Race to the Bottom of the Burn Pile

A few things struck me about the Vice-Presidential debate between Tim Walz and J.D. Vance. In general, I was a bit surprised that both candidates were civil toward one another and I appreciated that they went back and forth a bit in more of an actual debate format.

In appearance and style I would say Vance won the debate. He was calm and very polished while Walz seemed a bit nervous and repeatedly jumped to the next part of his answer before finishing the first. Vance appeared in command of his comments and the setting and I suspect he’s jumped on the Trump train, despite having formerly been one of Trump’s biggest critics, to position himself as leader of the far-right MAGA Republicans when the aged Trump finally leaves the scene.

While he put on a strong appearance, when it came to substance Vance lied repeatedly. The most gob-smackingly blatant was his claim that Trump saved the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) when in fact Trump fought over and over again to repeal the ACA and has vowed to do so on day one if he gets reelected. Vance lied when he said he never supported a national abortion ban even though we can just Google it and see his own words supporting such a ban. Vance said, "Thanks to Kamala Harris' open border, we've seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel."  In fact, long-standing evidence shows that the gun-smuggling route is going the opposite direction and, as I’ve written about before, Mexican officials have pleaded with U.S. gun manufacturers to stop the illegal flow of weapons across the border. Vance also blamed Harris letting fentanyl into, “communities at a record level.” In reality, reports show that fentanyl coming into the U.S. is down and fentanyl-related deaths have dropped ten-percent. Vance also squirmed and refused to answer the question whether he believed Trump lost the election in 2020.

Walz’s worst moment was when the moderators asked him about an apparently false-claim he made that he had been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre. He fumbled around, tried to redirect his answer to focus on Trump complimenting Chinese President Xi Jinping on his handling of the 2020 pandemic, but when pressed finally just said he had misspoken and that sometimes he, “was a knucklehead.” It would have been so much better if he’d just said he’d made a mistake and misspoken about when he arrived in Hong Kong.