Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz stunned watchers of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate as he nervously fidgeted, frowned and even called himself a “knucklehead” — while his Republican counterpart, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, gave a steady and lawyerly presentation and was widely seen as the victor.
The largely good-natured forum, hosted by CBS News, featured the two candidates agreeing with each other repeatedly and expressing warm personal sentiments — avoiding the blistering personal attacks that were part of both presidential debates earlier this year.
Walz, 60, who has honed a folksy demeanor on the campaign trail, was noticeably nervous and misspoke repeatedly as he wrung his hands and his eyes darted around the CBS studio.
Answering the very first question of the night, Walz expressed concern about “the expansion of Israel and its proxies” — instead of Iran and its proxies — when asked if he would support a pre-emptive Israeli strike targeting Iran’s nuclear weapon program.
The Minnesotan ultimately didn’t answer the question, with Vance, 40, saying he would leave the final decision up to the Israelis and support them regardless.
Walz still seemed nervous an hour later, declaring “I’ve become friends with school shooters” — when he seemed to mean victims — during an answer about gun control. Vance responded amicably and expressed his regret that the governor’s son had witnessed a shooting at a Minnesota community center.
The Democrat stumbled again, in what will be the most replayed moment of the debate, when he was asked about fresh reporting that he lied about having been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in the spring of 1989.
“Look, I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community,” Walz said in a rambling initial response. “I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that those same people elected me to Congress for 12 years.”
Co-moderator Margaret Brennan pressed: “Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy? “
Walz, visibly shocked and dismayed by the blunt follow-up, claimed that “I got there that summer and misspoke on this.”
Neither Vance nor the moderators raised Walz’s alleged embellishment of his military exploits or use of fertility treatments to help his wife conceive children, despite Republicans focusing on both in recent weeks.
Walz at one point praised Donald Trump’s running mate for giving viewers “the conversation they want to hear” about the future of the country, in an apparent reference to the civility of the debate.
Vance, who spoke about his mother’s struggle with opioid addiction while urging greater US-Mexico border security and about his grandmother sometimes turning the heat off in the winter to save money, stood the most to gain from showing amiability.
In one of his best-received answers, Vance recalled that someone “very dear to me” had an abortion in past and told him “she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”
Vance, who had been asked about Republicans’ abortion policies, used the story to pivot to noting the GOP ticket’s proposals to make fertility treatments free and improve home affordability.
When pressed by co-moderator Norah O’Donnell on his appearing to distance himself from a proposed federal abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Vance cited his own state’s pro-abortion rights outcome in a 2023 referendum.
“We had a referendum in 2023 and the people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position,” Vance said.
“And I think that what I learned from that, Norah, is that we’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust. So many young women would love to have families. So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships, and we have got to earn people’s trust back. And that’s why Donald Trump and I are committed to pursuing pro-family policies, making child care more accessible, making fertility treatments more accessible, because we’ve got to do a better job at that and that’s what real leadership is.”
The 40-year-old Republican entered the debate with a more negative appraisal by the public — with a 10.3% deficit in his own favorability ratings, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, versus Walz’s plus-2.5% favorability rating.
It appeared to pay off handsomely, with venerable pollster Frank Luntz finding that in a 14-person focus group of undecided voters across seven battleground states, 12 concluded that Vance won the debate.
Other commentators gave a similar assessment of Walz’s performance.
“Dems are fortunate presidential debates tend to matter a lot more than VP debates,” wrote Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
“Walz looks rusty and nervous. Maybe he should have done some press interviews to better prepare,” tweeted Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin — noting the relative sparsity of Walz’s media engagements.
“15 minutes in and its clear that Walz not doing interviews was a big mistake: He’s nervous and JD is comfortable because he’s been in doing an adversarial interview a day since he was picked,” wrote “Breaking Points” cohost Saagar Enjeti.
Veteran political commentator Chris Cillizza, formerly of CNN and MSNBC, wrote toward the end: “Vance is winning the debate. He is clearly the best debater of the 4 candidates running for president or vice president. His abortion answer/pivot was masterful. Walz has been fine — but uneven. His answer on the lie that he was in China during Tiananmen Square was AWFUL.”
Vance has done more than 60 interviews since since becoming former President Donald Trump’s running mate, versus a mere handful by Walz.
The Republican kept an even keel in the rare moments the debate got contentious, at one point speaking even as his microphone was cut off when he challenged a moderator’s fact-check claim.
When Brennan said that thousands of Haitian migrants awaiting asylum rulings while living in Springfield, Ohio, “have legal status” — Vance was ready with his counter-argument that they arrived under an illegal expansion of “parole” by the Biden-Harris administration.
“Since you’re fact checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” Vance protested. “So there’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”
Republicans have argued that the program exceeds the administration’s legal authority and that parole should not be granted categorically.
Vance, meanwhile, praised some of the Harris-Walz campaign’s policies, including on expanding housing construction and affordability, but repeatedly pressed on why Harris has not already made good on her policy pledges while in office.
“Some of those ideas actually think are halfway decent, and some of them I disagree with,” Vance said.
“The most important thing here is Kamala Harris is not running as a newcomer to politics. She is the sitting vice president, if she wants to enact all of these policies to make housing more affordable I invite her to use the office at the American people already gave her not sit around and campaign and do nothing.”
