Notes From a Phony Campaign: The Great Un-Debate

+ This week’s vice-presidential debate, one of the most tedious and dull in US history, was praised by the punditocracy for its civility. Is civility in politics what we want when the current government is arming a genocide and the rival campaign wants to arrest 15 million people and deport them?

+ Before I fell into a stupor, I counted Walz saying “I agree” with the racist misogynist JD Vance at least six times. It was like listening to a table talk between Biden and Strom Thurmond in the Senate cafeteria. Why did Walz try to humanize a jerk who claims Haitians are BBQing pets?

+ The “big moment” of the night was the first moment of the night when both candidates agreed that Israel could obliterate Iran at will, as far as they were concerned…

+ CBS’s debate moderators, Margaret Brennan and Nora O’Donnell, described Iran’s attacks on Israel as “failed”–without explaining what the strategic objectives might have been. In their minds, if Iran didn’t kill a bunch of Israeli civilians, the strike had to be a failure, even though it degraded Israel’s military. It’s apparently inconceivable to them that Iran (the terror state) could have launched retaliatory airstrikes designed to minimize civilian casualties by targeting only military and intelligence sites.

+ Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, Maj Gen Mohammad Bagheri: “Among our targets were Israel’s three main airbases, Mossad’s terror HQ, Radar sites, and gathering sites of armored vehicles around the Gaza Strip, responsible for the genocide in Gaza. Only military sites were targeted. If Israel is not contained by the US and Europe and takes action against our sovereignty and territorial integrity, tonight’s operation will be repeated in much greater size.”

+ How many schools, tents or hospitals did Iran bomb?

+ Here’s the entire dispiriting exchange on the Middle East…

Margaret Brennan: Earlier today, Iran launched its largest attack yet on Israel. But that attack failed thanks to joint U.S. and Israeli defensive action. President Biden has deployed more than 40,000 U.S. military personnel and assets to that region over the past year to try to prevent a regional war. Iran is weakened, but the U.S. still considers it the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and it has drastically reduced the time it would take to develop a nuclear weapon.  It is down now to one or two weeks. Governor Walz, if you are the final voice in the situation room, would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran? You have two minutes.

TW: Well, thank you. And thank you for those joining us at home tonight. Let’s keep in mind where this started. On October 7th, Hamas terrorists massacred over 1400 Israelis and took prisoners. Iran, or, Israel’s ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental, getting its hostages back, fundamental, and ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there. You saw it experienced today, where, along with our Israeli partners and our coalition, able to stop the incoming attack. But what’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter. It’s clear. And the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago. A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need at this moment. But it’s not just that. It’s those that were closest to Donald Trump that understand how dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous. His Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said that he was the most flawed humanity being he’d ever met. And both of his Secretaries of Defense and his national security advisors said he should be nowhere near the White House. Now, the person closest to them, to Donald Trump, said he’s unfit for the highest office. That was Senator Vance. What we’ve seen out of Vice President Harris is we’ve seen steady leadership. We’ve seen a calmness that is able to be able to draw on the coalitions, to bring them together, understanding that our allies matter. When our allies see Donald Trump turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness around holding the coalitions together, we will stay committed. And as the Vice President said today, we will protect our forces and our allied forces, and there will be consequences.

MB: Governor, your time is up. Senator Vance, the same question, would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran? You have two minutes.

JDV: So, Margaret, I want to answer the question. First of all, thanks, Governor. Thanks to CBS for hosting the debate. And thanks most importantly to the American people who are watching this evening and caring enough about this country to pay attention to this vice presidential debate. I want to answer the question, but I want to actually give an introduction to myself a little bit because I recognize a lot of Americans don’t know who either one of us are. I was raised in a working-class family. My mother required food assistance for periods of her life. My grandmother required Social Security help to raise me. And she raised me in part because my own mother struggled with addiction for a big chunk of my early life. I went to college on the GI Bill after I enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in Iraq. And so I stand here asking to be your vice president with extraordinary gratitude for this country and for the American dream that made it possible for me to live my dreams. And most importantly, I know that a lot of you are worried about the chaos in the world and the feeling that the American Dream is unattainable. I want to try to convince you tonight over the next 90 minutes that if we get better leadership in the White House, if we get Donald Trump back in the White House, the American Dream is going to be attainable once again. Now, to answer this particular question, we have to remember that as much as Governor Walz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line. Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. What do they use that money for? They use it to buy weapons that they’re now launching against our allies and, God forbid, potentially launching against the United States as well. Donald Trump recognized that for people to fear the United States, you needed peace through strength. They needed to recognize that if they got out of line, the United States’ global leadership would put stability and peace back in the world. Now, you asked about a preemptive strike, Margaret, and I want to answer the question. Look, 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 they’re fighting the bad guys. I think that’s the right approach to take with the Israel question.

