Gone was the JD Vance of \u201cchildless cat ladies.\u201d Gone was the JD Vance who falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors\u2019 cats and dogs. And gone was the JD Vance of gleefully owning the libs online.<\/p>\n
Instead, Vance \u2014 the Republican senator from Ohio and Donald Trump\u2019s running mate \u2014 used Tuesday night\u2019s vice-presidential debate against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in New York to try to reintroduce a smoother, more affable version of himself to the nation. And, potentially more valuable to the Trump-Vance campaign, he also used the prime-time slot to repackage MAGA for the political middle \u2014 offering a softer, more moderate, and often misleading version of Trump\u2019s polarizing vision and policy prescriptions.<\/p>\n
In fact, Vance spewed falsehoods and exaggerations on a host of Trump\u2019s core policy positions, ranging from immigration to health care to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Toward the end of the debate, he refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the election in 2020, a reminder of the revisionist history the Republican ticket has embraced.<\/p>\n
But in many ways, the hardcore online bro from the far-right scrollisphere was conspicuously absent, replaced for at least one evening with the helpful narrator of \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d \u2014 Vance\u2019s 2016 memoir that explained and demystified Appalachia for large swaths of the country still coming to terms with Trump\u2019s unexpected victory. It was yet another well-timed reinvention for a candidate who in the past few years transformed from vocal Trump critic to obsequious Trump defender.<\/p>\n
Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist and ardent Trump critic, took to X to facetiously praise Vance\u2019s ability to \u201ccode switch,\u201d writing that his transformation from a jerk \u201cwho is ambivalent to human suffering on MAGA bro podcasts to a guy who credibly seems like he doesn\u2019t want other people to die on the debate stage is a useful political skill that he has deployed with effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the clearest example of the MAGA rebrand \u2014 the version the campaign hopes that political independents and suburban voters could actually feel good about supporting \u2014 came midway through the debate on the topic of abortion.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the fall of Roe v. Wade. And Vance ran for Senate in 2022 on a platform that promised to \u201cend abortion,\u201d saying he would like the procedure to be \u201cillegal nationally\u201d and suggesting that he might be open to restrictions to stop women from leaving the state for abortion care.<\/p>\n
But on Tuesday night, Vance referenced an anonymous friend in an abusive relationship who told him how grateful she was that she had been able to have an abortion, seeming to imply \u2014 but not quite saying \u2014 that he supported her decision to terminate her pregnancy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know she\u2019s watching tonight and I love you,\u201d he said, staring directly into the camera, before acknowledging that most Americans feel differently than he does about the issue \u2014 and pledging to earn their trust.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people\u2019s trust back on this issue, where they, frankly, just don\u2019t trust us,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign has wrestled all year with how to talk about abortion, eager to win the support of moderate Republican and independent women in swing states who care about abortion rights without alienating its largely antiabortion base.<\/p>\n
The former president flip-flopped in late August on an amendment that would protect abortion rights in Florida\u2019s constitution \u2014 declaring that he found the measure too \u201cradical\u201d less than 24 hours after suggesting that he would support it. He also recently said his administration would be \u201cgreat for women and their reproductive rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday night, Vance offered the clearest recognition yet from the Republican ticket that his party is out of step with the American people on this issue \u2014 63 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases \u2014 and Trump, watching from afar and weighing in on social media, appeared to agree. During the debate, the former president pledged on Truth Social to veto a national abortion ban \u2014 after refusing to make that same promise in his own debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last month.<\/p>\n
Abortion was hardly the only issue on which Vance offered a gauzy \u2014 and at times distorted \u2014 portrait of the Trump-Vance platform.<\/p>\n
Venturing into territory that some Democrats instantly flagged as anti-vaccine, Vance offered a more benign spin to those skeptical of the anti-vaccine movement, referring to his own three children and saying: \u201cLook, so many of the drugs \u2014 the pharmaceuticals \u2014 that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop, and we\u2019re not going to stop it by listening to experts.\u201d<\/p>\n
And during an exchange about guns, Vance immediately offered his sympathy after Walz described his 17-year-old son witnessing a shooting at a community center while playing volleyball.<\/p>\n
\u201cTim, first of all, I didn\u2019t know that your 17-year-old witnessed the shooting, and I\u2019m sorry about that, and I hope he\u2019s doing okay,\u201d Vance said. \u201cChrist have mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n
In many ways, Vance offered a redo of the debate his campaign wished Trump had executed against Harris in their debate faceoff last month, largely refusing to get distracted and keeping his focus squarely trained on the vice president.<\/p>\n
He also repeatedly made the argument against Harris that Trump\u2019s team had hoped the former president would make: that she has served as President Joe Biden\u2019s vice president for nearly four years, and if she has so many grand plans, why didn\u2019t she implement any of them?<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernor Walz, you blame Donald Trump,\u201d Vance said at one point early in the debate. \u201cWho has been the vice president for the last three and a half years? And the answer is your running mate, not mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance\u2019s performance Tuesday night offered a striking contrast not just to his campaign-trail self, but also to his running mate, who just hours earlier in Milwaukee had offered remarks that were, by turns, rambling, off-script and, at times, even nearly incoherent.<\/p>\n
The senator from Ohio was polished, speaking in calm, measured tones and at times going out of his way to stress that he agreed with Walz on some issue or another.<\/p>\n
He also tried to soften his own image, referring to his children at least three times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got three beautiful little kids at home \u2014 7, 4 and 2 \u2014 and I love them very much,\u201d he said at one point. \u201cI hope they\u2019re in bed right now.\u201d (The classic awards show line was a gentler reprise of a similar refrain in his convention speech, where he admonished: \u201cKids, if you\u2019re watching, Daddy loves you very much but get your butts in bed.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Near the end of the debate, when the topic of threats to democracy came up, Vance attempted to gloss over the Jan. 6 attack and Trump\u2019s role in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemember, he said that on January the 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully and on January the 20th, what happened?\u201d Vance said. \u201cJoe Biden became the president. Donald Trump left the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was one of several blatant instances of Vance offering \u2014 again, with an equanimous, respectful delivery \u2014 downright falsehoods. He repeatedly praised Trump\u2019s leadership on the Affordable Care Act, despite his years of trying to repeal it, and touted the protections in place to protect people with preexisting conditions \u2014 people protected by the very act Trump unsuccessfully worked to overturn.<\/p>\n
On immigration, too, Vance claimed the government is giving away free housing to \u201cmillions\u201d of migrants. In fact, there is no free national housing program for migrants, and Vance seemed to be referring to shelters in New York, Chicago and a few other northern cities.<\/p>\n
But the debate, which CBS said from the outset would not involve moderators doing significant fact checking, also underscored the limits of \u201cMinnesota nice,\u201d as well as Walz\u2019s less polished skills as a debater. The Minnesota governor often struggled to push back on some of Vance\u2019s claims, which allowed Vance to repackage both himself and the MAGA mantle he now helps shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like and respect Tim Walz. I\u2019m voting for him and Harris,\u201d Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist and outspoken Trump critic, wrote on X. \u201cBut he has the killer instinct of a manatee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nick Miroff contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gone was the JD Vance of \u201cchildless cat ladies.\u201d Gone was the JD Vance who falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors\u2019 cats and dogs. And gone was the JD Vance of gleefully owning the libs online. Instead, Vance \u2014 the Republican senator from Ohio and Donald Trump\u2019s running mate \u2014 used Tuesday night\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}