I wasn’t looking forward to last night’s VP debate. I like Gov. Tim Walz a lot – he’s smart, he comes across as a tremendously decent man, and he has a happy-warrior vibe. But JD Vance is a slick creep who lies constantly and he’s “good” at debating, if no one cares about all of the lies and sudden flip-flops. Well, Walz did much better than I expected, but so did Vance. Vance dialed down his creepiness as much as he could – it came spilling out a few times – while Walz at times looked befuddled by all of the lies Vance was telling.

There was very little fact-checking, although there was one moment where Vance was fact-checked in real time about his blatant racist lies about Haitian immigrants in Ohio (his state) and moderator Margaret Brennan stated, “And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status.” Vance threw a tantrum about that, spitting: “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.” Seconds later, the moderators cut both Vance and Walz’s mics.

My favorite part of the debate was Gov. Walz’s whole answer on abortion rights and how women should be trusted to make their own reproductive decisions and people should mind their own business. Vance once again lied and flip-flopped about where he stands on abortion, suddenly backing away from his repeated statements about how there should be a federal abortion ban.

Another great moment for Walz happened towards the end of the debate, during the conversation about January 6th and whether both candidates would accept the results of the election. Vance tried to hem and haw and talk around the fact that Trump is still spreading lies about the 2020 election, and that Trump still cannot admit that he lost. Walz looked at Vance and said: “He is still saying he didn’t lose the election. Did he lose the 2020 election?” Vance replied greasily: “Tim, I’m focused on the future.” Walz: “That is a damning non-answer.” Walz also brought up why Mike Pence isn’t Trump’s running mate, and then said: “America, I think you’ve got a really clear choice… of who’s going to honor that democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump.”

The one bad moment for Walz was when he was caught out on a lie/tall-tale about being in China in 1989 during Tiananmen Square. Walz should have just said, “I misspoke, I was in China that summer, but not at the same time.” He had a hard time diffusing that or admitting that.

Photos courtesy of YouTube.