MB: Thank you, Senator. Governor Walz, do you care to respond to any of the allegations?

TW: Well, look, Donald Trump was in office. We’ll sometimes hear a revisionist history, but when Donald Trump was in office, it was Donald Trump who… we had a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program in the inability to advance it. Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership. And when Iran shot down an American aircraft in international airspace, Donald Trump tweeted, because that’s the standard diplomacy of Donald Trump. And when Iranian missiles did fall near U.S. troops and they received traumatic brain injuries, Donald Trump wrote it off as headaches. Look, our allies understand that Donald Trump is fickle. He will go to whoever has the most flattery or where it makes sense to him. Steady leadership like you witnessed today, like you witnessed in April. Both Iranian attacks were repelled. Our coalition is strong, and we need the steady leadership that Kamala Harris is providing.

MB: Senator Vance, the U.S. did have a diplomatic deal with Iran to temporarily pause parts of its nuclear program, and President Trump did exit that deal. He recently said just five days ago, the U.S. must now make a diplomatic deal with Iran because the consequences are impossible. Did he make a mistake? You have 1 minute.

JDV: Well, first of all, Margaret, diplomacy is not a dirty word, but I think that’s something that Governor Walz just said is quite extraordinary. You, yourself, just said Iran is as close to a nuclear weapon today as they have ever been. And, Governor Walz, you blame Donald Trump, who has been the Vice President for the last three and a half years, and the answer is your running mate, not mine. Donald Trump consistently made the world more secure. Now, we talk about the sequence of events that led us to where we are right now, and you can’t ignore October the 7th, which I appreciate Governor Walz bringing up. But when did Iran and Hamas and their proxies attack Israel? It was during the administration of Kamala Harris. So Governor Walz can criticize Donald Trump’s tweets, but effective, smart diplomacy and peace through strength is how you bring stability back to a very broken world. Donald Trump has already done it once before. Ask yourself at home, when, when was the last time? I’m 40 years old. When was the last time that an American President didn’t have a major conflict, breakout? The only answer is that during the four years that Donald Trump was president,

+ Jeet Heer: “The Biden White House has October Surprised their own candidate. A historical first, I think.”

+ When the Biden-Harris people say Israel has the “right to defend itself,”  they leave out the part about that defense coming with the unquestioning US intelligence, logistical, targeting, and military support–regardless of the provocation that made the defense necessary.

+ Shortly before the debate, Trump once again tried to minimize the traumatic brain injuries suffered by more than US troops after an Iranian missile strike in 2020: “What does injured mean? You mean because they had a headache?” 

+ A report by CBS found that dozens of injured soldiers initially weren’t awarded Purple Hearts, despite appearing to qualify, because the military brass feared undercutting Trump’s assertion that the injuries were minor. One soldier told CBS, that he suffered constant headaches and memory loss as a result of the TBI: “The person I was prior to a traumatic brain injury, he’s gone.”

+ Parapraxis as truth: Walz: “The expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute fundamental necessity for the United States…”

+ Shamefully, there were no questions on the genocide in Gaza, despite Unicef reporting that in less than a year of war, more Palestinian women and children have been killed by Israel (most with US-made weapons) than in any other conflict in the last 20 years.

+ As for climate change, even amid the carnage inflicted by Hurricane Helene, Vance accepted the premise that there is a scientific consensus on human-caused climate change only “for the sake of argument, while Walz weirdly bragged about Biden-Harris turning the US into “an energy superpower.”

+ Here’s the extent of the stultifyingly simplistic back-and-forth on climate change and Hurricane Helene: Walz talks mainly about jobs and increasing oil and gas production, and Vance complains that most solar panels used in the US are made in China (they aren’t)…

Nora O’Donnell: Let’s turn now to Hurricane Helene. The storm could become one of the deadliest on record. More than 160 people are dead and hundreds more are missing. Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger and more deadly because of the historic rainfall. Senator Vance, according to CBS News polling, seven in ten Americans and more than 60% of Republicans under the age of 45 favor the U.S. taking steps to try and reduce climate change. Senator, what responsibility would the Trump administration have to try and reduce the impact of climate change? I’ll give you two minutes.

