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'Are you kidding me?': Vance's 'carefully constructed edifice of civility comes crashing down'
FRANCE 24 English
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10/2/2024
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00:00
Norma Mendoza-Denton is a professor and author of the book Language in the Trump Era.
00:05
She joins me now live from Los Angeles.
00:07
Norma, this debate seemed to be a bit more civil than other debates we've seen in the
00:12
past, even with more substance, some might say.
00:14
Why do you think that was?
00:16
I think that there was a tremendous bar for Vance to clear, to basically appear that he's
00:25
normal, he's not weird, as he had been labeled.
00:28
So he really honed in on the message of, I am completely here, reasoning like a completely
00:36
normal person, and I'm not going to say anything too strange.
00:39
So I think that that actually ratcheted up the civility of the debate.
00:43
And I think that's something that voters really took away from this portion of the election
00:50
is that at least they appear to agree on some critical things.
00:55
They appeared to respect each other and to try to work together.
00:58
Indeed.
00:59
And it did seem like there were certain issues on which J.D. Vance, a Republican, rolled
01:02
back, if you like, on abortion rights, for example.
01:05
But I did think it was interesting that he would not confirm that his candidate, Donald
01:08
Trump, did indeed lose the last election.
01:11
Yeah.
01:12
And I think that a lot of analysts are saying that he built a carefully constructed edifice
01:20
of civility and seeming normality only to have it crash down at the last minute because
01:28
he wouldn't agree that Donald Trump lost the election.
01:32
And that led, I think, to Walt's take-home moment of, are you kidding me?
01:38
And I think that that left a lasting impression on, at least on those polled afterwards.
01:43
Well, let's talk about Walt a little bit more.
01:45
I mean, he had a bit of a rough start.
01:47
What did you think about his performance?
01:49
Well, he seemed extremely nervous at first and sort of, I think, danced around a couple
01:54
of points.
01:55
And then at one point he had a terrible misstep by saying that he was friends with shooters.
02:02
And he clearly meant he was friends with victims of shooters.
02:05
But Donald Trump jumped on right on that.
02:07
And then also he wound up saying that he had misspoken and that he was just a knucklehead
02:14
in that sort of folksy Tim Waltz way.
02:17
And all of this came just a few hours after Iran's attack on Israel.
02:21
What did you think about how each candidate reacted to that?
02:25
I think that both candidates were basically likely to support the state of Israel.
02:31
And in that case, J.D. Vance came in a little bit stronger, saying that it's for each country
02:37
to decide what they're going to do and that the United States will stand with its allies.
02:43
Whereas Tim Waltz seemed to be kind of running around the topic a little bit because that
02:46
was early.
02:47
That was the first question in the debate.
02:49
So Waltz hadn't found his footing yet.
02:52
So by the end of it, was there a clear winner for you?
02:54
Did one of them seem more vice presidential than the other?
02:57
I think it's a toss up.
02:58
A lot of people are saying that that Vance was incredibly slick.
03:06
And both sides actually, interestingly, both sides tried to downplay their own candidates'
03:10
disabilities so that, you know, they were saying, oh, you know, Waltz has been in government
03:16
for a long time.
03:17
And the other side was saying, well, Vance has been, you know, a practice debate lawyer,
03:21
started at Yale.
03:22
So he's slick like that.
03:24
But I think in the end, it was a toss up.
03:27
It was a toss up.
03:29
Definitely, Vance was much more well-practiced and almost like elegant debate wise.
03:36
And Waltz was a little bit more clumsy, but he really seemed more, in some ways, truthful,
03:45
veridic, just because he wasn't contradicting his own past statements and contradicting
03:50
essentially everything that his running mate has done.
03:53
So this was the only debate the two vice presidential candidates are going to have, probably the
03:56
last debate at this point for the election, as Trump will not debate Kamala Harris again.
04:02
How much effect do you think that this debate is really going to have on voters or for voters?
04:08
I don't think it will have a great, big, a great big effect, except it does place Vance
04:15
a little bit more on the normal side, right?
04:18
It showed him performing what he could, what could be seen as sort of, you know, maybe
04:24
possibly a little bit more statesmanlike, but it didn't affect Waltz very much, I think,
04:30
because Waltz came off as his affable, folksy self.
04:35
And there are two very different visions for the future of the country.
04:39
Norma, thank you for that.
04:40
Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor and author of the book Language in the Trump Era.
04:45
Thanks so much for speaking to us.
04:46
Thanks so much.
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