On the bright side for Tim Walz, he didn’t lose last night’s vice-presidential debate due to a boneheaded gaffe — such as when he said, “I’m a knucklehead at times,” or when he said, “I’ve become friends with school shooters.”

Inasmuch as “Vice President Knucklehead” has a charming ring to it, Walz lost the debate over the course of the evening on one issue after another, on both style and substance. And it wasn’t even close.

Take CNN’s word for it: “JD Vance came to this debate to land a bunch of punches, and he did,” said CNN political correspondent Abby Philip, adding, “Tim Walz did not seem prepared for it.” Said her CNN colleague Dana Bash, “I think the lack of interviews that [Walz] has done with national media, with local media, it shows.” Longtime anchor John King piled on, “The two issues driving the campaign right now are: Harris has a big deficit on the economy, Harris has a big deficit on immigration. And Republicans were happy tonight and Democrats a little bit nervous.”

Or ask NBC News, whose Kristen Welker said, “Senator JD Vance knew his challenge tonight was to come off as more likable. I received a number of texts from Republicans and Democrats who say he was very effective at doing that.”

Even the traditional Trump critics at National Review were impressed with the hillbilly-turned-Marine-turned-Yalie: “Vance made as strong a case for Trump as could be made — a better one, in fact, than Trump typically makes for himself.” Editor-in-Chief Rich Lowry wrote, “It was the best debate performance I can remember, perhaps going back to Obama in 2008 or Clinton in 1992. It didn’t hurt that Walz was completely pathetic, but Vance still put on a master class.”

As we noted yesterday, Walz got his debate wish, and he’s now living to regret it. At a rally in Philadelphia on August 6, the day after he joined the Harris ticket, Walz said of Vance, “I’ve gotta tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

Oops.

But Vance didn’t just whip Walz; he also whipped CBS News, whose co-moderator, Margaret Brennan, told us at the start of the debate that her job would be to “provide the candidates with the opportunity to fact-check claims made by each other,” but who nonetheless falsely fact-checked Vance on a question about Springfield, Ohio, and the 20,000 Haitian immigrants who have overrun that town. Vance calmly and surgically called Brennan out on it, and he corrected her by providing context. Then she admitted her guilt by cutting his mic.

Vance fact-checks Margaret Brennan on her fact-check.

CBS proceeds to cut the mic, because they were wrong. pic.twitter.com/tJl1A6ipJn

— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) October 2, 2024

Those who might’ve wondered why Donald Trump picked the young first-term Ohio senator to be his running mate are wondering no more. The debate began with a question about Israel and Iran and whether the candidates would support a preemptive strike by Israel. Walz nervously fumbled his way through it, and then it was Vance’s turn. After thanking Walz and the moderators and thanking the American people for tuning in, Vance artfully introduced himself and then made an airtight case for Trump as commander-in-chief:

Now, to answer this particular question, we have to remember that as much as Governor Walz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line. Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. What do they use that money for? They use it to buy weapons that they’re now launching against our allies and, God forbid, potentially launching against the United States as well. Donald Trump recognized that for people to fear the United States, you needed peace through strength. They needed to recognize that if they got out of line, the United States’ global leadership would put stability and peace back in the world.

JD VANCE on the Middle East:

“We have to remember that as much as Governor Waltz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world. And he did it by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out… pic.twitter.com/iVndkyCNCx

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 2, 2024

Walz had a tough time of it, partly because he’s a weirdo, but mostly because he was given such a tough task: namely, defending the top of his ticket. Vance brilliantly pointed this out, almost as if he were patting little Timmy on the head: "Honestly, Tim, I think you’ve got a tough job here because you’ve got to play Whac-a-Mole. You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver rising take-home pay, which, of course, he did. You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver lower inflation, which, of course, he did. And then you’ve simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries, and housing unaffordable for American citizens.”

Then there were the tough questions from the moderators about Walz’s deployment-dodging and his valor-thieving, and about Harris’s many flip-flops on important issues — on fracking, on amnesty, on the wall, on single-payer healthcare, on offshore drilling, on defunding the police, on abolishing ICE. And there was the zinger about Harris’s support of taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for imprisoned illegal immigrants.

Just kidding. The moderators didn’t ask about any of those things.

Still, Brennan did test Walz on his honesty at one point, and he failed miserably. “You said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protest in the spring of 1989,” said Brennan. “But Minnesota Public Radio and other media outlets are reporting that you actually didn’t travel to Asia until August of that year. Can you explain that discrepancy?”

Walz couldn’t. And he didn’t. See if you can figure out how on earth he got from that specific question to this utterly irrelevant word salad:

Yeah. Well, and to the folks out there who didn’t get at the top of this, look, I grew up in small, rural Nebraska — [a] town of 400. Town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I’m proud of that service. I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms, and then I used the GI bill to become a teacher. Passionate about it, a young teacher. My first year out, I got the opportunity in the summer of ‘89 to travel to China, 35 years ago, be able to do that. I came back home and then started a program to take young people there. We would take basketball teams, we would take baseball teams, we would take dancers, and we would go back and forth to China. The issue for that was, was to try and learn. Now, look, my community knows who I am. They saw where I was at. They, look, I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect. And I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that. Those same people elected me to Congress for 12 years. And in Congress I was one of the most bipartisan people. Working on things like farm bills that we got done, working on veterans’ benefits. And then the people of Minnesota were able to elect me to governor twice.

Walz continued on in this rambling and disjointed vein. And on. And on. But he never circled back to the actual question. So Brennan asked him again: “Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy?”

To which Walz replied, with a deer-in-the-headlights look, “No. All I said on this was, is, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, that’s what I’ve said.”

Time and again, the moderators asked questions that could’ve been written by the Harris-Walz campaign, and time and again, Vance hit them out of the park or smoothly segued to friendlier turf. For example, when Norah O'Donnell dredged up January 6 and the 2020 election, Vance responded: “Well, Norah, first of all, I think that we’re focused on the future. We need to figure out how to solve the inflation crisis caused by Kamala Harris’s policies. Make housing affordable, make groceries affordable, and that’s what we’re focused on.”

Vance then turned the question back on the media and the Democrats: “I believe that we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country,” he said, “but unfortunately, it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship. It’s Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics. It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens. And it’s Kamala Harris saying that rather than debate and persuade her fellow Americans, she’d like to censor people who engage in misinformation.” It was a brilliant bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu, and it was one of many. And the defeated look on Walz’s face spoke volumes.

VANCE: “I believe we that actually do have a threat to democracy in this country, but unfortunately it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship.”pic.twitter.com/FxhTuqbGlo

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 2, 2024

While it’s true that vice-presidential debates rarely move presidential needles, this one clearly showed that Donald Trump has an eye for talent, and Kamala Harris does not.

Yesterday, we predicted that JD Vance would clean Tim Walz’s clock. He didn’t disappoint.