WASHINGTON — The first and only vice presidential debate between Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz featured an often orderly, policy-focused and even civil dialogue between the two men seeking to serve as the next president’s second in command.

One of the sharpest comments came from a debate moderator. Here are some of the most notable quotes from the debate:

“Gentlemen, the audience can’t hear you because the mics are cut.”

— CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan, who intervened after a tense back and forth between the candidates over immigration. Vance protested a clarification by a moderator about the legal status of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. “Since you’re fact checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” Vance said before both he and Walz’s exchanges were muted.

“I actually agree with that.”

— Walz, agreeing with Vance that some regulations limit the construction of new housing units. Both candidates throughout the debate expressed agreement on some points before driving home their own messages.

“I’m sorry about that. Christ have mercy.”

— Vance, after Walz noted his son had witnessed gun violence. “I appreciate that,” Walz replied.

“I’m a knucklehead at times…I misspoke on this.”

— Walz, when discussing discrepancies in his travel history to Hong Kong in 1989 that have been reported by multiple news organizations.

“Kamala Harris is not running as a newcomer to politics.”

— Vance, arguing Harris could have acted as vice president to make housing more affordable. “If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle class problems, she ought to do them now,” Vance also said during the debate.

“There’s consequences for this.”

— Walz, when discussing Vance’s unfounded claims about immigrant communities in Springfield, Ohio. Walz said Vance “will create stories to bring attention to this that vilified a large number of people who were here legally in the community of Springfield. The Republican governor said, it’s not true. Don’t do it.”

“Sometimes it just is the guns. It’s just the guns.”

— Walz, discussing the high rate of gun violence in the United States compared to other rich nations. Walz cautioned against using mental illness as a “scapegoat” for the country’s high levels of gun violence rather than “find solutions on this that protect the Second Amendment, protect our children, that settlement.”

“My shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice.”

– Walz, noting that he is a longtime gunowner and the need to address firearm deaths by suicide and violent crime.

“I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.”

— Vance, responding to how Republicans should navigate potentially unpopular and dangerous realities that face women surrounding pregnancy. Vance, who opposes abortion, said Republicans “have 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.”

“Donald Trump put this all into motion.”

— Walz, criticizing Trump’s record on abortion. Walz said Trump “bragged” about appointing three Supreme Court justices who would go on to join a majority ruling that overturned the abortion protections in Roe v. Wade. “52 years of personal autonomy and then he tells us ‘Oh, send it to the states,’” Walz said of Trump.

“A president’s words matter.”

— Walz, discussing the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Walz said Trump’s rhetoric and refusal to concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election led to the riot at the U.S. Capitol and deep ensuing divisions across politics. “All of us say there’s no place for this,” Walz said.

“My own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square.”

— Vance, when asked whether Trump won the 2020 presidential election and if he would support efforts to contest the election which Trump carried out that have since been deemed illegal or unconstitutional. “First of all, I think that we’re focused on the future,” Vance said. “But what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square.”

WASHINGTON — Vice Presidential hopefuls Tim Walz and JD Vance squared off Tuesday night in what may be the last debate of the 2024 presidential campaign. It was the first encounter between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator, following last month’s debate between the tops of their tickets, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

No more debates are on the political calendar before Election Day. Tuesday’s confrontation came as the global stakes of the contest rose again as Iran fired missiles at Israel. The vice presidential hopefuls sparred over the violence in the Middle East, climate change and immigration. Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s debate.

 

With Mideast in turmoil, Walz promises ‘steady leadership” and Vance offers ’peace through strength’

Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday elicited a contrast between the Democratic and Republican tickets on foreign policy: Walz promised “steady leadership” under Harris while Vance pledged a return to “peace through strength” if Trump is returned to the White House.

The differing visions of what American leadership should look like overshadowed the sharp policy differences between the two tickets.

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More Americans lean Republican than Democrat. What that means for the presidential election is uncertain.

The Iranian threat to the region and U.S. interests around the world opened the debate, with Walz pivoting the topic to criticism of Trump.

“What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter,” Walz said, then referenced the “nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” and responding to global crises by tweet.

Vance, for his part, promised a return to “effective deterrence” under Trump against Iran, brushing back on Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her role in the Biden administration.

“Who has been the vice president for the last three and a half years and the answer is your running mate, not mine,” he said. He pointedly noted that the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, happened “during the administration of Kamala Harris.”

Vance and Walz punch up rather than at each other

Vance and Walz trained the bulk of their attacks not on their on-stage rival, but on the running mates who weren’t in the room.

Both vice presidential nominees sought to convey a genial mien as they lobbed criticism at Harris and Trump, respectively.

It was a reflection of the fact that most voters don’t cast a ballot based on the vice president, and on a vice presidential nominee’s historic role in serving as the attack dog for their running mates.

Walz pointedly attacked Trump for failing to meet his pledge of building a physical barrier across the entire U.S.-Mexico border at the country’s southern neighbor’s expense.

“Less than 2% of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime,” Walz said.

Underscoring the focus on the top of the ticket, during a back-and-forth about immigration, Vance said to his opponent: “I think that you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”

Both candidates put a domestic spin on climate change

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Vance took a question about climate change and gave an answer about jobs and manufacturing, taking a detour around Trump’s past claims that global warming is a “hoax.”

Vance contended that the best way to fight climate change was to move more manufacturing to the United States, because the country has the world’s cleanest energy economy. It was a distinctly domestic spin on a global crisis, especially after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the international Paris climate accords during his administration.

Walz also kept the climate change focus domestic, touting the Biden administration’s renewable energy investments as well as record levels of oil and natural gas production. “You can see us becoming an energy superpower in the future,” Walz said.

It was a decidedly optimistic take on a pervasive and grim global problem.

Walz, Vance each blame opposing presidential candidate for immigration stalemate

The two running mates agreed that the number of migrants in the U.S. illegally is a problem. But each laid the blame on the opposing presidential nominee.

Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris the “border czar” and suggested that she, as vice president, single-handedly rolled back the immigration restrictions Trump had imposed as president. The result, in Vance’s telling, is an unchecked flow of fentanyl, strain on state and local resources and increased housing prices around the country.

Harris was never asked to be the “border czar” and she was never specifically given the responsibility for security on the border. She was tasked by Biden in March 2021 with tackling the “root causes” of migration from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and pushing leaders there and in Mexico to enforce immigration laws. Harris was not empowered to set U.S. immigration policy — only the president can sign executive orders and Harris was not empowered as Biden’s proxy in negotiations with Congress on immigration law.

Walz advanced Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly killed a bipartisan Senate deal to tighten border security and boost the processing system for immigrants and asylum seekers. Republicans backed off the deal, Walz noted, only after Trump said it wasn’t good enough.