By Steve Holland and Stephanie Kelly
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Democrat Tim Walz questioned Republican Donald Trump’s fitness for office at the outset of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, arguing that the former president is too unstable to be trusted at a time of crisis in the Middle East.
His Republican opponent for the country’s No. 2 office, JD (NASDAQ:JD) Vance, responded by asserting that Trump had made the world more secure during his term in office.
Amid Israel’s ongoing assault against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on Tuesday, the escalating Middle East conflict that began last October when the militant group Hamas attacked Israel was the debate’s first topic, giving the two men a chance to outline their foreign policy credentials.
Asked whether he would support a preemptive strike against Iran by Israel, Vance suggested he would defer to Israel’s judgment, while Walz did not directly answer the question.
Instead, Walz pivoted to criticizing Trump for nixing the Iran nuclear deal. The 2015 deal, which then-President Trump abandoned in 2018, had capped Iran’s uranium enrichment at 3.67% purity and its stockpile of this material at 202.8 kg (447 pounds) – limits Tehran has since far exceeded.
“Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership,” he said.
Walz, 60, the liberal governor of Minnesota and a former high school teacher, and Vance, 40, a bestselling author and conservative firebrand U.S. senator from Ohio, have portrayed themselves as two sons of America’s Midwestern heartland with deeply opposing views on the issues gripping the country.
The rivals were expected to clash early and often at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, with each trying to land a lasting blow at the last remaining debate before the Nov. 5 presidential election between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Walz has called his Republican opponents “weird,” and Vance came under fire for past comments disparaging some Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”
Harris and Trump were expected to watch the debate, which began at 9 p.m. (0100 GMT on Wednesday), and Trump said he would offer a play-by-play commentary of the event on social media.
Harris was widely viewed as the winner of her sole debate with Trump on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia, which was watched by an estimated 67 million people.
That square-off did little to change the trajectory of an extremely close election battle. While Harris has edged ahead in national polls, most surveys show voters remain fairly evenly divided in the seven states that will decide the November election.
Political analysts say vice presidential debates can be fiery but generally do not alter the outcome of an election. That said, even a slight shift in public opinion could prove decisive with the race on a razor’s edge five weeks before Election Day.
The main takeaway from the last V.P. debate, the 2020 encounter between then-Senator Harris and then-Vice President Mike Pence, was a fly that landed on Pence’s head unbeknownst to Pence himself.
With no more debates planned, the stand-off allows Walz and Vance to make closing arguments on behalf of their campaigns – just as early voting ramps up across the country.
MUD-SLINGING
Walz, who has sought to cultivate a homespun image as a former high school football coach, is expected to get Vance to defend his 2021 comments criticizing Harris and other Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
Walz is also likely to go after Vance for spreading a fictional story of Haitian immigrants eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio, a false claim that Trump has repeated and that local officials say has drawn bomb threats.
The Democrat will seek to introduce himself to U.S. voters who may not be familiar with him, while aiming to keep the conversation focused on Harris’ agenda, said a Walz adviser who asked to remain anonymous to discuss strategy.
Trump advisers said Vance would try to force Walz to defend the Biden-Harris administration’s policies on immigration and the economy, as well his own handling of the riots in Minneapolis in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white policeman.
Vance will also bring up questions about Walz’s military service, said Tom Behrends, a retired command sergeant major who joined a Trump campaign call about the debate.
Republicans have accused Walz of exaggerating his final rank in the Army National Guard, where he served for 24 years. Walz has in the past described himself as a retired command sergeant major, one of the highest non-commissioned officer positions in the Army.
While he achieved that rank, he did not meet the requirements to retire with that title.
The Harris campaign says also Walz “misspoke” in 2018 during his gubernatorial campaign in Minnesota when he referred to “weapons of war, that I carried in war.” Walz was never deployed to a war zone.
Vance is a former Marine who served as a military journalist. He was deployed to Iraq but never saw combat.
Earlier on Tuesday, Minnesota Public Radio reported that Walz was not in China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown as he has previously claimed but traveled there months later, another misstatement likely to draw Vance’s fire.
Despite Vance’s having written “Hillbilly Elegy,” a popular 2016 memoir, U.S. voters have a negative view of him, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows, with 51% of registered voters saying they view him unfavorably, compared with 39% who view him favorably. Meanwhile Walz was viewed favorably by 44% of registered voters, with 43% reporting an unfavorable view in the Sept. 20-23 poll.
