At VP debate, Vance repeats debunked claims, minimizes Jan. 6, gets upset over mild fact-checking

At Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate in New York City, Republican nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) and Democratic nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz seemed to channel every bit of an era gone by — civility.

Yet even with the conversational tones and lack of explosive outbursts shown by former President Donald Trump a few weeks prior, Vance yet again showed the nation that he’s unable to not lie for an extended period of time. 

From the outset, Vance seemed to dial heavily into his Yale-polished debate skills to try and overpower Walz, who was leaning into his well-popularized “Midwestern Dad” speaking style. While it led to a policy-focused discussion from the outset, things quickly went left after Margaret Brennan, anchor of CBS’s “Face The Nation” and debate co-moderator, fact-checked Vance to say that Springfield, Ohio’s unfairly maligned community of Haitian immigrants was in the country legally. Vance erupted into a tirade about how live fact-checking was not part of the rules, prompting the other moderator Norah O’Donnell to cut his mic. As Vance kept talking, Brennan had to explain to the senator that his microphone was off and that no one could hear him. 

From the perspective of voters and analysts watching both at home and at network-observed focus groups, it was this moment that Vance started to come “unhinged.” From there, he referenced a female friend of his who had an abortion, saying “God love you!” but then failed to connect the reference to the question at hand, which was whether or not Vance and Trump would implement a national registry of pregnancies. Vance failed to answer the question, saying that the U.S. needed to be more “family friendly”, which Walz used as an opportunity to pounce on the rise in maternal mortality across the U.S. since Roe v. Wade was overturned two years ago. 

His performance continued to implode from there, as Vance glaringly refused to answer whether or not Trump won the 2020 election, with Walz jumping in to say it was a “damning nonanswer.” Groups of undecided voters being polled by MSNBC, CNN, and Politico all pointed to this answer as the moment they all decided that Walz had won the debate, or at least came across more trustworthy than Vance. 

While vice-presidential debates are widely seen as inconsequential, this year’s likely set a critical tone of what voters can expect from each candidate. While Vance and Walz are both likely to defend and represent the top of their ticket; Vance made clear that he’s not only willing to lie, but lie about settled facts to the entire nation. Whether that makes a dent in the outcome will be seen next month.