0:01

It's Wednesday, October 2nd. I'm Jane

0:04

Kosten. And I'm Todd Zwilik. And this

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is What a Day, the show where God

0:08

help us. We watched last night's Vice Presidential

0:10

debate, so you didn't have to. On

0:21

today's show, J.D. Vance does his impression

0:24

of a normal guy who's never said

0:26

he's proud of lying to everyone in

0:28

the country. Plus, Tim Waltz knows

0:30

who won the 2020 election, but

0:32

is he alone? We're recapping last

0:35

night's Vice Presidential debate between Ohio

0:37

Senator J.D. Vance and Minnesota Governor

0:39

Tim Waltz. Now, generally speaking,

0:41

the rule of thumb for Vice Presidential debates

0:43

is do no harm to

0:45

your respective campaign. And by that

0:47

measure, I think both men largely succeeded.

0:50

It was a tense 90 minutes, way

0:53

more focused on policy than the two

0:55

previous presidential debates. But did

0:57

you think there was a winner, Todd? I

1:00

don't know. I guess J.D. Vance would

1:02

have won on points. But

1:04

then, like, if you just scratch the

1:06

first two skin cells off of that,

1:09

I mean, so much of it was

1:11

complete, not only falsehoods, but really cogent

1:13

and coherent in ways that the candidate,

1:15

Donald Trump, never has been, never will

1:18

be and can't be, doesn't have the

1:20

ability to be. Yeah, I was

1:22

really interested. And I'm interested to hear what

1:24

your thoughts like, what was the benchmark of

1:26

success here? Because it really seemed to be,

1:29

for lack of a better term, don't screw

1:31

up or throw up on television. And

1:33

neither of them did so. So I

1:35

was trying to think earlier, like, was

1:37

there a vice presidential debate that I

1:40

really remember? And I

1:42

vaguely remember Paul Ryan, Joe

1:45

Biden back in 2012, because they got into

1:47

a sad off and you don't get into

1:49

a sad off with Joe Biden. But that's

1:51

pretty much about it. But I think that

1:53

what really drew the contrast was just in

1:56

comparison with the last two presidential debates

1:58

because they featured Donald Trump. Trump, this

2:01

was civil. I think

2:03

we saw two guys trying to

2:05

give up the vitriolic partisanship,

2:07

the race baiting, the immigrant

2:09

bashing, all of that,

2:11

of the actual campaign and come into

2:14

a room that says, okay, there's four

2:16

people in Michigan, eight people in Wisconsin,

2:18

and a smattering of people in Pennsylvania

2:20

who still consider themselves undecided. They might

2:22

not like Donald Trump, but say he

2:25

had good policies, or they might kind

2:27

of be Kamala curious, but I've never

2:29

voted for a Democrat before. So

2:31

that's what I saw these two politicians kind

2:33

of going for, and the weirdness of it

2:35

is, especially on Vance's side, but to an

2:38

extent on Tim Waltz's side too, that's not

2:40

who either of them is in this campaign, like

2:42

at all. That's not the role either of them

2:44

has ever played. J.D. Vance

2:46

has been like a press baiting,

2:48

race baiting, nativistic, immigrant bashing person,

2:51

unlike the first two debates. The VP

2:54

debate was actually pretty civil.

2:56

In fact, if you read a transcript

2:58

of this debate, you'd find that Waltz

3:00

and Vance actually said a lot

3:02

of things they agreed upon, as we just

3:05

said, in an answer about childcare. Here's an

3:07

example. As Tim said, a lot of the

3:09

childcare shortages, we just don't have enough resources

3:11

going into the multiple people who could be

3:13

providing family care options, and we're going to

3:15

have to, unfortunately, look, we're going to have

3:17

to spend more money. We're going to have

3:19

to induce more people to want to provide

3:21

childcare options for American families. It's agreed

3:24

with Vance that decades of international trade

3:26

agreements and globalization haven't necessarily been great

3:28

for the average American worker. Look,

3:31

I'm a union guy on this. I'm not a

3:33

guy who wanted to ship things overseas, but I

3:35

understand that, look, we produce soybeans and

3:37

corn. We need to have fair trading partners.

3:39

That's something that we believe in. I think the thing that

3:42

most concerns me on this is Donald

3:45

Trump was the guy who created the

3:47

largest trade deficit in American history with

3:49

China. So the rhetoric is good.

3:52

Much of what the senator said right there, I'm in

3:54

agreement with him on this. I watched it happen too.

