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Going into the first and only vice presidential debate of the twenty twenty four US election, Tim Walls and JD. Vance had a clear job keep the momentum going for their running mates and do no harm. Both candidates double down on their ticket stances on issues like climate change and conflict in the Middle East. But tonight, the major takeaway from the event was just how civil it all was.
First of all, Governor, I agree with you. I agree with a lot of what gender vants said.
If Tim Walls is the next vice president, he'll have my prayers, he'll have my best wishes, and he'll have my help.
Tonight was a chance for the candidates to explain and sell their running mates' positions. Did they pull it off? Today? On the show, Walls and Vance faced off on the CBS debate stage. All the clips you'll hear are of CBS News. Bloomberg Senior editor Wendy Benjaminson joined me to break down the key moments from the night and what they say about the current state of the race. This
is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. Wendy, thanks so much for being here and staying up late with us.
Oh my pleasure, Wendy.
This is the first time we've seen vice presidential candidates jd Vance and Tim Walls debate each other, and it's likely the last time we'll see them in conversation like this before the election. What did they have to do on behalf of their campaigns tonight and were they effective?
I think they were somewhat effective. What they had to do was make the Boss look good. Basically, they had to give voters even more reason to vote for the top of the ticket of their choice. Jd Vance presented himself as a reasonable sounding version of Trump. He presented himself as senatorial, as a reasonable, policy focused, almost wonk type. Tim Wallas was every man. He was midwester or nice. But jd Vance did a better job of selling Donald Trump than Tim Walls did of selling Kamala Harris.
I think, well, it's interesting. The debate we watched tonight felt a lot different than the one we watched just a few weeks ago. Between Harris and Trump. There were a few tense moments, to be sure.
Thank you, senator for describing the legal process. They have so much ticket to a senator. The audience can't hear you because your mics are cut.
But overall it felt a lot nicer. How would you describe the tenor of the debate, Wendy, That might have been.
The most shocking takeaway of the whole thing, after watching Trump's anger at the last debate, after watching Kamala Harris try to ensnare him and their performance, there was none of that tonight. They agreed with each other, They nodded at each other's answers, and it was actually a little bit surprising and maybe a harbinger for the post Trump era when candidates can go back to treating each other
with respect. The most consequence that a vice presidential debate can have is booster and that politician's career, And in that sense, I think JD. Vance may have set himself up to be a possible Republican nominee for president in the future, especially if he and Trump win in November. Tim Walls wasn't really burdened by that. In this debate. He has made it clear that he has no presidential ambitions. He just wants to be Kamala Harris's vice president and
then go back to Minnesota and probably retire. So tonight, he just really had to help the boss, not so much build his own care.
And he did talk about those Midwestern bonafides his time in Minnesota a lot during the debate tonight.
He absolutely did too, and so did Jadie Vance. Remember he wrote the book He'llbilly Elogy about his drug addicted mother and being raised by the single grandmother. Was really kind of striking how much he was pushing the Midwestern background over his time as a California venture capitalist.
Despite all their talk of agreement, Vans and Walls do have very different approaches and they have very different policy views. Like the presidential candidates they represent. What were those competing visions for the country that Vance and Walls laid out for voters on that stage tonight, well.
Tim Walls, for his part, definitely reflected Kamala Harris's policies in terms of helping the middle class and by cutting their taxes, cutting their expenses, using federal largess to help family make it financially, and paying for that by increasing taxes heavily on those who make over four hundred thousand dollars a year and then billionaires as well. Vance did something kind of interesting. He took Donald Trump's policies, which,
when Donald Trump describes him, sounds so extreme. Vance dressed them up in reasonable sounding, very policy deep sort of approaches that softened the edges of the sort of rough language that Donald Trump used in his rallies. One of the very interesting things was on the child tax credit. For example, Tim Wallas and Kamala Harris both propose increasing the child tax credit for families up to a certain income. What Vance talks about sounded almost like more it came
from Ronald Reagan, then from Donald Trump. It was this, well, childcare is very expensive, but we should let churches get federal money.
To do it.
Let's say you'd like your church maybe to help you out with childcare. Maybe you live in a rural area or an urban area, and you'd like to get together with families in your neighborhood to provide childcare. And the way that makes the most sense.
Which doesn't work under the separation of church and state and church's tax exem status. And so he's giving this sort of leave it to Beaver's family vision that he has embraced, and Donald Trump does too, but Donald Trump talks about it in ways that make it sound less appealing. Than Vance may have made.
It sound tonight, the economy is the biggest issue going into the selection. Walk me through their appeals to voters who are concerned about affording basics like groceries and housing.
Well, it was very interesting the way the debate moderators presented it because they talked about how both candidates policies risk ballooning the federal budget deficit.
