The debate between Vice Presidential candidates, Republican J D Vance and Democrat Tim Walz, Tuesday focused on issues of national importance including school shootings, housing crisis, abortion, and foreign policy.
The debate took place in the shadow of the escalating tensions in West Asia, after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel in response to its deadly attacks in Gaza and Lebanon.
Will they support a pre-emptive US strike on Iran?
Walz, who is the running mate for Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, said, “We will protect our forces and our allied forces, and there will be consequences.”
Walz also hit out at Donald Trump, calling him “dangerous”. “…what’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter. It’s clear—and the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago—a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need at this moment. But it’s not just that. It’s those that were closest to Donald Trump that understand how dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous,”he said.
He also accused Trump’s “fickle leadership” for Iran being “closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before.”
Vance, hit back, saying, “Donald Trump delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line. Iran, which launched this attack, has received over USD 100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration.”
He also added that it was up to Israel to decide the best way to keep themselves safe. “We should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys,” Vance said.
Did Trump lose the 2020 election?
Vance, raising an argument, said that Donald Trump, in 2020, “peacefully gave over power on January the 20th”. To this, Walz questioned: “Did he lose the 2020 election?”
Vance argued that the Democrats were the real threat to democracy and claimed that Kamala Harris censored Americans, citing old Facebook policies, without providing any answer to the question itself.
Walz noted that it was a “damning non-answer.” “To deny what happened on January 6, the first time an American president or anyone tried to overturn an election. this has got to stop,” he said. “It’s tearing our country apart.”
On abortion
Among the central issues this election, abortion brought out personal stories of women from both candidates. Walz spoke about the women who had died or suffered severe health problems because their states had banned or passed restrictions on abortion in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the report highlighted.
“The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography?” Walz asked.
Vance, on the other hand, echoed Trump’s position that abortion should be left to the states. “We’ve got to do a better job of winning back people’s trust,” Vance said, referring to the Republican Party, before adding that he and Trump supported “pro-family policies.”
On school shootings, housing crisis, US border policy
Asserting that US housing crisis stemmed from undocumented immigrants competing with US citizens for homes, Vance suggested that Trump’s push for mass deportations of undocumented people in US would bring down rents and housing costs.
“We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should be building more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here,” he said during the debate.
When questioned about school shootings and gun control laws, Vance suggested adding more security measures to schools. “We have to make the doors stronger. We have to make the windows stronger.”
He also pointed out that most gun violence in the country is carried out using illegally acquired firearms, while drawing a connection between “open border” with Mexico and a rise in illegal guns in US.
Walz went on to speak about his teenage son, who he said witnessed a shooting at a community center. In gaffe, however, at one point he said he had “become friends with school shooters”.
— with inputs from AP, New York Times, The Guardian