SALT LAKE CITY — “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” Sen. Kamala Harris at one point interjected during Wednesday’s vice presidential debate.
“I just want the record to reflect she never answered the question,” Vice President Mike Pence quipped later on.
Wednesday’s debate was filled with less interruption and much more policy talk than last week’s presidential debate, but the candidates managed to make their marks with a series of stinging one-liners directed at their opponent.
Both Pence's and Harris’ records were on the line during Wednesday’s event, as well as those of their respective counterparts, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. Pence was tasked with the unenviable job of explaining the White House’s perceived flouting of coronavirus guidelines in recent days, while Harris deflected questions about her and Biden’s plans for the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Harris made history Wednesday night as the first Black woman and first South Asian woman on the vice presidential debate stage.
Here are some takeaways from the first and only Vice Presidential debate:
Harris was on the attack, and Pence was put on the defensive when it came to the Trump administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Harris called the government's response to the outbreak "the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country." The California senator also said Trump still does not have a plan for tackling the virus but that Biden has laid out a national strategy for contact tracing, testing, and administering a vaccine that will be free to everyone.
Pence, who heads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said, "From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first."
The vice president said Trump has delivered on tests, protective gear for health care workers, and medicines, adding that he believes tens of millions of vaccine doses will be distributed before the end of the year.
"Quite frankly, when I look at their plan that talks about advancing testing, creating new PPE, developing a vaccine, it looks a little bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about," Pence said, referring to the Biden scandal that derailed his 1988 presidential campaign.
Harris fired back: "Whatever the vice president is claiming the administration has done, clearly it hasn't worked when you're looking at over 210,000 dead bodies in our country."
Pence sidestepped a question about the COVID-19 outbreak that has infected dozens who work at or have recently visited the White House, including Trump. The vice president instead tried to make a statement about how the administration respects people's right "to make choices in the best interest of their health."
Harris used that remark to attack Trump for publicly downplaying the seriousness of the virus.
"Let's talk about respecting the American people," she said. "You respect the American people when you tell them the truth. You respect the American people when you have the courage to be a leader speaking of those things that you may not want people to hear, but they need to hear so they can protect themselves."
Regardless of who is elected president on Nov. 3, their vice presidential candidate will make history: Both would serve alongside the oldest president in American history.
Trump, who was the oldest president when he was sworn in at 70 years old, is now 74; Biden is currently 77, and would turn 78 shortly after Election Day.
As such, and in light of President Trump’s recent hospitalization at Walter Reed after he tested positive for the coronavirus, both candidates were asked if they have had conversations with their respective running mates about a potential transfer of power should Biden or Trump become either mentally or physically incapacitated.
On this topic, both Pence and Harris demurred.
When asked why the American people should be expected to follow coronavirus guidelines when even the White House can’t seem to do so, Pence said that he and Trump, “have great confidence in the American people and their ability to take that information and put it into practice.”
President Trump notably did not exercise Section 3 of the 25th Amendment while hospitalized, which would have temporarily transferred the powers and duties of the president to the vice president.
Pence did concede that the American people have a right to know about the health of the president, insisting that "the transparency they [Walter Reed doctors] practiced all along will continue."
In fact, the updates from Trump’s medical team have often raised more questions than they answered. Both Dr. Sean Conley, the president’s physician, and the White House have refused to answer questions about when the president received his last negative COVID test; nor have they answered questions about what specific precautions the president’s team will take to prevent the transmission of the virus to other staffers upon his return to the White House.
Harris, although also dodging the original question about whether she and Biden have had a conversation about the potential transfer of power, did offer an explanation of what a United States presidency would look like should something happen to Biden, saying he chose her because they share the same ideals and hopes for the country.
The former prosecutor seized upon Pence’s statement that “the American people have a right to know about the health of the president,” pointing out that Trump has been anything but since his hospitalization on Oct. 2.
Harris also extended her call for transparency to both Trump’s personal finances, and the recent revelation from journalist Bob Woodward that the president knew of the severity of the coronavirus pandemic before he informed the public.