JDV: Sure. So first of all, let’s start with the hurricane because it’s an unbelievable, unspeakable human tragedy. I just saw today, actually, a photograph of two grandparents on a roof with a six-year-old child, and it was the last photograph ever taken of them because the roof collapsed, and those innocent people lost their lives. And I’m sure Governor Walz joins me in saying our hearts go out to those innocent people, our prayers go out to them. And we want as robust and aggressive as a federal response as we can get to save as many lives as possible. And then, of course, afterward, to help the people in those communities rebuild. I mean, these are communities that I love, some of them I know very personally. In Appalachia, all across the Southeast, they need their government to do their job. And I commit that when Donald Trump is president again, the government will put the citizens of this country first when they suffer from a disaster. And Norah, you asked about climate change. I think this is a very important issue. Look, a lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns. I think it’s important for us, first of all, to say Donald Trump and I support clean air and clean water. We want the environment to be cleaner and safer, but one of the things that I’ve noticed some of our democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions. This idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change. Well, let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science. Let’s just say that’s true. Well, if you believe that, what would you, what would you want to do? The answer is that you’d want to reshore as much American manufacturing as possible and you’d want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world. What have Kamala Harris’s policies actually led to? More energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business in some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world. When I say that, I mean the amount of carbon emissions they’re doing per unit of economic output. So if we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people. And unfortunately, Kamala Harris has done exactly the opposite.

Nora O’Donnell: Governor Walz, you have two minutes to respond.

TW: Well, we got close to an agreement because all those things are happening. Look, first of all, it is a horrific tragedy with this hurricane, and my heart goes out to the folks that are down there in contact with the Governors. I serve as co-chair of the council of governors as we work together on these emergency managements. Governors know no partisanship. They work together to… all of the Governors and the emergency responders are on the ground. Those happen on the front end. The federal government comes in, makes sure they’re there, that we recover. But we’re still in that phase where we need to make sure that they’re staying there, staying focused.

Now, look, coming back to the climate change issue, there’s no doubt this thing roared onto the scene faster and stronger than anything we’ve seen. Senator Vance has said that there’s a climate problem in the past; Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in. What we’ve seen out of the Harris administration now, the Biden Harris administration is, we’ve seen this investment, we’ve seen massive investments, the biggest in global history that we’ve seen in the Inflation Reduction Act, has created jobs all across the country. Two thousand in Jeffersonville, Ohio. Taking the EV technology that we invented and making it here. Two hundred thousand jobs across the country. The largest solar manufacturing plant in North America sits in Minnesota. But my farmers know climate change is real. They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods, back to back. But what they’re doing is adapting, and this has allowed them to tell me, “Look, I harvest corn, I harvest soybean, and I harvest wind.” We are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have. We’re also producing more clean energy. So the solution for us is to continue to move forward, that climate change is real. Reducing our impact is absolutely critical. But this is not a false choice. You can do that at the same time you’re creating the jobs that we’re seeing all across the country. That’s exactly what this administration has done. We are seeing us becoming an energy superpower for the future, not just the current. And that’s what absolutely makes sense. And then we start thinking about, “How do we mitigate these disasters?”

Nora O’Donnell: Thank you, Senator. I want to give you an opportunity to respond there. The Governor mentioned that President Trump has called climate change a hoax. Do you agree?

JDV: Well, look, what the President has said is that if the Democrats, in particular, Kamala Harris and her leadership, if they really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America, and that’s not what they’re doing. So clearly, Kamala Harris herself doesn’t believe her own rhetoric on this. If she did, she would actually agree with Donald Trump’s energy policies. Now, something Governor Walz said, I think is important to touch upon, because when we talk about “clean energy,” I think that’s a slogan that often the Democrats will use here. I’m talking, of course, about the Democratic leadership. And the real issue is that if you’re spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of American taxpayer money on solar panels that are made in China, number one, you’re going to make the economy dirtier. We should be making more of those solar panels here in the United States of America.

TW: We are in Minnesota.

JDV: Some of them are, Tim, but a lot of them are being made overseas in China, especially the components that go into those solar panels. So, if you really want to make the environment cleaner, you’ve got to invest in more energy production. We haven’t built a nuclear facility, I think one, in the past 40 years. Natural gas. We have got to invest more in it. Kamala Harris has done the opposite. That’s raised energy prices and also meant that we’re doing worse by the climate.

