During MSNBC’s post-Vice Presidential debate coverage on Tuesday, Rachel Maddow commented that JD Vance was “much slicker” and a “much more practiced kind of professional debate style speaker.”
“And the other candidate won,” she added, referring to Vance’s opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Particularly due to the context of this election, which Maddow noted is the first since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“There was one bad moment for Tim Walz in this debate,” Maddow conceded, “where he got mixed up and embarrassed in answering a question about exactly what month he had been in China in relation to the Tiananmen Square protest. But then on guns, on Jan. 6, the border, back again on health care, on abortion, on every issue, on substance, JD Vance was very polished and very slick, and Tim Walz beat him on all the substantive points.”
She then noted what she called “one very blunt, very easily disprovable lie… that is going to be real trouble. JD Vance supported a national ban on abortion. JD Vance is bluntly on the record and on tape saying, I want abortion to be illegal nationwide, his actual quote was, ‘I certainly would like abortion to be banned nationally,’ [now] saying I never supported a national abortion ban. When that’s out there, it’s something you’re never going to shake in your campaign, particularly…” during, she added, “the first presidential election after the fall of Roe v. Wade.”
Maddow’s fellow MSNBC hosts voiced similar reviews. Nicole Wallace said Vance’s initial performance was him “building an intricate and beautiful fort out of toothpicks. And it was perfect. And at the end, he sneezed on it, the whole thing fell apart, and he had to walk out of that room over the broken toothpicks.”
She was referring to themoment at the very end, when the topic turned to the election itself. Vance was asked if he’d commit to honoring the results of the election no matter who won, with his running mate Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results cited specifically. Vance not only wouldn’t say yes, he also repeatedly refused to admit Trump lost the election and even minimized the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.
Vance also attempted to misdirect the conversation, claiming Trump “peacefully” handed over power on Jan. 20, 2021, ignoring that Trump outright refused to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“No matter how you watch this, if you cannot say what happened in 2020 and the only reason you’re there is because what actually happened in 2020 is that Donald Trump sent his supporters to hang Mike Pence,” Wallace added, “then you lose.”
Chris Hayes meanwhile agreed that was significant, adding that it was particularly egregious when Vance claimed Trump “handed power over peacefully on Jan. 20. Yes, when the coup failed and the cops’ brains had all been bashed in, and there were actual dead bodies and blood on the Capitol. 14 days later, we did manage to actually do it, and he didn’t show up for the transfer of power.”
“What is that alternate universe in which that happened? I would like to visit. It seems nice and much less violent,” Maddow joked in response.
“He couldn’t answer the question, ‘did Trump lose the election?’ A smooth lie is still a lie,” Joy Reid weight in. “Yeah, JD Vance is incredibly smooth. But he said number one, nothing memorable. There’s nothing clippable in what he said. They were just all smooth, bland lies.”
There’s plenty more. Watch the whole thing below:
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