“Joe Biden has been so incredibly transparent and certainly by contrast where the president has not, both in terms of health records but also let’s look at taxes,” Harris said, later adding: "Donald Trump paid $750 in taxes...When I first heard about it, I literally said, 'you mean $750,000?' And it was like, no, $750."
“Trump didn’t share information about the virus because he wanted you to stay calm,” Harris later continued. “I want to ask you: how calm were you when you were hunting for toilet paper? How calm were you when your children couldn’t see their grandparents because you were afraid they could kill them?”
Though it may have been swept out of the news cycle by a busy week of news, the debate circled back to reports about President Trump’s taxes.
A New York Times report released last week that President Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax the year he entered the White House – and, thanks to colossal losses, no income tax at all in 11 of the 18 years that the Times reviewed – served to raise doubts about Trump’s self-image as a shrewd and successful businessman.
Harris said a lack of information on President Donald Trump’s outstanding debts raises concerns about possible motives for his decisions in the nation’s top office.
The Democratic vice presidential nominee said Wednesday during a candidate debate in Salt Lake City that “it’d be really good to know who the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief, owes money to.”
Pence shook his head as she spoke.
Trump has fiercely guarded his tax filings and is the only president in modern times not to make them public. Harris pivoted to taxes during a question on whether the American people deserved to have information on their president’s health, to which she and Pence both answered in the affirmative.
Harris’ answers – or lack thereof – about whether she and Biden will pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices should Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination be confirmed will certainly be a sticking point for many undecided and Republican voters.
Harris, like her running mate Joe Biden, staunchly refused to answer Pence’s demands about whether their administration would expand the amount of justice on the Supreme Court. The former prosecutor instead parroted the campaign’s often-repeated line that the American people should decide who represents them on the nation’s highest court.
“Joe and I are very clear: The American people are voting right now, and it should be their decision about who will serve on this most important body for a lifetime,” Harris said.
Pence did not miss Harris’ dodge, saying, “I just want the record to reflect that she never answered the question.”
But the candidates did draw a clear line in the sand when it came to the issue of abortion. As Coney Barrett is well-known among conservatives for her anti-abortion views, many have grown concerned about the future of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that protects a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government interference.
"I will always fight for a woman's right to make a decision about her own body,” Harris said. “It should be her decision and not that of Donald Trump and the vice president, Michael Pence."
Pence holds a starkly different view.
"I am pro-life, I don’t apologize for it. And this is another one of those cases where there’s such a dramatic contrast," the vice president said of his opponents. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support taxpayer funded abortion all the way up to the moment of birth.”
The truth of Pence’s claim is murky, although his underlying message is categorically untrue. Biden has never explicitly expressed his support for late-term abortions, but has said that he will codify Roe into law should he be elected president. Biden also reversed his condemnation of the Hyde Amendment, a controversial piece of law that bans taxpayer-supported programs from utilizing federal funds for abortions, as recently as 2019.
Pence touted the economy under Trump, saying it had been growing too slowly under Barack Obama/Biden administration.
"We've already added back 11.6 million jobs because we had a president who cut taxes, rolled back regulation, unleashed American energy, fought for free and fair trade and secured $4 trillion from the Congress of the United States to give direct payments to families, save 50 million jobs through the Paycheck Protection Program," Pence said. "We literally have spared no expense to help the American people and the American worker through this."
The vice president argued that the economy would take steps backward in a Biden/Harris administration because of their tax, environmental, and foreign trade policies.
"Joe Biden says democracy's on the ballot," Pence said. "Make no mistake about it ... the American economy, the American comeback is on the ballot."
Harris said Trump and Pence merely benefited from the groundwork that Obama and Biden laid.
"Joe Biden is the one who during the Great Recession was responsible for the Recovery Act that brought America back," she said. "And now the Trump-Pence administration wants to take credit when they rode the coattails of Joe Biden's success for the economy that they had at the beginning of their turn. Of course, now the economy is a complete disaster.
"On the issue of the economy, I think there couldn't be a more fundamental difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden," Harris said. "Joe Biden believes you measure the health and the strength of America's economy based on the health and the strength of the American worker and the American family. On the other hand, you have Donald Trump, who measures the strength of the economy based on how rich people are doing."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.