By BILL BARROW, ZEKE MILLER and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice Presidential hopefuls Tim Walz and JD Vance squared off Tuesday night time in what would be the final debate of the 2024 presidential marketing campaign. It was the primary encounter between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator, following final month’s debate between the tops of their tickets, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
No extra debates are on the political calendar earlier than Election Day. Tuesday’s confrontation got here as the worldwide stakes of the competition rose once more as Iran fired missiles at Israel. The vice presidential hopefuls sparred over the violence within the Center East, local weather change and immigration. Listed below are some takeaways from Tuesday’s debate.
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With Mideast in turmoil, Walz guarantees ‘regular management” and Vance presents ’peace via energy’
Iran’s ballistic missile assault on Israel on Tuesday elicited a distinction between the Democratic and Republican tickets on overseas coverage: Walz promised “regular management” underneath Harris whereas Vance pledged a return to “peace via energy” if Trump is returned to the White Home.
The differing visions of what American management ought to appear to be overshadowed the sharp coverage variations between the 2 tickets.
The Iranian menace to the area and U.S. pursuits around the globe opened the talk, with Walz pivoting the subject to criticism of Trump.
“What’s basic right here is that regular management goes to matter,” Walz mentioned, then referenced the “practically 80-year-old Donald Trump speaking about crowd sizes” and responding to world crises by tweet.
Vance, for his half, promised a return to “efficient deterrence” underneath Trump towards Iran, brushing again on Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her function within the Biden administration.
“Who has been the vp for the final three and a half years and the reply is your operating mate, not mine,” he mentioned. He pointedly famous that the Hamas assaults on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, occurred “throughout the administration of Kamala Harris.”
Vance and Walz punch up quite than at one another
Vance and Walz skilled the majority of their assaults not on their on-stage rival, however on the operating mates who weren’t within the room.
Each vice presidential nominees sought to convey a genial mien as they lobbed criticism at Harris and Trump, respectively.
It was a mirrored image of the truth that most voters don’t solid a poll based mostly on the vp, and on a vice presidential nominee’s historic function in serving because the assault canine for his or her operating mates.
Walz pointedly attacked Trump for failing to satisfy his pledge of constructing a bodily barrier throughout your complete U.S.-Mexico border on the nation’s southern neighbor’s expense.
“Lower than 2% of that wall obtained constructed and Mexico didn’t pay a dime,” Walz mentioned.
Underscoring the deal with the highest of the ticket, throughout a back-and-forth about immigration, Vance mentioned to his opponent: “I feel that you simply need to resolve this downside, however I don’t assume that Kamala Harris does.”
Each candidates put a home spin on local weather change
Within the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Vance took a query about local weather change and gave a solution about jobs and manufacturing, taking a detour round Trump’s previous claims that world warming is a “hoax.”
Vance contended that the easiest way to struggle local weather change was to maneuver extra manufacturing to america, as a result of the nation has the world’s cleanest vitality financial system. It was a distinctly home spin on a worldwide disaster, particularly after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the worldwide Paris local weather accords throughout his administration.
Walz additionally stored the local weather change focus home, touting the Biden administration’s renewable vitality investments in addition to report ranges of oil and pure fuel manufacturing. “You possibly can see us changing into an vitality superpower sooner or later,” Walz mentioned.
It was a decidedly optimistic tackle a pervasive and grim world downside.
Walz, Vance every blame opposing presidential candidate for immigration stalemate
The 2 operating mates agreed that the variety of migrants within the U.S. illegally is an issue. However every laid the blame on the opposing presidential nominee.
Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris the “border czar” and urged that she, as vp, single-handedly rolled again the immigration restrictions Trump had imposed as president. The outcome, in Vance’s telling, is an unchecked circulate of fentanyl, pressure on state and native assets and elevated housing costs across the nation.
Harris was by no means requested to be the “border czar” and she or he was by no means particularly given the accountability for safety on the border. She was tasked by Biden in March 2021 with tackling the “root causes” of migration from the Central American international locations of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and pushing leaders there and in Mexico to implement immigration legal guidelines. Harris was not empowered to set U.S. immigration coverage — solely the president can signal govt orders and Harris was not empowered as Biden’s proxy in negotiations with Congress on immigration legislation.
Walz superior Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly killed a bipartisan Senate deal to tighten border safety and increase the processing system for immigrants and asylum seekers. Republicans backed off the deal, Walz famous, solely after Trump mentioned it wasn’t adequate.
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