The vice presidential candidates outlined vastly different visions for the country and traded barbs about their qualifications Tuesday during their first and only debate before Election Day.
Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, who’s on the ticket with former President Donald Trump, and Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris, stuck to their rehearsed, scripted remarks to answer many questions, though they deviated from the talking points more than once.
Here are 10 telling moments from the vice presidential debate, moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan at CBS studios in New York City:
Vance on his past negative comments about Trump: “When you screw up, when you misspeak, when you get something wrong and you change your mind, you ought to be honest with the American people about it. It’s one of the reasons, Margaret, why I’ve done so many interviews, is because I think it’s important to actually explain to the American people, where I come down on the issues and what changed.“
“I’ve been extremely consistent that I think there were a lot of things that we could have done better in the Trump administration in the first round, if Congress was doing its job.”
Walz on bipartisan immigration bill and threats against Haitian immigrants: “We could come together and solve this if we didn’t let Donald Trump continue to make it an issue. And the consequences in Springfield (Ohio) were the governor had to send state law enforcement to escort kindergartners to school.”
Vance on the legislative branch: “Congress is not just a high-class debating society. It’s not just a forum for senators and congressmen to whine about problems. It’s a forum to govern. So there were a lot of things on the border, on tariffs, for example, where I think that we could have done so much more if the Republican Congress and the Democrats in Congress had been a little bit better about how they govern the country.”
Walz on access to fertility treatments: “Infertility treatments are why I have a child. That’s nobody else’s business.”
Vance on reproductive rights: “I want us as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home, so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.”
Walz on trade and tariffs: “Look, I’m a union guy on this. I’m not a guy who wanted to ship things overseas. But I understand that, look, we produce soybeans and corn; we need to have fair trading partners. That’s something that we believe in. I think the thing that most concerns me on this is Donald Trump was the guy who created the largest trade deficit in American history with China.”
Vance on debating national health care policy: “You’re not going to propose a 900-page bill standing on a debate stage. It would bore everybody to tears, and it wouldn’t actually mean anything, because part of this is the give-and-take of bipartisan negotiation.”
Walz on previously saying he was in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre: “I’m a knucklehead at times.”
Vance on housing shortages: “What Donald Trump has said is we have a lot of federal lands that aren’t being used for anything, they’re not being used for a national park … and they could be places where we build a lot of housing. And I do think that we should be opening up building in this country.”
Walz on the peaceful transition of power following the election: “So America, I think you’ve got a really clear choice on this election of who’s going to honor that democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump.”
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