JONESBORO, Ark. – Minnesota Governor and Vice Presidential contender Tim Walz shamed Senator and Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance of Ohio Oct. 1 in the only vice presidential debate of 2024 on CBS, when Vance had no answer for the most basic of questions: Did Trump lose the 2020 election?
In one of the debate’s final exchanges, Vance found himself without an explanation for Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election and on Jan. 6, 2021 during the violent attack on the Capital, twisting the truth into a pretzel of an argument by saying Trump did eventually leave Washington after Congress certified the results, and Joe Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.
“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz questioned Vance directly, as the CBS moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan tried to fact check Vance, only to be interrupted and eventually cut off Vance’s microphone.
Vance dodged and pivoted, and tried to make the case that it was the Democrats who were a threat to democracy - for censorship on Facebook? The exchange showed both the limits and requirements of serving as Trump’s running mate, having to kiss the rat king’s ring to remain in his good graces like a peasant bowing to a monarch in a Shakespeare play.
“That’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” Walz said.
By the end of the 90 minutes, the Harris campaign announced it was making an ad off the Jan. 6 moment.
It was not exactly a “peaceful transfer of power,” but Vance tried to advance that falsehood, as he also lied about just about everything as smoothly as a corrupt used car salesman throughout the night. At every turn, he tried to blame Kamala Harris for all the world’s problems, including illegal immigration, inflation, problems with health care, child care and the damn housing shortage.
He lied about Trump’s record on health care, claiming he fixed Obamacare, when in fact he tried to kill it. Walz correctly pointed out that the Affordable Care Act was saved by the courage of John McCain in casting the deciding vote in the Senate. I was there that day in the Senate gallery when McCain gave that now famous thumbs down.
Many of the problems Vance talked about are not in the purview of the Vice President to fix, and in fact much of what Vance talked about could be blamed on this do nothing Congress held back by the MAGA Caucus. Walz pointed out time and again that Congress is responsible, and even had a bipartisan bill ready to pass on immigration reform until Trump made phone calls and had it killed so he could run on immigration as a campaign issue.
By all outward appearances, it seemed to be a substantive and mostly civil debate between two Midwestern men revealing policy differences between the two parties on immigration, abortion and foreign policy. But no issue showed the clear difference between reality and fake news apparent in the nation’s political divide than the final hot topic of the debate, when Vance refused to concede that former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said, trying to move on from the topic.
“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz came back.
Vice-presidential debates rarely influence the outcome of presidential elections, and neither candidate appeared to suffer a debilitating stumble, so it will likely change few minds or many votes. But hey, at least some people were watching CBS for a change. The network has been running last in the ratings for months, and going through internal strife trying to compete with more partisan Fox News and MSNBC.
I watched the debate with a group of Democrats from Craighead County, Arkansas in a place called Bono with Democrat Rodney Govens, who is running for Congress in Eastern Arkansas in the First District against a MAGA Republican named Rick Crawford, and Chris Jones, the party’s most recent nominee for Governor who lost to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of Trump’s first press secretaries and the daughter of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
In exchanges with the public here in our new temporary home, the confusion caused by the splintering of news media sources and the divisive nature of social media shows up in the attitudes of rural residents of Eastern Arkansas, part of the great Mississippi River Delta, where cotton fields still line the roadways in all directions. The in-tune Democrats still rely on what’s left of the newspapers, Public Television and NPR on the radio out of Arkansas State University, while conservatives seem to know the Republican talking points from Fox News, conservative talk radio and YouTube.
It reminds one of something Rudyard Kipling once wrote.
“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!”
Glynn Wilson is editor and publisher of New American Journal (NewAmericanJournal.net).
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2024
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