is married to a trial lawyer he met at Yale Law School. The couple has three young children. Usha Vance left the law firm where she worked shortly after her husband was chosen as Trump’s running mate.

Vance is expected to follow Trump’s lead and appear in the spin room when he’s done. There’s already a crowd of journalists waiting for him to walk in.

When talking about the issue of gun violence, Walz said his son witnessed a shooting at a community center while playing volleyball.

According to a Walz aide, the shooting he was referring to happened in January 2023 at a recreation center in St. Paul, Minnesota.

An MPR News story on the shooting says a recreation center employee shot and critically wounded a 16-year-old during a fight with a group of teens. The man who pleaded guilty to the shooting was sentenced earlier this year to 10 years in prison.

Vance was asked about the Trump campaign’s plan to open up federal land to build new homes. He said there are lot of spaces that “aren’t being used for anything,” though Vance didn’t answer the question from moderators about where exactly that could happen in the country.

Harris, too, has noted that she would support repurposing “certain federal lands” for new housing in campaign materials.

Walz said that Harris would make paid family leave “a priority” if she won the White House and said paid leave was “moral.” He did not give specifics on how long they should get. He emphasized, too, that child care workers need raises. They are among the lowest paid in the nation, and as governor, he invested in increasing pay for child care workers.

Last year, Walz signed into law 20 weeks of paid family and medical leave for Minnesotans.

Walz appears to have mangled some words and phrases during the debate—and Donald Trump has taken notice.

After Walz said he had “become friends with school shooters,” Trump asked on his Truth Social site whether he had heard the Minnesota governor correctly: “what does he mean by this? Is he insane?”

One noticeable clunker came when Walz attempted to explain his inaccurate past remarks suggesting he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Movement.

Walz said he had misspoke and didn’t arrive in Hong Kong until August—after the protests. But then repeated that he had been in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests, which would be incorrect if he didn’t go until August.

Walz, who often speaks at a rapid clip, has long struggled with mangling phrases and words when he speaks publicly.

It’s nearly the end of the vice presidential debate, and the candidates are being asked about election integrity.

Vance boasted that Trump saved the Affordable Care Act, saying that his own relatives even moved off Medicaid onto the health care coverage.

His personal story isn’t reflective of reality.

After unsuccessfully lobbying to repeal the law, Trump’s administration spent less money on navigators, who help people enroll in the coverage. Enrollment consistently dropped by hundreds of thousands of people while he was president.

It has since rebounded dramatically during the Biden years with a record number of people enrolling in the program. The expansion is also because Democrats expanded eligibility for the coverage and allocated billions of dollars toward subsidies to make the plans cheaper. Those expire after next year.

About that immigration app ... Early in the debate, Vance talked about the CBP One app, which he said facilitated “illegal immigration.”

It’s a government app that migrants can use to schedule an appointment to present themselves at an official border crossing to seek entry into the United States. More than 800,000 people have made an appointment through the app since it was launched in January 2023.

The Biden administration says it’s a way to cut out smugglers and bring order to the border.

Republicans say it is basically an end-run around U.S. immigration law.

Vance said that at least one prominent economic analysis from the Federal Reserve supports his claims that immigrations are pushing up housing costs. The Ohio Republican senator didn’t have any details, but he was likely citing a May 2024 blog post by Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Kashkari says immigration’s long-run effect on inflation is “unclear,” but immigrants need a place to live and their arrival has overlapped with higher prices.

There might be upward pressure on home prices in some markets because of immigrants arriving, but most economists say the issue is a lack of supply of homes on the market. Homebuilders say they need the immigrants to build the homes.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a September news conference that high mortgage rates mean people aren’t listing their homes for sale and there has not been enough supply.

Vance has reimagined Trump’s role in former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

“Donald Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure Americans had access to affordable care,” Vance said.

In truth, Trump tried to persuade Congress to repeal the program known as Obamacare. Walz noted that those ambitions were thwarted by Republican Sen. John McCain, who cast the tiebreaking vote against repeal.

Despite trading frequent verbal barbs and repeatedly laying into each other’s running mates, both candidates in the vice presidential debate have kept things quite civil.

Both Walz and Vance suggested at different points that they believed their opponent would personally work toward solutions on key issues like immigration and health care. Vance even called Walz “Tim” several times.

When Walz talked about his teenage son having witnessed a shooting at a community center, Vance expressed empathy, saying, “I’m sorry about that. Christ have mercy.”

“I appreciate that,” Walz replied.

Democrats have criticized Trump’s remark during last month’s debate that he had “concepts of a plan” for a replacement to the Affordable Care Act, but his running mate says he understands why Trump phrased it that way.

“I think it’s very simple common sense,” Vance said, arguing that proposing a lengthy plan on a debate stage “would bore everybody to tears.”

Vance also noted that some of his relatives got private health insurance for the first time and switched from Medicaid during Trump’s administration.

On Tuesday, Vance said the never supported a national ban when running for the Senate in 2022. He said he wanted a “minimum national standard.” But he acknowledged the state of Ohio voted against his position on this issue.

Vance said the results of that ballot issue showed him that Republicans have “got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust.”

“So many young women would love to have families. So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships,” he said. “And we have got to earn people’s trust back.” He then said he and Trump would pursue “pro-family policies,” including making child care more accessible and making fertility treatments more accessible.

