Vance and Walz remain civil in policy-driven VP debate

Trump’s shadow was inescapable as the candidates juggled with questions covering starkly different visions for America

- ALEX WOODWARD

Donald Trump may not have been in the room for the one and only vice-presidential debate, but there was no escaping his presence.

His running mate JD Vance was tasked with wrangling policy positions out of Mr Trump’s chaos, while Tim Walz sought to make the case why the former president should never be elected again, even quoting his opponent’s statement that he once believed Mr Trump “unfit” for higher office.

Tuesday’s 90-minute debate in New York is likely to be the last among any of the candidates before election day, and the only prime-time matchup between Democratic and Republican running mates who offered up their starkly different visions for America’s future.

Both men shook hands before and after the debate, and Mr Vance often mentioned that he agreed with Mr Walz about finding solutions for a number of crises facing Americans, especially lower-income and middle-class families. Mr Vance sought to distance himself from his false claims about migrants eating pets and his “cat ladies” remarks that have dominated the campaign.

But he used his newly polished veneer to make false and misleading claims about Mr Trump’s agenda, from calling his anti-abortion platform a way to “make it easier for moms to have babies” to brazen revisionist history that suggested the former president saved the Affordable Care Act.

Mr Vance also praised Mr Trump for agreeing to leave the White House in January 2021 as part of his peaceful transfer of power – papering over the violent attack on the Capitol days earlier. The two candidates juggled more than a dozen detailed questions about foreign policy, the climate crisis, immigration, childcare, housing, gun violence and abortion rights before concluding with a biting back-and-forth about the 2020 election, 6 January and whether Mr Trump and Mr Vance will accept 2024’s results.