Yeah, moderators pointed to this analysis from the Wharton School which estimates the Harris policy plan would add one point two trillion dollars to the deficit and the Trump plan would add five point eight trillion. Why the big discrepancy there, Well.
It's largely because of the tariffs that Donald Trump wants to place on countries that we import from and even
from American companies who move their manufacturing overseas. The Harris campaign has dubbed the tariffs in national Sales Tax, because of course, the manufacturers and retailers who sell those goods will have to pass the extra cost on to consumers, and economists widely believe that this will increase prices, increase inflation, and will not pay for the massive tax cuts that Donald Trump is proposing.
How did the VP candidates explain how they would pay for those plans, then.
Well, the Vance Trump plan or the Trump Vance plan, I should say, they don't really explain how they're going to pay for it. At this point in the campaign, Donald Trump hasn't seen a tax cut that he doesn't like. He's offering tax cuts to everyone from billionaires to tip workers in Las Vegas, and the tariffs. Those costs will be passed on to consumers, and that will of course raise the deficit urt the economy according to large numbers
of economists. The Harris Walls campaign says that for every tax cut given to middle class families and to low wage workers, that a tax hike will be placed on corporations, billionaires, and those who make over four hundred thousand dollars a year. The question is whether the math really adds up.
Coming up what Vance and Walls had to say on immigration, abortion, and January sixth, Wendy. Immigration is the second most important issue to voters, and while Trump is pulling ahead of Harris on this issue, Vance has undermined the campaign by promoting false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. How did Advance approach questions about border policy tonight and how did Walts engage with him on it.
There was one moment where jd Vance doubled down on one of the false claims that he and Trump have been making.
That is not a person coming in applying for a green cart and waiting for ten years. That is the adaptation of a legal immigration margaret.
They keep saying that the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are there illegally. They are not. They are there under temporary protected status which the US government of any party can give two migrants who are coming from countries where there are coups or natural disasters or something that happens
that just makes the country unlivable. What Tim Walls did that was very very smart, I thought, was to hammer home that Congress had teed up a bipartisan immigration bill that everyone from Oklahoma Senator Jim Langford, who wrote with Democrats everyone in Congress wanted that bill. And then Trump called the Republicans and said I need this as a campaign issue. Kill the bill, and the bill disappeared, and Kamala Harris and Tim Walls now have both been pushing
that that bill would have solved the problem. Donald Trump, they say, didn't solve the problem in his first term as president, he won't solve it in his second, and in fact, even while he was out of office, he stymiede progress on immigration.
Abortion will be another major issue motivating voters this November. It's an issue that Democrats really own. How did the candidates discuss the state of abortion access state to state and what were their proposals for reproductive health policy nationwide?
For Tim Walls, it was to restore the freedoms under Roe versus Wade, that abortion and reproductive rights have no place in a legislative setting, only in a doctor's office, between a doctor and a woman and her family. And what he did was tell these gripping, heartbreaking stories about the effects of the Supreme Court overturning roversus way on real women.
There's a young woman named Amber Thurman. She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth.
That was a very very powerful moment. What Jadie Vance did was very surprising.
Again, we've got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people's trust back on this issue where they frankly just don't trust us.
He acknowledged the Republicans have lost voter trust on this issue because Donald Trump appointed the justices who overturned Roe versus Way.
Another striking moment was when January sixth came up, and we've seen Trump recast the events of that date many times. What struck you about the way Vance talked about the insurrection?
I was very surprised by Jadi Vans's response on this. It seemed as if he was referring to it as a peaceful protest by voters instead of the violent insurrection that caused fatalities that it was. And I think Tim Walls really scored a point when he said to JD Vance, do you believe the twenty twenty election was stolen?
Did he lose the twenty twenty election?
Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind? And the wake of the twenty twenty COVID situation?
That is damning? That is a damning non answer.
This is where you see a vice presidential candidate not wanting to irritate the Boss because Trump's position. I mean, we saw it only a few weeks ago when he said he still believes he won the twenty twenty election. He still believes January sixth, the insurrection was a just act by his supporters. So jd Vance really had to dance carefully there to give an answer that would not get him in trouble but would also not get him in trouble with Trump.
How would you rate their performances as campaign representatives tonight?
I don't think Tim Wallas did any harm to Kamala Harris's candidacy. I don't think he did that much to boost it. I think if jd Vance can stop talking about childless cat ladies and stop talking about migrants eating pets and presents this reasonable, traditional Republican sort of attitude, that it actually could ease the fears of those Republicans who really don't want to vote for Donald Trump, but they're Republicans and they can't see themselves voting for Harris.
It might move some of those voters back into the Republican column, but we'll have to see in a month.
Much for being here, Wendy, thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening to The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited by Aaron Edwards. It was fact checked by Adrian Atapia and mixed by Alexander Dubois. Naomi Shavin, who also edited this episode, is our senior producer. We get editorial direction from Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemsterbor is our
executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show