3:56

I watched it to my communities, and we talk about

3:58

that. But we have. people

4:01

undercutting the right to collectively bargain. We had right

4:03

to work states made it more difficult. We had

4:05

companies that were willing to ship it over and

4:07

we saw people profit. I think what gets

4:10

me from this is that you're gonna have a

4:12

bunch of people who saw this and were like

4:14

this is what I've missed from presidential debates. But

4:17

those same people, many of

4:19

them, voted for Donald Trump. They

4:21

voted for the person who stirs things up,

4:24

the horse in the hospital to borrow that

4:26

line from the comedian John Mulaney. And

4:28

so it's interesting to me because these are

4:30

two people who if they had been both

4:32

in the Senate at a less polarized time,

4:34

there would have been a lot of Vance

4:36

Waltz acts or this bill or something like

4:39

that. Do you think that

4:41

that was a strategy to come off

4:43

as work across the aisle guys, even

4:45

when one of them is Donald Trump's

4:47

running mate? I think it totally

4:50

is. I mean look at the entire theme

4:52

of Kamala Harris's campaign, right? It doesn't have

4:54

to be like this. Turn the page from

4:56

this. Now she's talking about Donald Trump and

4:59

all the ugliness, but also talking about the

5:01

parts of politics, the screaming and yelling that

5:03

turn off a lot of low-information voters and

5:05

people who don't engage with it like you

5:08

and I do. So again, I try to

5:10

view this debate through the eyes of blue

5:12

wall working class undecided voters, all 14 of

5:15

them, and that's who this whole thing was

5:17

programmed toward. I think they both knew it. Yeah,

5:19

it's interesting though because there are a host of

5:21

people and I think you and I have both

5:23

heard it over and over again where they got

5:25

so mad at Mitt Romney or

5:28

Paul Ryan or John McCain because they didn't

5:30

fight enough because they were fighting for a

5:32

conservative ink and they didn't get mad enough.

5:34

So it's just funny to hear people online

5:36

you see it tonight being like, you know, this is

5:39

what politics could be like. I'm like, yeah, but

5:41

who did this? You did it. You brought

5:43

the horse into the hospital. And

5:46

I mean Tim Walz got the job by

5:48

coming up with the most elegant attack line

5:50

that Democrats can never find. These guys are

5:53

just weird and went at it and at

5:55

it and at it and really isolated Republicans

5:57

from the sensibilities of a lot of Americans.

5:59

Kamala Harris shot up in the polls and

6:02

chose Tim Walz. He didn't bring any of

6:04

that energy tonight. There was this moment in

6:06

the debate where Vance was asked about Donald

6:08

Trump's plans for healthcare after Trump famously, again,

6:10

said in the last debate that he had

6:12

concepts of a plan to replace the Affordable

6:14

Care Act with something much

6:16

better. He actually implemented some of these

6:18

regulations when he was president of the

6:21

United States. And I think you can

6:23

make a really good argument that it

6:25

salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until

6:27

Donald Trump came along. And I think

6:29

it's an important point about President Trump.

6:31

Of course, you don't have to agree

6:33

with everything that President Trump has ever

6:36

said or ever done. But when Obamacare

6:38

was crushing under the weight of its

6:40

own regulatory burden and healthcare costs, Donald

6:42

Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead,

6:44

he worked in a bipartisan way to

6:46

ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.

6:49

It's not perfect, of course, and there's so

6:51

much more that we can do. But I

6:53

think that Donald Trump has earned the right

6:55

to put in place some better healthcare policies.

6:58

He's earned it because he did it successfully

7:00

the first time. Now, to be

7:02

clear, that is complete and total bullshit.

7:04

You and I were alive when John

7:07

McCain was the one person who helped

7:09

to save the Affordable Care Act. The

7:12

lowest moment of Donald Trump's polling

7:14

was when he was attempting to

7:16

overturn the Affordable Care Act. But

7:19

I think that this goes to your point of

7:21

like, J.D. Vance was able to lie effectively

7:24

on this point, effectively for people

7:26

who apparently don't remember the

7:28

Trump administration, but he did so

7:31

nonetheless. I mean, it was a

7:33

very well-thought-out beautiful answer that was just

7:35

completely false. I mean, Trump went to

7:37

the mat politically over and over and

7:39

over again to try to repeal the

7:41

ACA. He reportedly hated it specifically because

7:43

it was called Obamacare. That was the

7:45

thing that really bothered Trump about it

7:47

when he became president. We don't have

7:50

time to go into all the reasons

7:52

why that's false, except they voted about

7:54

59 times in Congress

7:56

to try to repeal it. When

7:58

they finally failed, Republicans voted.