If you watched Tuesday’s vice presidential debate hoping for something like a WWE SmackDown event, then you were probably left disappointed. However, if you wondered what fascism on Novocain looks like, or what a political “prevent” defense versus a blitz looks like, you might have enjoyed yourself.
Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD “Smokey Eyes” Vance and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim “Coach” Walz squared off in a CBS event deemed the undercard event of the century. Expectations were low and interests relatively high. Still, all you could do was sigh.
With a serious tone and knitted brows, CBS News' Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan moderated the debate that ran for 90 minutes at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York. While the ghost of Walter Cronkite was probably wretched in anticipation of the event, which studio heads boasted would feature no fact-checking from the moderators, early in the debate the journalists abandoned that vow after Vance refused to drop the obvious and dangerous lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio he’s propagated for weeks.
“And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status,” Brennan made clear. Vance complained about the fact-checking. “Margaret, the rules were that you were not going to fact check and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” he protested. A few seconds later they cut Vance’s mic after he continued to talk.
The telling fact was that Vance, in complaining about being fact-checked, openly admitted he wanted to get away without being called on his lies – and expected to do so.
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Of course, there was plenty of criticism of the moderators from Trump supporters about that, but Walz supporters also criticized the moderators, after they asked Walz about his misleading statements regarding a 1989 visit to China. “I’m a knucklehead sometimes,” he said as he stumbled to explain his claim to being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Trump followers told me they were pissed. Democrats who wanted a smackdown were equally upset. Their groans and moans could be heard across the nation. Both of them missed the point that Vance threw Trump under the bus.
But then the moderators asked Vance a more serious question regarding a time when Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler.” The answer from Vance was telling on many fronts. He, of course, shot the messenger. “I was wrong, first of all, because I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record.”
If Vance were to be believed, he had been living under a rock, poked his head out one day and read some horrible things about Trump and as a conditioned response – he believed them. He never independently verified anything he heard and never engaged in critical........