The Prince of Lies

The biggest takeaway from the debate is the horseshit Vance was shoveling while he smiled.

Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Getty Images

During the debate last night, I received texts from friends asking me who I thought was “winning.” It’s an understandable question, but it’s also the wrong one. We already know VP debates never move the needle, so no matter who won or lost, the race isn’t going to be impacted.

But in case you’re wondering, the post-debate polls showed a tie.

I watched the debate with a different, bigger question in mind. If JD Vance was chosen as the heir apparent to MAGA Trumpism, what would we learn about him during his debate performance that we hadn’t already seen?

I didn’t have those questions about Tim Walz. He proved he knows his policy and can connect to voters. No one is wondering who Walz really is. 

We came in assuming that JD Vance would be polished, confident and articulate. Deftly responding to journalists’ questions is his wheelhouse. But he also displayed a startling ability to sanitize Trump, wrap his bigotry in patriotism and his misogyny in concern, and lie effortlessly and with a smile. 

Today I want to talk about those lies and what they mean about Vance and the future of the MAGA movement. 

Trump and healthcare

Vance understood that healthcare is a huge vulnerability for Trump. After all, the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, has grown immensely popular since it was enacted, and tens of millions now depend on it for their health insurance.

He also understood that Trump tried repeatedly to kill Obamacare. In fact, Trump made it his singular mission, besides giving a $1.2 trillion tax break to the wealthy. 

So what’s an experienced liar to do? Vance reassured viewers that Trump actually tried to save Obamacare. No, really, he did:

“When Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”

Funny, I was watching the Senate vote during the very moment Sen. John McCain famously gave his thumbs down on a Trump-backed law that would have repealed the ACA, dooming the effort in that chamber.

Vance’s revisionist history is shameless.

I should also note that Vance never actually answered the question of whether people with pre-existing conditions would pay higher health care costs, promising only that they would be “covered.” The moderators asked him to clarify his response on the question of increased costs, but he deflected, and for good reason. Vance is on record for favoring putting higher risk insureds into different pools, which healthcare experts say would raise their premiums considerably.

National abortion ban

Nowhere is the Trump/Vance ticket more vulnerable than on the right to abortion, which Trump has bragged about ending by sending it “back to the states.” Vance unsurprisingly danced around the abortion question, saying instead that his party needs to do more to help women (who presumably would be forced to carry the pregnancy to term in many red states).

As a would-be national leader, however, for Vance the primary question is whether he would support a nationwide ban on abortion. Vance decided to lie about his position by playing semantic games:

“First of all, I never said I supported a national ban. I did, when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard…”

Two points here. First, a “minimum national standard” of a certain number of weeks is a ban for anyone past those weeks. Don’t play word games with women’s bodies.

Second, Vance actually did say he would like abortion banned nationally. Here’s audio of him saying just that on a podcast.

Vance is eager to be seen as someone reasonable and compassionate on abortion, when in fact he is a zealot who will lie brazenly to hide his true intentions. If he is given greater power, we will see the true JD Vance emerge, doing all he can to end abortion rights nationwide.

Migrants and the border

Donald Trump infamously came down a golden escalator and labeled Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “drug dealers.” With that salvo, he opened the door wide to the demonization of anyone (meaning, anyone non-white), whether documented or undocumented, who comes seeking safety from persecution, reunion with family members, or simply a chance for a better life for their children.

Vance has also politicized the question of migrants and the border, but under a more superficially acceptable brand of bigotry. His false and dangerous claims against Haitian immigrants, who are now legally living in places like Springfield, Ohio, have sparked hatred and threats against entire communities. And while CBS said it would not fact check the debate, the moderators did so anyway when it came to Vance’s lies about immigrants. His response was to complain about not being allowed to continue to lie.

As part of his smears upon migrants, Vance also falsely claimed that they are the ones bringing in fentanyl into the U.S. Voto Latino called him out on his bigoted misrepresentation of the truth:

JD Vance is attacking immigrants by spreading the fentanyl lie.

Let's be clear: Over 90% of fentanyl is trafficked into the US at ports of entry, mostly by US citizens. It is NOT an immigration issue.

JD Vance needs to stop scapegoating our migrant communities.

Vance also falsely claimed that the migrant crisis occurred under Harris’s direct watch in her role as the “Border Czar.” But let’s be clear: There was never such a position in the Biden Administration. Harris’s role was to lead diplomatic efforts with three specific Central American “triangle countries”—El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—to help reduce migration. But the migration patterns soon shifted toward countries unconnected to her work, including Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Vance knows all this, but he is deliberately misleading the public about Harris’s role to score political points.

Trump and the peaceful transfer of power

Vance saved his biggest whopper for nearly the end of the debate. He actually claimed that Trump “peacefully gave over power,” focusing on the final day of Trump’s presidency on January 20, 2021 rather than what happened just two weeks prior. The Harris campaign was out with a video response quickly.

On a related note, the biggest moment of the night, and a bad one for Vance because he couldn’t artfully dodge it, occurred when Walz asked Vance point blank whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance, who understands and is bound by the MAGA rules, attempted to pivot, but Walz nailed him on his response.

Let’s enjoy this moment further, with a focus on Walz’s face as he processes what he is hearing from Vance.

That singular moment of the debate will be remembered by many voters, and it made headlines by itself:

The refusal by Vance apparently was a stinker among undecideds. According to the Harris campaign, Vance’s answer on January 6 scored him his lowest rating of the night from a “dial” focus group of battleground undecideds. 

A smooth liar, a heartbeat from the presidency

Vance’s lies were a necessary component to Vance’s head spinning sanitizing of Trump. As legal commentator Andrew Weissman noted, “Vance is in large measure pretending that he is not running with Trump and just making up policies unrelated to Trump’s own policies.” 

Vance’s civil, even friendly demeanor, presented while calmly lying through his teeth, is a chilling portent of an Orwellian future beyond Trump. And his performance managed to snap a shiny veneer over his true political fangs. While the two candidates exchanged niceties and the moderators marched through sober questions steeped in policy, the bigger context somehow got lost: Vance and Trump present an existential threat to our democracy.

As Susan Glasser of The New Yorker put it,

The conceit of this CBS debate is that this is just a normal policy election, two guys shooting the shit about housing starts and health care financing. Misses the moment pretty dramatically.

Indeed, Vance wants to warp our federal government by replacing our civil servants with MAGA loyalists. And he wants to usher in a fascist, Christian Nationalist takeover, as laid out in Project 2025. Watching him feign concern for American women, while knowing he would relegate them to permanent second class citizenship if he could, made for a more than disquieting 90 minutes.

Author Ella Dawson captured Vance’s debate performance best with this observation:

JD Vance is a good debater because he is a smooth and confident liar. He looks directly into the camera with a benign expression and lies over and over again. If you win a debate by lying, the American people are the ones who really lose.

It turns out that Vance, like the man he serves, is a con artist, too. Just a different, scary kind.