2020 vice-presidential debate between Pence, Harris: key moments

Wednesday evening’s debate between Vice President Mike Pence and the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, was considerably extra civilized than final week’s political horror show between the president and Joe Biden.
That mentioned, there have been nonetheless some standout moments.
The spotlight of the evening was when a fly landed on Pence’s head and remained there for a full two minutes whereas the web misplaced its thoughts.
Pence repeatedly interrupted and spoke over Harris all through the talk.
He additionally used a query concerning the Trump administration’s dealing with of the COVID-19 pandemic to pivot to a plagiarism controversy that sank Biden’s 1988 presidential run.
Scroll all the way down to atone for the most important moments of the evening.
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Wednesday evening’s debate between Vice President Mike Pence and the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, was an train in civility in contrast with final week’s political horror present between President Donald Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.

However there have been nonetheless some standout moments from the evening.

Flygate

The spotlight of the talk was when a fly buzzed round after which landed on Pence’s head, remaining there for 2 full minutes whereas the web collectively lost its mind.

—Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) October 8, 2020

—Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 8, 2020

—HuffPost (@HuffPost) October 8, 2020

—Susan Orlean (@susanorlean) October 8, 2020

—Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 8, 2020

Harris knocks Trump over his debt

From a substantive angle, Harris made waves when she known as out the president over information he’d paid simply $750 in federal revenue taxes in each 2016 and 2017 regardless of describing himself as one of many nation’s wealthiest folks.

That element got here from final month’s bombshell New York Instances reporting on Trump’s federal tax returns, and Harris additionally knocked Trump over one other discovering from the report: that Trump is deeply mired in debt.

“We now know Donald Trump owes and is in debt for $400 million — and simply so everybody is obvious, once we say in debt, it means you owe cash to any person,” Harris mentioned.

—ABC Information (@ABC) October 8, 2020

Pence alludes to Biden plagiarism controversy

Pence raised eyebrows when he alluded to the plagiarism controversy that sank Biden’s 1988 presidential marketing campaign. He talked about the snafu after Harris criticized the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While you take a look at the Biden plan it reads an terrible lot like what President Trump and I and our job drive have been doing each step of the way in which,” Pence responded, including: “It appears to be like somewhat bit like plagiarism, which is one thing Joe Biden is aware of somewhat bit about.”

As Enterprise Insider previously reported, Biden lifted parts of a speech by Neil Kinnock, a UK Labour lawmaker who challenged Margaret Thatcher. And in accordance with a 1987 article in The New York Times, Biden acknowledged plagiarizing a law-review journal for a paper throughout legislation faculty and requested faculty directors to not be expelled. Biden later mentioned he made a mistake within the quotation course of.

Pence and Harris dodge questions on Trump’s and Biden’s well being

Pence and Harris conspicuously refused to deal with questions on their operating mates’ well being.

USA Immediately’s Susan Web page, the moderator of Wednesday evening’s debate, identified that both Trump or Biden can be the oldest US president on the primary day of a time period, with Trump at age 74 and Biden turning 78 in November. She then requested Pence and Harris about Trump’s and Biden’s well being, and each debaters refused to provide a straight reply.

Pence praised what he characterised as Trump’s “distinctive transparency” about his well being following his hospitalization final week for COVID-19. He additionally touted the Trump administration’s pandemic response.

Harris equally declined to immediately tackle the query, saying as a substitute that Biden was “forthright” and “trustworthy” about his well being and would proceed to be clear concerning the matter if elected.

Pence repeatedly interrupted and spoke over Harris

Pence repeatedly interrupted and spoke over each Harris and Web page.

One of many traces Harris repeated all through the talk — “Mr. Vice President, I am talking” — shortly made the rounds on social media. CBS Information’ Norah O’Donnell said: “Our group was following it very intently, and the VP Mike Pence interrupted Sen. Kamala Harris twice as usually.”