'Are you kidding me?': Vance's 'carefully constructed edifice of civility comes crashing down'

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00:00Norma Mendoza-Denton is a professor and author of the book Language in the Trump Era.

00:05She joins me now live from Los Angeles.

00:07Norma, this debate seemed to be a bit more civil than other debates we've seen in the

00:12past, even with more substance, some might say.

00:14Why do you think that was?

00:16I think that there was a tremendous bar for Vance to clear, to basically appear that he's

00:25normal, he's not weird, as he had been labeled.

00:28So he really honed in on the message of, I am completely here, reasoning like a completely

00:36normal person, and I'm not going to say anything too strange.

00:39So I think that that actually ratcheted up the civility of the debate.

00:43And I think that's something that voters really took away from this portion of the election

00:50is that at least they appear to agree on some critical things.

00:55They appeared to respect each other and to try to work together.

00:58Indeed.

00:59And it did seem like there were certain issues on which J.D. Vance, a Republican, rolled

01:02back, if you like, on abortion rights, for example.

01:05But I did think it was interesting that he would not confirm that his candidate, Donald

01:08Trump, did indeed lose the last election.

01:11Yeah.

01:12And I think that a lot of analysts are saying that he built a carefully constructed edifice

01:20of civility and seeming normality only to have it crash down at the last minute because

01:28he wouldn't agree that Donald Trump lost the election.

01:32And that led, I think, to Walt's take-home moment of, are you kidding me?

01:38And I think that that left a lasting impression on, at least on those polled afterwards.

01:43Well, let's talk about Walt a little bit more.

01:45I mean, he had a bit of a rough start.

01:47What did you think about his performance?

01:49Well, he seemed extremely nervous at first and sort of, I think, danced around a couple

01:54of points.

01:55And then at one point he had a terrible misstep by saying that he was friends with shooters.

02:02And he clearly meant he was friends with victims of shooters.

02:05But Donald Trump jumped on right on that.

02:07And then also he wound up saying that he had misspoken and that he was just a knucklehead

02:14in that sort of folksy Tim Waltz way.

02:17And all of this came just a few hours after Iran's attack on Israel.

02:21What did you think about how each candidate reacted to that?

02:25I think that both candidates were basically likely to support the state of Israel.

02:31And in that case, J.D. Vance came in a little bit stronger, saying that it's for each country

02:37to decide what they're going to do and that the United States will stand with its allies.

02:43Whereas Tim Waltz seemed to be kind of running around the topic a little bit because that

02:46was early.

02:47That was the first question in the debate.

02:49So Waltz hadn't found his footing yet.

02:52So by the end of it, was there a clear winner for you?

02:54Did one of them seem more vice presidential than the other?

02:57I think it's a toss up.

02:58A lot of people are saying that that Vance was incredibly slick.

03:06And both sides actually, interestingly, both sides tried to downplay their own candidates'

03:10disabilities so that, you know, they were saying, oh, you know, Waltz has been in government

03:16for a long time.

03:17And the other side was saying, well, Vance has been, you know, a practice debate lawyer,

03:21started at Yale.

03:22So he's slick like that.

03:24But I think in the end, it was a toss up.

03:27It was a toss up.

03:29Definitely, Vance was much more well-practiced and almost like elegant debate wise.

03:36And Waltz was a little bit more clumsy, but he really seemed more, in some ways, truthful,

03:45veridic, just because he wasn't contradicting his own past statements and contradicting

03:50essentially everything that his running mate has done.

03:53So this was the only debate the two vice presidential candidates are going to have, probably the

03:56last debate at this point for the election, as Trump will not debate Kamala Harris again.

04:02How much effect do you think that this debate is really going to have on voters or for voters?

04:08I don't think it will have a great, big, a great big effect, except it does place Vance

04:15a little bit more on the normal side, right?

04:18It showed him performing what he could, what could be seen as sort of, you know, maybe

04:24possibly a little bit more statesmanlike, but it didn't affect Waltz very much, I think,

04:30because Waltz came off as his affable, folksy self.

04:35And there are two very different visions for the future of the country.

04:39Norma, thank you for that.

04:40Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor and author of the book Language in the Trump Era.

04:45Thanks so much for speaking to us.

04:46Thanks so much.

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