No Breakouts in Polite VP Debate as Walz Calls Himself a ‘Knucklehead’, Vance Spars with Moderators

by Ben Whedon

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, both candidates held their own politely, although a handful of awkward moments from Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and the moderators sparring with Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, drew much attention.

The debate, moderated by CBS News’ Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell, marked the only scheduled confrontation between Vance and Walz of the 2024 election cycle. Both participants largely answered the moderators’ questions and at various points the two engaged in polite conversation express their agreement with each other.

But the moderators’ lopsided fact-checking against Vance largely overshadowed the policy exchanges between him and Walz, who made a handful of awkward blunders. However, neither candidate got meaningful hits on the other.

Still, pollster Frank Luntz indicated that his pre-debate focus group ultimately broke 12-2 in favor of Vance, with only five leaning toward Republicans at the start of the debate.

Walz’s blunders

While discussing gun violence, Walz explained his past opposition to an assault weapons ban and why he changed his position to support such a measure. During the conversation, he claimed his transition followed a meeting with the families of school shooting victims, but awkwardly said, “I’ve become friends with school shooters” in an apparent gaffe.

“Sometimes it’s just the guns,” Walz continued. ‘It’s just the weapons. And there are things you can do about it, but I do think this is a healthy conversation. I think there is a capacity to find solutions to this that work. Protect the Second Amendment, protect our children. That is our priority.”

On a separate note, moderators pressed Walz about his previous claim that he had been in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. However, local newspaper reports in Nebraska indicate that Walz only left for Hong Kong after the protests subsided last.

Walz did not address the discrepancy, but said, “I’m an idiot sometimes,” and admitted, “I’ll get caught up in the rhetoric,” before focusing on his support of his local community.

“It’s always been about those same people who elected me to Congress for 12 years, and in Congress I was one of the most bipartisan people working on things like farm bills that we got done, working on veterans benefits, and then the people of Minnesota was able to elect me governor twice,” he said.

Fact checks

During the debate, moderators also tried to fact-check Vance, leading to tense discussions as he pushed back on their comments. While not as intense or rampant as the lopsided fact-checking against former Republican President Donald Trump that marked ABC News’ presidential debate, the moderators were generally lopsided in their intrusions on Vance.

In one conversation, Brennan intervened to address the influx of Haitian immigrants into Springfield, Ohio, saying, “just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio has a large number of Haitian immigrants with legal status, temporary, protected status . ”

Vance then objected to Brennan’s intrusion.

“Margaret, the rules were that you guys didn’t do fact checking, and since you do fact checking, I think it’s important to say what’s really going on,” he said, before explaining what he called the ‘fact check’ mentioned. “facilitating illegal immigration.”

“So there’s an application called the CBP One app, which allows you to continue as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and get legal status on the wave of a (Vice President) Kamala Harris open boundary stick,” he said. “That’s not someone coming in, applying for a green card and waiting ten years, that’s facilitating illegal immigration, Margaret, by our own leadership.”

Brennan then replied sarcastically, “Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process.” The comment drew a rebuke from Trump, who chastised her on Truth Social for cutting Vance’s microphone to prevent him from responding.

Another moment saw a moderator press Walz to respond to Vance’s claims about fentanyl trafficking and using children as drug mules, but he appeared to misquote him, saying he had claimed that Harris was “letting fentanyl in and using children as used drug mules.”

“I didn’t accuse Harris of inviting drug mules,” Vance countered. “I said she has enabled the Mexican drug cartels to operate freely in this country, and we know they are using children as drug mules, and it is a shame and it has to stop.”

Choice of questions

During the debate, moderators also largely left out a range of important policy issues, such as energy, as Vance noted in his closing statements.

Iran, for example, received only a single query just hours after the country launched a volley of missiles against Israel. Both candidates were pressed on their potential support for a pre-emptive strike on Iran, although foreign policy was largely left unaddressed.

Prominent in the debate were issues of disproportionate importance to Democrats, including abortion policy and climate change. Housing costs and inflation also played a prominent role.

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Ben Whedon is a reporter for Just the News.