The border, housing prices, Vice President Kamala Harris’s record, and past statements from Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Gov. Tim Walz came up.
Cordiality amidst clashes marked the first and only vice-presidential debate of 2024.
The Oct. 1 CBS News event hosted by Norah O’Donnell, of CBS Evening News, and Margaret Brennan, of Face the Nation, pitted Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
While both were plainspoken and civil, Vance provided a crisp defense of former President Donald Trump’s America First policies while Walz, in defending the policies of the administration co-helmed by his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, stumbled at times.
Vance’s dominant debate performance earned him rare praise from some liberal media outlets. A majority of columnist and contributors, nine out of thirteen, surveyed by The New York Times said Vance won the debate. A CNN post debate poll saw Vance as the winner of the debate by a 2 percent margin.
Here are highlights of a debate that revealed commonalities and differences between the two Midwesterners.
Vance Highlights Harris’s Record, Walz Defends It
“If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle class problems, then she ought to do them now,” Vance said in his closing remarks.
The senator brought up Harris’s record on a range of issues from immigration and the economy to America’s ongoing housing crisis. He blamed Harris for moving to free up several billion in Iranian assets before the events of Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel.
“When did Iran and Hamas and their proxies attack Israel? It was during the administration of Kamala Harris,” Vance said.
Walz countered by claiming that Trump’s leadership had laid the groundwork for destabilization in the region.
“We need the steady leadership that Kamala Harris is providing,” he said.
Vance described a surge of immigrants in recent years as one of multiple factors increasing housing prices, pinning responsibility on Harris and her administration for relatively lower wages for domestic workers and other issues he tied to the border.
Walz responded in part by saying that the border crisis could have been addressed through the bipartisan bill advanced by Sen. Jim Lankford (R-Okla.) and others earlier this year, in line with arguments from Harris and other Democrats.
