Leah Feiger: I think it adds to it. This is it, it is stolen courage. Even if you really analyze the specifics of it, is it that bad?
Tim Marchman: I don’t think he played great. I don’t think that’s…
Leah Feiger: Yes, he appeared to be not okay with calling himself a fool. That’s hard to see. It was definitely JD Vance’s smirking moment. I couldn’t stop watching him the whole time.
Tim Marchman: Yes, and that’s what you really want… If the guy gilds the lily a little, everyone gilds the lily a little, at least at this political level, and you really should come back because of that. I think there’s a bit of confusion. I was in the area during that time, I was not in Hong Kong at the time of those particular protests. I wasn’t in Tiananmen Square when the man stood down from the tank, but I was there at the time. It was a time of great change, as we all remember, the Berlin Wall. There is a way to do it. He seemed completely flat, which was strange.
Leah Feiger: Obviously, we should point out, and perhaps our lovely moderators can too, that Trump is a serial liar, and compared to his many, many, many liars over the years, I could see Walz’s humorous twist, “It’s nothing. Let’s talk about some of the greatest hits.” For a campaign that was so focused on the memeable, go-to-social, go-to-TikTok moment, they didn’t get much out of this. Of course, we’re not even talking about Springfield. J.D. Vance is one of the big instigators of all the Haitian immigrants, the Haitian illegal immigrants that are eating the friendly pets in your neighborhood. They are eating your dogs and cats. When Springfield appeared in the debate, it was Walz’s chance to get involved, and he did. He mentioned that some of this rhetoric has resulted in schools having to increase security or having to have all these extra drills, but he wasn’t specifically targeting Vance. He hardly went after Trump specifically.
Makena Kelly: This could also be the turning point for Walz to say, “Okay, let’s talk about lying and fabrication. You’re the one who literally made the news last week or any week, saying we can spin these stories to really understand everything that’s happening in rural America right now because immigration status.” That could have been a great hook and of course, that didn’t happen.
Tim Marchman: He also had the opportunity to say that what Vance was saying was still completely untrue. Vance, as he did throughout the debate, basically took this rhetorical position of kind of distancing himself from Trump or treating Trump like a crazy uncle, “Eh, we all know what he’s saying, but don’t worry about it. He said a lot of things.” He denied claims that illegal immigrants in Haiti were kidnapping people’s pets and grilling them, but he presented it as his attempt to draw attention to the problem severity of immigrants flooding into Springfield and overwhelming the hospital system, overwhelming the school system, some of which is really not in evidence. People have looked at death rates, they’ve looked at 911 wait times, all these different metrics. There is no evidence that migrants are overwhelming the hospital system. The school system, they need more ESL teachers, they need things like that. Those are legitimate issues that need to be raised. There is a very easy way to raise those issues without being defamatory. Walz missed the opportunity to take offense that when this whole issue came up, he asserted his defense of these people and said, “These are people who are here legally, people who are in this town because the town The town has jobs and they don’t have jobs. everyone will do them, period.” He’s very forceful in making the point that Trump and Vance’s rhetoric has led to bomb threats and all sorts of terrible things, but to me, again, that’s an example of his giving in to the premise just a little bit. This is not a problem. Really, this is not a problem. He has, I think, allowed it to be seen as a huge existential problem for the country in a rather ridiculous way.
