Minnesota Nice wasn’t enough for Gov. Tim Walz in Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate.
While Republican U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) delivered a smooth performance that largely avoided the contentious rhetoric many associate with him, Walz offered a gaffe-filled series of difficult to follow answers.
At one point, Walz called himself a “knucklehead.”
“JD Vance wins by knockout,” said Guy Ciarrocchi with the Commonwealth Foundation.
Walz, 60, was elected governor of Minnesota in 2018 and reelected in 2022. He won his first election to the United States House of Representatives in 2006 and served six terms.
Vance, 40, was first elected to public office in 2022 when he won the race for U.S. Senate in Ohio.
From the first question, Vance appeared to have the upper hand. The CBS News rules did not give the candidates the opportunity to make an introductory statement, but Vance used the first question to deliver one, anyway. He seemed comfortable and confident the entire night.
Walz, on the other hand, spoke fast and appeared flustered. During a question on gun control, he mistakenly said he “made friends with school shooters.” And he compared his support for censorship of political speech on social media to “shouting fire in a crowded theater.”
The wheels nearly came off for Walz when he was confronted about his repeated false claims that he was in China in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
Offering a word salad that would have made Kamala Harris blush, Walz rambled from his childhood in a small Nebraska town to his National Guard service to his career as a teacher to his support for a bipartisan farm bill. But eventually he conceded, “I will talk a lot. I will get caught up in the rhetoric.”
Walz added, “I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times.”
As in previous debates, the Republican faced tougher questions than the Democrat, and Vance was repeatedly asked to defend controversial statements made by his running mate, Donald Trump. And as in earlier debates, the moderators only “fact-checked” the Republican, never the Democrat.
Vance was unfazed. He even turned the tables on the moderators when Margaret Brennen attempted to mislead viewers about the legal status of the thousands of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.
“Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status,” Brennan said. When she tried to move onto another topic, Vance interrupted her.
“The rules were that you got a fact check, and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” Vance said. “So there’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”
As Vance continued to speak, CBS News cut off his microphone.
In a reflection of how the night was going overall, Walz then jumped in to claim that what Vance described “has been on the books since 1990.” He was wrong.
The Biden administration began using the CBP One app, which wasn’t released until 2020, for widespread asylum requests like those used by many Haitians in Springfield, in January 2023.
“It’s three against one,” said National Review’s Andy McCarthy. “And the one is winning.”
And Walz may have created a headache for himself by denying that the Minnesota abortion law he signed allows doctors to legally deny care to babies that survive abortion procedures.
“That’s not what the law says,” Walz claimed, adding, “There’s a continuation of these guys to try and tell women [what to do]. I use this line: ‘Just mind your own business’ on this.”
In fact, as The Dispatch reported, Walz signed a bill repealing nearly all of the state’s protections for those infants. Minnesota “recorded eight deaths among infants who survived abortion attempts during Tim Walz’s tenure as governor,” The Dispatch confirmed.
In a drastic turn from recent political debates, both candidates went out of their way to treat each other with respect and even graciousness. During the debate over gun control, for example, Walz mentioned that his 17-year-old son witnessed a shooting at a community center.
“I didn’t know that your 17-year-old son had witnessed a shooting,” Vance said. “I’m sorry about that. That is awful.”
And Walz repeatedly mentioned he agreed with points Vance was making, on issues like bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.
But nice wasn’t enough.
“Governor Walz was a deer in headlights for the first several minutes of the debate,” said Republican strategist Vince Galko, a former executive director of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.
“The Harris leadership team has to be seething behind closed doors. If Governor Walz wasn’t agreeing with Senator Vance then he was bragging about Minnesota. Can anyone remember one positive thing he said about Kamala Harris?”
The reaction from Keystone State Democrats was muted, though a few did speak up in defense of Walz via social media.
“Tim Walz tonight was plain spoken and powerful in laying out a future with more freedom, opportunity, and decency with Kamala Harris as president,” posted Democratic nominee for Auditor General Malcolm Kenyatta. “JD Vance couldn’t say Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and tried to convince us that Trump wasn’t Trump.”
And U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan also weighed in.
“Way to go, Coach! Tim Walz showed up tonight to talk about a New Way Forward for America where everyone, everywhere can get ahead. Vance showed us the dystopian future he and Trump are intentionally designing. Move forward together or get dragged backward–the choice is clear.”