Nora O’Donnell: Senator, your time is up.  Governor, would you like to respond?

TW: Well, look, we’re producing more natural gas than we ever have. There’s no moratorium on that. We’re producing more oil. But the folks know, and my… like I said, again, these are not liberal folks. These are not folks that are green, new deal folks. These are farmers that have been in drought one year and massive flooding the next year. They understand that it makes sense. Look, our number one export cannot be topsoil from erosion from these massive storms. We saw it in Minnesota this summer. And thinking about, “How do we respond to that?” we’re thinking ahead on this and what Kamala Harris has been able to do in Minnesota, we’re starting to weatherproof some of these things. The infrastructure law that was passed allows us to think about mitigation in the future. How do we make sure that we’re protecting by burying our power lines? How do we make sure that we’re protecting lakefronts and things that we’re seeing more and more of? But to call it a hoax and to take the oil company executives to Mar-a-Lago, say, give me money for my campaign and I’ll let you do whatever you want. We can be smarter about that. And an all of the above energy policy is exactly what she’s doing, creating those jobs right here.

+ Trump on climate change: “The planet has actually gotten a little bit cooler recently. Climate change covers everything. It can rain, it can be dry, it can be hot, it can be cold. Climate change. I believe I really am an environmentalist. I’ve gotten environmental awards.”

+ Meanwhile, the Desert Southwest experienced the most extreme high temperatures ever recorded in October.

+ Trump on the Green New Deal, getting more and more insane: “They wanted to rip down all the buildings in Manhattan and they wanted to rebuild them without windows. Take a look; you have to see the bathrooms. Basically, water-free bathrooms, no water. It’s so gross.”

+ What kind of anti-social personality type is still watching this debate, I ask myself, while watching the debate…

+ Vance tried to excoriate Walz for signing a bill that supposedly allowed “allowed babies that survived an abortion to die.” “The statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion,” Vance charged.

+ Walz’s response was defensive and weak. “These are women’s decisions to make about their health care decisions, and the physicians know best when they need to do this…He’s trying to distort the way a law is written to try and make a point. That’s not it at all.”

+ The Minnesota law Vance was referring to changed a requirement that medical personnel seek to”preserve the life” of an infant who is born alive after an attempted abortion to say instead that they must “care” for infants born with fatal complications.

+ In fact, abortions late in pregnancy are extremely rare to non-existent. Abortions at or after 21 weeks (5 months) account for less than 1% of all abortions in the U.S., per the CDC, and most of these are performed because of severe health issues. 94% take place at 13 weeks or earlier. Only abortion in the third-trimester termination (32 weeks) was reported in 2022.

+ In trying to present himself as a more compassionate anti-abortion zealot, Vance said that the Trump-era GOP had to work harder at “earning the American people’s trust back” on the issue of abortion “where they frankly, just don’t trust us.” Then, in almost the next breath, Vance denied he’d ever supported a national ban on abortion. A lie, but one which Walz failed to highlight. In 2022, Vance supported Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill to ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

+ Vance told many stories about how government programs had helped his poor family, programs he now wants to eliminate.

+ Vance’s solution to the housing crisis is to build housing on national forests and BLM lands. Will Cliven Bundy’s cows still get to graze on their lawns? Another question about the Trump-Vance housing plan: who will build the houses after the mass deportation of immigrants, who make up more than 33% of the construction industry workforce in the US?

+ Trump at a rally the day of the debate: “I shouldn’t say this. I know a lot about overtime. I hated to give overtime; I hated it. I’d get other—I shouldn’t say this–but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t + pay.”

+ Walz often sounded like he was running for reelection as Governor of Minnesota and, given her + rightward drift, it’s debatable how many of the programs he kept pointing to in his state Harris would now support.

+ By my estimate (and I stopped counting after a while), Walz said, “I agree with JD” at least six times in an attempt to manufacture an illusory common ground on issues like guns, trade, and health care that no longer exists.

+ Vance’s absurd claim that most US mass shootings are the result of illegal guns flowing from Mexico to the United States is the reverse of what’s really taking place, as the drug cartels arm themselves with weapons imported from the US.

+ Vance: “The gross majority, close to 90 percent in some of the statistics I’ve seen, of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms.”