Mike Pence wasn’t the only person cut off by Senator Tim Kaine’s multiple interruptions; the senator also talked over a quote of the newly canonized Mother Teresa. People who look you in the eye and lie so boldly without breaking a sweat are creepy, and I’m sure voters noticed that.
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Correspondent Hasan Minhaj said watching the debate was “like watching two pairs of khakis debate each other”. During Kaine’s response, Pence shook his head like a father who could not believe he found a marijuana joint in Kaine’s sock drawer. While many were exhorting Trump to choose a VP exclusively on the basis of gender or ethnic electoral appeal, he selected a white male who was just entirely suited, prepared and qualified for the job.
Pence’s role was to do what Trump could not do consistently during the first presidential debate, which was to prosecute a case against Clinton – highlighting both her policy vulnerabilities as Secretary of State and questions about her private email server and the Clinton Foundation. On the contrary, they see Clinton and Kaine’s commitment to social justice and to upholding the lives of marginalized communities as precisely what it means to be “pro-life”.
But Pence ignored the bait as any seasoned professional should.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton clearly read the minds of many journalists and fact-checkers and basically did their job for them by creating a video with side-by-side clips that call out Pence Hard for the blatant mistruths he told about Trump on Tuesday. Could he mount a defense and make Kaine seem like an opportunistic bully?
Pence appeared taken aback by the assault, though he surely understood that it would be coming.
For disheartened conservatives, Pence’s performance was more than that. And as the political intelligentsia debated which man won, Pence offered a gracious deflection.
-On Trump’s insults: “You can’t have someone at the Trump who demeans at every opportunity”.
“I thought he put Governor Pence on the defensive right from the start”, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said on CNN’s “New Day” Wednesday.
“Donald Trump must give the American public his tax returns to show he’s prepared to be president, and he’s breaking his promise”, Kaine said.
Kaine struck me as a far more impassioned, informed, effective defender of Clinton and her proposals, many of which he presented in great detail. He will have to answer questions from voters who may not agree with him or support him.
Stylistically, Pence was strong: calmer than Kaine, interrupting less often, and repeatedly luring Kaine to respond to him. While last week’s first presidential debate was watched by a record-setting television audience of 84 million people, Tuesday’s contest was expected to have smaller viewership given Pence and Kaine’s lower profiles in the campaign.
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In the vice presidential debate, Kaine revisited immigrants from Mexico by saying Trump had said at a Phoenix rally that upon construction of his proposed border wall that the USA would be “deporting everybody”.
