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Vice-presidential debate live: Trump has 'Mt Rushmore' of dictators, says Kaine Vice-presidential debate live: candidates spar as Pence forced to defend Trump
(35 minutes later)
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Reactions II
Just another reminder that too often in life and politics, people trade apparent short-term gain for fucking themselves down the line.
The two candidates arguing about "insult-driven" campaigns was the top moment of the debate on @facebook. Watch it below. https://t.co/TJhr76D4n6
The winner of the debate is a deep sense of regret that "generic Republican" wasn't nominated for the top of the ticket. https://t.co/OLMXW0cEIm
Kaine should have brought out that Gospel of Matthew quote earlier, and gone back to it.
Cool chart by @RitchieSKing showing #attacks in the #VPDebate https://t.co/iBZrXWIwvk pic.twitter.com/f0GIu0FZbs
.@Mike_Pence: "You whipped out that Mexican thing again."@TimKaine: "Can you defend it?" #VPDebate #debatenight #debates #Debates2016 pic.twitter.com/UCJJpFuIdf
#VPDebate pic.twitter.com/6qExoprsBi
Pence is giving the country a very good preview of how the Republican Party is going to move beyond Trump. Just pretend he never happened.
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Reactions
Mike Pence won big. We should all be proud of Mike!
Post-debate Clinton camp: pence never actually defended trump
Kaine interrupted too much and Pence basically denied that Trump ever said everything he has ever said. #debate
@NoahShachtman he had no chill
Now I want to meet the Trump from Earth 2 that Pence was describing.
The GOP needs to #fliptheticket
Pence is working hard (and largely succeeding) to look statesmanlike, etc. Kaine is trying to rattle off as many attacks on Trump as he can.
"Whip Out That Mexican Thing!" wins debate.
"whipped out that Mexican thing again" is very unfortunate
Pretty accurate summary of the #VPDebate: pic.twitter.com/BvBtbiuX5f
My specially-assembled #VPDebate focus group: pic.twitter.com/hm7lekBquc
kaine + pence = peterman pic.twitter.com/B66OEPeOhi
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Fact check: abortionFact check: abortion
Alan YuhasAlan Yuhas
Pence: ‘Donald Trump and I would just never support legislation that would punish a woman for making the heartbreaking decision to terminate a pregnancy’Pence: ‘Donald Trump and I would just never support legislation that would punish a woman for making the heartbreaking decision to terminate a pregnancy’
Kaine is correct that Trump suggested women should be punished for having abortions – he then recanted the idea at the end of a day of flip flopping positions. Unlike Pence, Trump has not been pro-life his whole life. In 1999, he said: “I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for, I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject, but still I just believe in choice.”Kaine is correct that Trump suggested women should be punished for having abortions – he then recanted the idea at the end of a day of flip flopping positions. Unlike Pence, Trump has not been pro-life his whole life. In 1999, he said: “I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for, I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject, but still I just believe in choice.”
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Fact check: the Clinton foundationFact check: the Clinton foundation
Alan YuhasAlan Yuhas
Pence: the Associated Press found that more than half of Clinton’s meetings as secretary of state were with donors to the Clinton FoundationPence: the Associated Press found that more than half of Clinton’s meetings as secretary of state were with donors to the Clinton Foundation
The AP story on Clinton’s meetings did not include her meetings with people in the US government and from foreign governments – who were by a huge margin the people she met with while serving as the top diplomat of the United States.The AP story on Clinton’s meetings did not include her meetings with people in the US government and from foreign governments – who were by a huge margin the people she met with while serving as the top diplomat of the United States.
The news agency deleted a tweet about the story – virtually verbatim to what Pence said– for lack of context, and AP’s vice president for standards John Daniszewski wrote a blog post about the decision.The news agency deleted a tweet about the story – virtually verbatim to what Pence said– for lack of context, and AP’s vice president for standards John Daniszewski wrote a blog post about the decision.
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@mollyesque I never liked Pence in "Mad Men."@mollyesque I never liked Pence in "Mad Men."
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That’s it! It’s done. Who won? Did Kaine rattle Pence? How did Quijano do?That’s it! It’s done. Who won? Did Kaine rattle Pence? How did Quijano do?
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Many have been asking what kind of pin Tim Kaine is wearing on his lapel tonight.Many have been asking what kind of pin Tim Kaine is wearing on his lapel tonight.
Answer: A Blue Star Pin, worn by the families of those who serve in the military, in honor of his son Nat.Answer: A Blue Star Pin, worn by the families of those who serve in the military, in honor of his son Nat.
