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In their first and likely only debate, Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance will be performing against his Democratic rival Tim Walz for an audience of one: Trump himself.
That’s according to Vance’s one-time opponent Tim Ryan, the former Democratic congressman who lost a critical 2022 Senate race in Ohio against the Republican venture capitalist.
Ryan, among the only elected officials with experience on a debate stage with Vance, told NPR that Vance will likely turn “very aggressive at trying to frame the Harris-Walz ticket as super extreme, super out of touch.”
“They’ll be blamed for everything and the world’s going to end if they get elected,” Ryan said. “He’ll be hitting that hard because he has an audience of one, and that’s Donald Trump.”
Walz is also expected to hit back at Trump — a dedicated television viewer — and remind viewers of Vance’s well-documented and colorful past criticism of the former president, who Vance once labeled an “idiot” who is “unfit” for office and compared to Adolf Hitler.
In one of Vance’s 2022 debates with Ryan, the former congressman struck at his rival’s past comments about Trump, characterizing his nascent cheerleading as a demeaning about-face: “I don’t know anybody I grew up with, I don’t know anybody I went to high school with, that would allow somebody to take their dignity like that.”
The Minnesota governor is also expected to juggle real-time fact checks of Vance’s statements, including his baseless racist rumors targeting legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, as well as his misogynistic statements about childless women.
Unlike the presidential debate hosted by ABC News last month, CBS moderators at the vice presidential debate are leaving that up to the candidates themselves, after Trump’s avalanche of false claims in his first (and potentially final) debate with Kamala Harris was met with a handful of live corrections from debate moderators.
“There’s a real uncomfortableness” to Vance, according to Ryan, “and he’s also very thin-skinned and so he can fly off the handle a little bit if you hit him in the right spot.”
But Vance will be prepared. He survived a gauntlet of primary and general election debates during his Senate campaign, is a frequent talking head on political talk shows, and he has reportedly been preparing for his matchup against Walz with “murder board” sessions where his top advisers pound him with potential questions and lines of attack.
House Republican Tom Emmer has been playing the role of Walz in those mock debates.
“He’s going to do a great job,” Emmer told ABC News on Sunday. “Once he understands that Tim Walz is just going to try and deflect and go into this folksy whatever, he’ll hold him accountable.”
