Who won the debate? Inside the VP face off between JD Vance and Tim Walz

WASHINGTON – Republican JD Vance entered Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate with Democrat Tim Walz hoping to avoid a repeat of Donald Trump’s disastrous debate performance against Kamala Harris last month in Philadelphia.

On that score, Vance clearly succeeded during the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate in New York.

Vance did what Trump was unable to do by delivering a debate performance that mostly avoided the verbal missteps and the outrageous outbursts that characterized the GOP presidential nominee’s performance in his faceoff with Harris three weeks ago in Philadelphia.

Vance appeared to have an edge over Walz in terms of poise and command of policy.

Vance is a Republican senator from Ohio, but the debate likely marked the first time that many voters had seen him perform on the national stage. He used some of his answer to the first question of the night to introduce himself to voters, reminding them that he grew up in a middle-class background and went to college on the GI bill after serving in Iraq.

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Walz, the governor of Minnesota, seemed to get off on the wrong foot right from the start when he mixed up Iran and Israel when asked about how he would advise the president on a preemptive strike by Israel against Iran.

“Iran, or I, uh, Israel’s ability to be able to defend itself is fundamental,” he said initially. Moments later he said “the expansion of Israel and its proxies” is a fundamental necessity for the United States to steady leadership there.

Other times, Walz seemed nervous and unsure of himself.  He spoke so rapidly at times that he stumbled over his words.

The two candidates met on the debate stage in New York as polls show a close election with just 35 days to go. Most national polls give Harris and Walz a small lead nationally, but the race remains a tossup in several of the swing states that will determine the winner.

Harris and Trump debated each other last month in Philadelphia, a faceoff that Harris was widely regarded as having won. Harris has been pushing Trump to agree to another debate later this month, but so far, he has been reluctant to commit to a rematch.

Tuesday’s event between Walz and Vance is the only scheduled debate between the vice-presidential nominees – and could possibly be the last debate of the presidential race.

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Even before the nominees took the stage, the Harris campaign tried to lower expectations for Walz, who reportedly claimed to be a bad debater and was nervous about how he would perform. Trump, on the other hand, seemed to raise expectations for Vance.

“He’s going up against a moron. A total moron,” Trump said during an interview with Kellyanne Conway, who managed his campaign in 2016 and worked as his senior adviser in the White House.

During the 1? hour debate, both candidates found themselves on the defensive.

Walz was asked to explain why he has said he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in spring 1989. Recently unearthed news reports indicate he was still in Nebraska, his home state, and headed to China to teach high school in August 1989, several months after the Tiananmen Square protests.

Walz stumbled as he tried to explain the discrepancy, eventually saying he misspoke and calling himself “a knucklehead” at times. “I can get caught up in the rhetoric,” he said.

Vance was put on the defensive over his past criticism of Trump, who he once suggested might be “America’s Hitler,” and over his false claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating cats and dogs.

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“I was wrong about Donald Trump,” Vance said, blaming what he called dishonest media reports that he said had distorted Trump’s record.

Vance repeatedly questioned why Harris hasn’t already implemented many of the policies she is advocating as a presidential candidate, given that she has been the vice president for more than three years.

Presidents, not the vice president, set an administration’s policy. But Vance frequently referred to Harris’ “wide open southern border” and said some of her economic plans sound “pretty good” – but that she could have already enacted them if she wanted.

“If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle class problems, then she ought to do them now, not when asking for a promotion,” he said. “The fact that she isn’t, tells you about how much you can trust her actual plans.”

Vance dodged when asked about Trump continuing to push false claims that he won the 2020 election and about the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol by a group of Trump supporters trying to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.

Vance said he and Republicans want to focus on the future and accused Democrats of trying to censor the speech of people criticizing the election system.

Walz countered that the threat to democracy is real and warned that Trump and his allies are "laying the groundwork" for more protests and another attempt to overthrow the election if they lose in November.

Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who won the VP debate tonight? Inside Walz, Vance stand-off