But Vance has said that he would vote for the national abortion ban at 15 weeks introduced by Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, but also believes in certain exceptions — such that the 10-year-old Ohio rape victim could have gotten her abortion in the state, for example. He did not explicitly say he supports a rape exception, rather implied that her case probably fell under the exception for protecting the life of the mother.

In a discussion about housing prices, Vance pivoted back to immigration.

Vance said, “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.”

Vance said that competition for “scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country.”

Despite what Vance says, most economists blame a long-term decline in the housing supply for the steady increase in home prices. The number of new homes under construction plunged from an annual pace of 1.4 million in April 2006 to barely above 400,000 in August 2011 and didn’t recover to 2006 levels until 2021.

In addition to attacking immigrants more broadly, Trump has lately been zeroing in on targeting immigrant kids, saying they are “poisoning” the schools.

On Tuesday, Vance mentioned schools being “overwhelmed” twice in his discussion about immigrants. Schools are barred from asking about immigration status and are obligated by the U.S. Constitution to educate all kids regardless of immigration status, but there are some conservative groups that have indicated they’re interested in chipping away the legal precedent.

Turning to the issue of gun violence, Vance was asked about whether holding the parents of mass shooters responsible for their children’s violent actions could curb the attacks. Vance didn’t directly answer the question, saying he trusts local law enforcement to make charging decisions.

“I think in some cases the answer is going to be ‘yes’ and in some cases the answer is going to be ‘no,’” Vance said. Instead of pressing for more gun restrictions, Vance said the country needs to increase security at schools.

The two men on stage shared personal stories of women to respond to questions about how their administration would handle abortion.

Walz talked about Amanda Zurwaski, a Texas who was denied an abortion despite developing a life-threatening infection, and Hadley Duval, who was 12-years old when she was raped and impregnated by her stepfather. He also suggested that Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who reportedly died in 2022 after waiting hours for an emergency room to treat her complications from taking abortion pills.

Walz highlighted Minnesota’s law that protects abortion rights, saying “There’s a very real chance had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today.”

Vance, meanwhile, appeared to soften some his abortion views on the debate stage. The vice presidential candidate said that growing up in Middletown, Ohio he knew many women who had unplanned pregnancies and opted for an abortion.

One close friend, Vance said, “told me something a couple of years ago that she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”

Vance said that he wants Republicans to offer “more options” to women to raise families.

Vance says “we have to increase security in our schools” to combat gun violence.

“We have to make the doors lock better,” Vance said, in response to a query about guns in schools.

Walz said that his 17-year-old son had witnessed a shooting at a community center and called for “reasonable things that we can do” to combat the problem, pivoting to Harris’ experience as attorney general.

Vance responded that he didn’t know Walz’s son had witnessed a shooting and said, “Christ have mercy.”

Vance has continued to play to the center in a departure from the kind of red-meat rhetoric he often used in appearances in conservative media before he was tapped as Trump’s VP choice.

His efforts to explain Trump’s policies and positions with a more gentle touch are also reminiscent of how former Vice President Mike Pence often operated when he and Trump were in the White House.

The two broke over Pence’s refusal to join his efforts to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The candidates are back for the second half of the vice presidential debate, and the first question is about gun violence.

Vance claimed that Walz signed a bill in Minnesota that says doctors are “under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.”

This claim misrepresents a bill Walz signed into law in 2023 updating language about the care of newborns.

The new language uses the phrase “an infant who is born alive” instead of “a born alive infant as a result of an abortion.” It statesthat medical personnel are required to “care for the infant who is born alive” rather than “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.”

Both the current version of the law and the 2015 version that was amended state that “an infant who is born alive shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law.”

Infanticide is criminalized in every state, including Minnesota, and the bill does not change that.

In a debate during his 2022 run for Senate, Vance said that he would be “totally fine” with a “minimum national standard” on abortion laws with “reasonable exceptions.”

He opposed Ohio’s Issue 1, a 2023 constitutional amendment that enshrined access to reproductive health care, including abortions, in the state constitution. Ohio voters supported the issue by nearly 57%.

Before the break, Vance said that the Trump tax cuts of 2017 led to an “American economic boom, unlike we’ve seen in a generation in this country.”

That’s an exaggeration — the U.S. economy grew 3% in 2018 under Trump, barely higher than the 2.9% growth rate under President Barack Obama in 2015. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% under President Trump, the lowest in decades, but it dropped a tick lower to 3.4% under President Biden — the lowest in a half-century.

Vance accused Harris of presiding over a period of a “record number of illegal crossings.”

In fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol encountered 2.2 million people crossing the border illegally, a historic high. The numbers went down slightly the next year but still high.

Republicans say that the Biden administration threw out Trump policies that were working to deter immigration. The Biden administration argues they were dealing with a unique set of circumstances where post-pandemic people all over the world are on the move.

And they argue they’ve put together policies that are now working to cut the numbers of asylum seekers at the southern border. After peaking last December the numbers have steadily fallen.

That’s the end of the first half of the vice presidential debate, and Vance and Walz have debated topics including the Middle East, immigration, the economy and abortion.

So far, they haven’t talked about issues related to race, civil rights, gun rights and national security.