Earlier this year, the North Carolina GOP derided Kaine as “shameful” for wearing the Blue Star Pin, which they wrongly thought was a Honduras flag pin. (Kaine was a missionary in Honduras in 1980).Earlier this year, the North Carolina GOP derided Kaine as “shameful” for wearing the Blue Star Pin, which they wrongly thought was a Honduras flag pin. (Kaine was a missionary in Honduras in 1980).
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Last question: How would you bring the country together if elected?Last question: How would you bring the country together if elected?
Kaine: Clinton was first lady, senator and now the nominee. I’m surprised all the time by how well people say they worked with her. He names children’s health care and care for 9/11 survivors. “She has a track record of working across the aisle to make things happen.” He mentions he had two Republican- controlled legislatures while governor.Kaine: Clinton was first lady, senator and now the nominee. I’m surprised all the time by how well people say they worked with her. He names children’s health care and care for 9/11 survivors. “She has a track record of working across the aisle to make things happen.” He mentions he had two Republican- controlled legislatures while governor.
Pence: Thank you thank you. “This is a very challenging time in the life of the nation. .. an economy that’s truly struggling... more taxes, regulation, Obamacare, war on coal, trade deals that have put American workers in the backseat. “The best way we can bring American workers together is through change in Washington DC... The American people want to see our people standing tall again... and Donald Trump’s entire career has been about building... finding a way... to fight forward. When Donald Trump because president of the United States, we’re going to have a stronger America.Pence: Thank you thank you. “This is a very challenging time in the life of the nation. .. an economy that’s truly struggling... more taxes, regulation, Obamacare, war on coal, trade deals that have put American workers in the backseat. “The best way we can bring American workers together is through change in Washington DC... The American people want to see our people standing tall again... and Donald Trump’s entire career has been about building... finding a way... to fight forward. When Donald Trump because president of the United States, we’re going to have a stronger America.
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Kaine: Trump wants to punish women for abortionKaine: Trump wants to punish women for abortion
Quijano: describe your faith life.Quijano: describe your faith life.
Kaine: This question is easy. Irish Catholic, Jesuit, Catholic missionary, people should worship as they please. As state governor, he says, he struggled with Virginia’s death penalty. He opposed it based on religion. “But I know how to take an oath and uphold the law... it was very very difficult to allow an execution to go forward... that was a real struggle” but people of faith can’t just substitute their own views on everyone.Kaine: This question is easy. Irish Catholic, Jesuit, Catholic missionary, people should worship as they please. As state governor, he says, he struggled with Virginia’s death penalty. He opposed it based on religion. “But I know how to take an oath and uphold the law... it was very very difficult to allow an execution to go forward... that was a real struggle” but people of faith can’t just substitute their own views on everyone.
Pence: Wonderful question. “My Christian faith is at the very heart of who I am.” We went to church and had grace. “With my wife at my side, we followed the calling into public service.” I have a great deal of respect for senator Kaine’s sincere faith. But the sanctimony of life... out of the blue... ancient principle... God says... great compassion for the sanctity of life.. non-abortion alternatives.. pro-adoption. “What I can’t understand with Hillary Clinton... to support a practice like partial birth abortion... that a child almost born could still have their life taken from them is just anathema to me...Clinton wants to repeal” ban on tax funds for abortion. Still Pence talking here. “I like to spend a little bit of time on my knees every day.”Pence: Wonderful question. “My Christian faith is at the very heart of who I am.” We went to church and had grace. “With my wife at my side, we followed the calling into public service.” I have a great deal of respect for senator Kaine’s sincere faith. But the sanctimony of life... out of the blue... ancient principle... God says... great compassion for the sanctity of life.. non-abortion alternatives.. pro-adoption. “What I can’t understand with Hillary Clinton... to support a practice like partial birth abortion... that a child almost born could still have their life taken from them is just anathema to me...Clinton wants to repeal” ban on tax funds for abortion. Still Pence talking here. “I like to spend a little bit of time on my knees every day.”
Kaine: “This is a fundamental question... we really feel that it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else... we support Roe v Wade... the constitutional right of American woman to... make their own decision about pregnancy. We trust American women to do that. And we don’t think that women as Donald Trump said should be punished.. “ Pence wants to overturn Roe.. “The very last thing that government should do is to make laws that would punish women.” And that “is theKaine: “This is a fundamental question... we really feel that it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else... we support Roe v Wade... the constitutional right of American woman to... make their own decision about pregnancy. We trust American women to do that. And we don’t think that women as Donald Trump said should be punished.. “ Pence wants to overturn Roe.. “The very last thing that government should do is to make laws that would punish women.” And that “is the
Pence: “Donald Trump and I” don’t favor punishing women for abortion.Pence: “Donald Trump and I” don’t favor punishing women for abortion.
