“Midwest Nice” took the vice presidential debate stage Tuesday evening, as Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were surprisingly civil toward each other in their only faceoff.
“I don’t think Sen. Vance and I are that far apart,” Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said during the debate.
“Some of it, I’ll be honest with you, it even sounds pretty good,” Vance, a senator from Ohio, said about a Kamala Harris policy.
While both candidates were expected to frequently be on offense during the debate, and have been used as attack dogs on the campaign trail to mock each other, they were far more measured in the New York City battle:
“If Tim Walz is the next vice president, he'll have my prayers, he'll have my best wishes, and he'll have my help whenever he wants it,” Vance said.
“I've enjoyed tonight's debate,” Walz said. “I think there was a lot of commonality here.”
Perhaps most notably, Vance expressed sympathy toward his opponent after Walz shared that his son witnessed a shooting at a community center:
"Tim, first of all, I didn't know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting. And I'm sorry about that,” Vance said. “Christ have mercy."
“I appreciate you saying that,” Walz responded.
