Walz and Vance clash over abortion and immigration in vice-presidential debate | US elections 2024

Tim Walz and JD Vance took the stage Tuesday night for a vice presidential debate that was less dramatic than the presidential debate in September but offered insightful disagreements on abortion, school shootings and immigration.

Three weeks ago, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump endured an hour-and-a-half-long argument in which an emotional Trump was pushed to rail against the number of people attending his rallies and to call the vice president a “Marxist.” before reportedly threatening to sue one of the debate moderators. Harris enjoyed a brief boost in poll numbers due to this performance.

But on Tuesday, Walz and Vance largely avoided attacking each other, instead focusing their fire on each other's competitors. It was a more politically motivated discussion than that of her peers, although with a few gaffes that may overshadow some of the content in the coming days.

In a key exchange on abortion, Walz, the Minnesota governor, followed Harris' lead and used personal stories.

Trump “bragged about how great it was that he installed the justices and overturned Roe v. Wade,” Walz said. He mentioned the case of Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion in Texas despite serious health complications during her pregnancy – Zurawski is now among a group of women suing the state of Texas – and a girl in Kentucky who was raped as a child became a stepfather and became pregnant.

“If you don’t know (women like that), you will soon. Your 2025 project will have a pregnancy registry,” Walz said, which Vance refuted.

Walz also criticized Trump and Vance's position that states should decide whether women have access to abortion.

“That's not how it works. These are basic human rights. “We have seen a surge in maternal mortality in Texas that exceeds many other countries in the world,” he said.

When Harris was considering Walz as her vice presidential candidate, he reportedly told her that he was a terrible debater, and Vance, wearing a sharp blue suit, pink tie, lots of makeup and hair gel, looked the part right from the start more sophisticated performer. Walz, a former high school teacher and football coach, cut a more animated figure in a baggy black suit.

Vance, the senator from Ohio who has appeared regularly on right-wing news channels for years, appeared preened from the start, conveniently dodging the question of whether he thought the climate crisis was a “hoax” in favor of lamenting how much money was spent on solar panels.

Walz gained the nomination for vice president, among other things, through his confident appearances on cable news – which gave rise to his famous “strange” characterization of Vance and Trump – but initially seemed nervous and did not respond to his sharp criticism of his opponents.

Both men also frequently referenced their childhood in the Midwest.

“I'll be the first to tell you that I put my heart and soul into my community and tried to do my best, but I wasn't perfect and sometimes I'm a dick,” Walz said as he tried to compose himself to find his way around a question about his time in China. “But (Minnesotans) elected me to Congress for 12 years.”

Walz also criticized Trump and Vance for demonizing immigrants in Springfield, Ohio – the two falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating people's pets, leading to bomb threats and children in the city having to be escorted to school by police.

Asked about immigration, a key issue in November, Walz discussed Harris' history in California and showed that the real goal was for both he and Vance to flaunt their bosses' records rather than sell their own.

“Kamala Harris was the attorney general of the largest border state, California. She is the only person in this race who has prosecuted transnational gangs for human trafficking and drug interference,” Walz said.

Vance blamed Harris for the number of people crossing the border under the Biden administration, prompting Walz to raise the issue of a bipartisan border bill endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council that was torpedoed by Trump earlier this year .

“When the whole thing was about to be passed and actually started, Trump said 'no' and told them to vote against it because it was a campaign issue for them,” Walz said.

The immigration conversation led to an awkward moment for Vance. Trump has said that if elected he will carry out “the largest deportation in the history of our country,” but in a country where some families' children could be U.S. citizens born to noncitizen parents, He didn't explain how this was supposed to happen, that would work.

Asked whether a Trump administration would separate immigrant parents from their U.S. citizen children, Vance twice declined to answer.

Walz's missteps, meanwhile, were largely of style rather than substance, but could prove fodder for the right in the coming days. He was questioned about his false claim that he was in Hong Kong “when Tiananmen took place,” referring to the anti-government protests that culminated in the massacre of hundreds of people in June 1989. This week it emerged that Walz had traveled to China in August, two months later.

“Look, I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, a town of 400, a town where you rode bikes with your friends until the street lights came on, and I'm proud of that service,” Walz began. Answer when he said: tried to avoid the question altogether.

Pressed further, Walz said, “I got there that summer and I made a mistake.” So I'll just…that's what I said. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests. And through that I learned a lot about what’s required in governance.”

As the debate neared its end, both men were questioned about school shootings and asked whether AR-15 weapons, which have been used in several mass shootings, should be banned.

Vance called the school shootings “horrible stuff” before attempting to blame Harris for gun violence. He claimed there has been “a massive increase in illegal weapons used by Mexican drug cartels” – even though the weapons used in most school shootings were purchased legally. Democrats have pushed for stricter gun controls to curb mass shootings, but Vance took a different approach.

“What are we doing to protect our children? And I think the answer is, and I say this because I don't like the answer because I don't want my children to go to school in a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of safety, but Unfortunately, I think we need to increase security in our schools. We have to make sure the doors are locked better. We have to make the door stronger. “We need to make the windows stronger,” Vance said.

Walz was more direct. He said he met with the parents of the children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting and said, “Our first responsibility is to our children,” detailing his warning policy in Minnesota.

“I ask all of you out there: your schools have hardened into a fortress – is that what we have to go through?” he said.

“I think in the end we're looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it’s just the guns.”

But his strong response to gun reform was eclipsed on social media when he accidentally said he was “more friends with school shooters” than victims.

Vice presidents and their debates have typically been viewed as unimportant, and it remains to be seen what impact this debate will have. But with the election expected to be extremely close, the hour and a half of scrutiny and even the blunders would have been worth it if Vance or Walz had managed to convince a few voters.