Kaine: Trump said he did.Kaine: Trump said he did.
Pence: “He’s not a polished politician.”Pence: “He’s not a polished politician.”
Kaine: The gospel of Matthew says, “From the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” So Trump meant it. And he called Mexicans rapists.Kaine: The gospel of Matthew says, “From the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” So Trump meant it. And he called Mexicans rapists.
Pence: “Senator, you bring up that Mexican thing again.” Pence: “Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again.”
Kaine: “Can you defend it?”Kaine: “Can you defend it?”
Pence: “There are criminal aliens that come into this country...”Pence: “There are criminal aliens that come into this country...”
[talk talk][talk talk]
Kaine: Why doesn’t Donald Trump trust women to make that choice for themselves?Kaine: Why doesn’t Donald Trump trust women to make that choice for themselves?
Pence: Because a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable... I couldn’t be more proud to be standing with a pro-life candidate.”Pence: Because a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable... I couldn’t be more proud to be standing with a pro-life candidate.”
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The candidates are asked about their faith. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner has taken a look at their different Catholic-inspired visions:The candidates are asked about their faith. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner has taken a look at their different Catholic-inspired visions:
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It’s all about theIt’s all about the
BenjaminsBenjamins
Putin(s) Putin(s)
CLINTON’S CLOSE TIES TO PUTIN DESERVE SCRUTINY:https://t.co/wPYm5vQoyt #VPDebateCLINTON’S CLOSE TIES TO PUTIN DESERVE SCRUTINY:https://t.co/wPYm5vQoyt #VPDebate
Actually, @mike_pence, your running mate did say that. https://t.co/qtAiHWDqsr #VPDebate pic.twitter.com/youtybAqicActually, @mike_pence, your running mate did say that. https://t.co/qtAiHWDqsr #VPDebate pic.twitter.com/youtybAqic
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Kaine says that Trump owes $650m including to the bank of China.
Pence is shaking his head and frowning. Pence seems really offended by Kaine saying all this stuff with a smile.
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Pence says that the Clinton foundation lets the Clintons travel the world but we’d know a lot more about it if Hillary Clinton would release 33,000 emails she released.
Kaine is asked whether he would take action if North Korea launched a nuke that could hit the USA.
“You have to take action,” Kaine says. Seems like a solid answer?
"It's inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country." – Mike Pence
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Fact-check: Trump & taxes
Alan Yuhas
Kaine: Trump ‘doesn’t pay taxes’
Nobody except Trump and his current accountant seem to know for sure whether Trump pays taxes.
Last weekend Trump’s 1995 returns were published by the New York Times, which had them mailed by an anonymous source and verified by Trump’s former accountant. The documents showed that Trump reported losing $916m in his businesses that year, meaning that he could avoid paying federal income taxes for the next 18 years.
Trump has not denied that he paid no federal taxes for nearly two decades, and instead said that avoiding taxes would show that he was “smart”.
Earlier in his career Trump did pay a few taxes. A 1981 report to New Jersey’s casino control commission, which reviewed Trump’s taxes from 1975 to 1979, shows that he paid federal income taxes for three of those five years. He did not pay taxes in two of those five years because he lost more money, $3.8m, than he made.
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Kaine says the Clinton foundation is great. It provides Aids drugs and helps Americans with opioid addictions. And Clinton as secretary of state took no action on behalf of the foundation.
“The Trump foundation..[he means Trump organization?] is an octopus-like foundation around the world...whose conflicts of interests could only be known if Donald Trump releases his tax returns... it’s not a nonprofit. It’s putting money into Donald Trump’s pockets and the pockets of his children...
The foundation was just fined for an ... illegal contribution and then they tried to hide it.. and the person they donated to was somebody’s office who was trying to investigate Trump University.
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Fact check: Russia, Putin, Crimea and Ukraine
Alan Yuhas
Kaine: Trump has praised Vladimir Putin and ‘it’s clear that he has business dealings with Russian oligarchs who are dealing with Putin’
Trump has repeatedly called Russia’s president a “strong leader” and spoken approvingly of this strength and Putin’s polling numbers. For instance, on 18 December 2015 he told MSNBC: “I’ve always felt fine about Putin. I think that he’s a strong leader.”
He added: “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.”
Last September, he told Fox News: “In terms of leadership [Putin’s] getting an A.” In a 10 March debate, Trump tried to hedge on semantics. “Strong doesn’t mean good,” he said. “Putin is a strong leader, absolutely. He is a strong leader. Now I don’t say that in a good way or a bad way. I say it as a fact.”
