VP Debate Moderators Showed their ‘Smug and Arrogant Bias’

Tuesdays’ Vice Presidential debate was disappointing but expected, only because my expectations were so low already. CBS “hairdos” Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan did provide one surprise – I did not expect them to be so bitchy. Someone after the debate said O’Donnell and Brennan showed their smug and arrogant bias. I’m sticking with bitchy.

The debate moderators announced the rules at the beginning, which included no fact-checking the candidates by moderators – but then Brennan or O’Donnell would make comments after Vance’s answers. So it was rich when JD Vance fact-checked them – live on national TV – only to have his mic cut.

A few of the questions I wanted asked and answered at Tuesday’s Vice Presidential debate:

• How will you lower the cost of living?
• What will you do about high interest rates?
• What is your plan to increase housing?
• How will you seal the border?
• What wold you have done for Hurricane Helene response.
• The Longshoremen strike – would you negotiate with the labor union?

While the moderators did ask about the border, it was up to JD Vance to set them straight. They asked about “migrant” (illegal aliens) parents being deported and separated from their U.S. children under Donald Trump’s promise of deportation. Vance provided this astounding reply:

“For three years Kamala Harris went out bragging that she was going to undo Donald Trump’s border policies. She did exactly that. We had a record number of illegal crossings. We had a record number of fentanyl coming into our country, and now that she’s running for President she says she’s got religion…The only thing that she did when she became the Border Czar was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions to open up southern border.”

And when Vance addressed the 320,000 children lost by the Department of Homeland Security, as well as drug mules trafficking drugs across the open border, Walz interrupted and said, “drug mules, not true,” and claimed the Biden/Harris administration has the “largest opioid decrease in the country’s history.”

Vance said Kamala Harris “enabled drug cartels, which use children as drug mules. She bragged she would undo Donald Trump’s border laws.”

I did enjoy when JD Vance made Tim Walz think he agreed with him and then swooped-in with the correction: “Tim just said something that I agree with. We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris.”

The moderators spent an inordinate amount of time on climate change – lots of woo-woo with very little tangible meaning. JD Vance did set them straight once again when asked about why he referred to climate change as a “hoax.”

Vance said in “clean energy” the real issue is spending, and the hundreds of bills funding solar panels and components made in China.” Vance said we need more energy production in the U.S. and that includes nuclear power.

Vance stressed several times that under Trump, the U.S. was energy independent, and will be again when they are elected. And he said bringing back solar panel and component manufacturing to the U.S. is a win-win for jobs and because U.S. manufacturing is much cleaner than China’s or India’s.

I’m just bummed that “childless cat ladies” and “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats,” didn’t come up. Vance was ready for that – “He’s worried about things I’ve said…” Vance said when Springfield, Ohio came up.

Margaret Brennan cut Vance off when he explained that illegal aliens are causing the cost of everything to go up, as well as taxing the limited resources 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.

“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance told Brennan. “And since you are fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

Vance explained the legal status of the Haitians, and how the Biden-Harris-administration used immigration policy to get the Haitians temporary legal status. Again both moderators talked over Vance, condescendingly thanking him for “describing the legal process” before they cut off his mic.

Vance corrected moderators’ and Walz’s poorly-asked questions or incorrect answers, and in particular, the Trump tax cuts.

Walz claimed former President Trump “gave tax cuts to the richest, and now is proposing a consumption tax.” (He should have said “tariffs.”) “We just want the wealthiest to pay their fair share,” Walz said.

O’Donnell asked Vance how he would pay for it. Vance said Harris has had three years to implement what she now claims to support, and asked why she hasn’t done it.

“Donald Trump’s economic plan – he has a record,” Vance said. “Resources went to the middle class,” and he talked about the American economy booming when Trump was president – low interest rates, record low unemployment, record low inflation, and energy abundance and independence.

Walz tried to hang the Covid pandemic around Trump’s neck, claiming his covid response “led to a collapse of the economy.”

Vance denied this, and asked why anyone would trust “experts” who shipped American jobs to other countries. He noted that Trump brought manufacturing jobs back to America.

He also questioned why drugs and medications that Americans need and use “are made by nations who hate us.”

Walz totally blew the opportunity to correct the record on his decades of claims of being in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989 – the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He refused to say that it was not true, and instead claimed he was a knucklehead and occasionally “misspeaks.”

“Tim Walz may not have been in Tiananmen Square, but tonight he got hit by a tank,” Daniel Greenfield posted on X.

Moderators asked about abortion in the 9th month. Walz told stories of women who died seeking “reproductive care” in other states. He talked incessantly about how Minnesota has addressed abortion. Then he claimed that Trump would adopt the Project 2025 which “will eliminate fertility treatments.” And claimed Vance supported a national ban.

Vance said he read the Minnesota abortion law, and “Doctors are under no obligation to provide life-saving care to botched abortions.” Walz denied this.

However, “Tim Walz did repeal the law that protected babies born alive after failed abortions,” Megyn Kelly posted on X, and included this news article.

Moderators turned their sites on JD Vance and the “gun violence epidemic,” accusing Vance of “opposing most gun laws.”

Vance said he supports securing schools, and hiring school resource and security employees.

Toward the end of the debate, Walz got a little nasty with Vance over Donald Trump’s request to investigate the 2020 election results.

“To deny what happened on January 6, the first time in American history that a president or anyone tried to overturn a fair election and the peaceful transfer of power. And here we are, four years later, in the same boat,” Walz said.

Walz asked Vance: “Did Trump lose the 2020 election?”

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said.  “It’s a damning non-answer,” Walz said.

Once again, it was three-on-one in this debate. Yet JD Vance gave an excellent debate performance, answering the biased questions, and flipping the narrative when necessary. Walz did come off like an affable knucklehead at times, or a pit-bull on the attack. The contrast was telling.

It’s all political performance art for the left.