Pence also said, as Kaine points out, that it’s “inarguable” that Putin is a stronger leader than Obama.
Kaine also said that Putin “has run his economy into the ground, he persecutes LGBT folks and journalists”.
The caliber of Putin’s leadership is debatable in and of itself. Russia’s economy under Putin’s 16 years of leadership has become over-reliant on oil and hamstrung by economic sanctions, themselves prompted by Putin’s aggressive military action in Ukraine. The value of the ruble has collapsed, and the Kremlin started hinting that it would start to reach into its reserves. The economy has shrunk to a smaller GDP than Spain, according to the IMF, and Russia’s newly active military is involved in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria that appear to have no resolution in sight. In Ukraine nearly 10,000 people have been killed, and in Syria nearly 500,000. Putin has passed anti-LGBT laws, clamped down on the press, and been accused of murdering opponents, including journalists.
Kaine: ‘Donald Trump on the other hand didn’t know that Russia had invaded Crimea’
Pence: “He knew that.”
Here’s what Trump told ABC’s This Week in August: “He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.”
Host George Stephanopoulos: “Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?”
Trump: “OK, well, he’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of Nato and all of this. In the meantime, he’s going away. He takes Crimea.”
Back in 2014, Trump called the invasion of Ukraine “so smart”.
Pence: ‘That [diplomatic] reset [overseen by Clinton] resulted in the invasion of Ukraine’
This claim strains credulity. Russia invaded Ukraine in the wake of the country’s 2014 revolution, which ousted a pro-Kremlin president who had reneged on a pledge to join an economic pact with the EU.
There is an argument, vaguely, that a lack of American or Nato forces in eastern Europe may have encouraged Russia’s actions, but this is speculative at best. Ukraine is not a member of Nato, the history of Crimea and Russia goes back centuries, and the continued war in eastern Ukraine is being fueled by both the Kremlin and local forces.
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On to North Korea. How to stop them from developing a missile capable of reaching the USA?
Pence: we need to rebuild the American military and marshal American forces to build a coalition to fight the problem. “When Donald Trump is president,” Pence says, “we’re going to go back to the days of peace through strength.”
“All this talk about tax returns, and I get that you’re going to keep bringing it up...” Pence says.
Then he opens an attack on the Clinton foundation, which he says accepted tens of millions from foreign donors in a “pay-to-play” arrangement.
“The Clintons found a way to create a foundation where foreign governments could donate millions” and then Clinton took meetings with donors, Pence says.
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Pence: 'this is crazy'
Quijano for Pence: Why would Putin respect a Donald Trump administration.
Pence: “Strength, plain and simple.”
Then Pence refers again to “this whole Putin thing” and says America is stronger than Russia in every way.
Pence says that Putin being stronger than Obama is “stating painful facts.”
Kaine says that Pence said inarguably that “Vladimir Putin is a better leader than Barack Obama... if you mistake leadership for dictatorship...”
Pence sharply denies he said that.
Pence: “This is the grade school thing again? This is crazy.”
Kaine: “Donald Trump’s sons say that they have all these business dealings with Russia. And that could be explained with tax returns.”
Kaine has brought up Trump’s taxes about 50 times.
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Fact check: the FBI on Clinton
Alan Yuhas
Kaine: ‘A Republican FBI director’ concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would charge Clinton with wrongdoing
FBI director James Comey was George W Bush’s deputy attorney general, and a registered Republican, but is no longer registered with the party. Comey did say that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” against Clinton over her use of a private email server while secretary of state. But Comey also excoriated Clinton for “extremely careless” practices, and found that she had spoken falsely repeatedly about the system.
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Pence: 'I'm just trying to keep up'
Kaine says that Pence is not even attempting to defend his running mate’s position.
I’ll defend them one at a time, Pence says.
“More nations should get nuclear weapons, try to defend that,” Kaine says.
Pence denies Trump said that. Good thing the Internet hasn’t been invented yet or he might get away with that prevarication.
Quijano asks about confronting Russia.
Kaine says that first off, you don’t praise Putin, and the Republican ticket has.
Pence denies it.
Trump “praises Vladimir Putin all the time... had a campaign manager with ties to Putin.. who had to be fired... when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America’s bottom line, or Donald Trump’s bottom line?’
We’d know if he released his tax returns, revealed his business dealings, Kaine says.
Pence scoffs.
“I know he thinks this is funny,” Kaine says.
Pence: “I’m just trying to keep up with this insult driven campaign.”
Kaine: “I’m just saying what your running mate said.”
Pence can’t quite keep up, can he?
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Cross·talk (/ˈkrôsˌtôk/)
2
(h/t: Merriam-Webster)