Vance's 'excellent' debate reviews could 'enrage' an upstaged Trump: conservative

Critics and polling are mixed on exactly who the winner of the vice presidential debate was — but one thing is for certain: Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) did better against Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) than former President Donald Trump did in his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris several weeks previously.

That means, according to The New York Times roundup of opinion columnists' takes on the debate, that even some people who believe Vance walked away the winner of the debate, like former GOP strategist Peter Wehner, consider it something of a Pyrrhic victory — because Trump is sure to be furious at how his running mate appears to be positioning himself as a better leader than he is.

"Vance — because he was quite good and Trump was so awful — must have had MAGA Republicans all over the country admit, if only to themselves, that Trump is not just flawed but deranged," said Wehner, a frequent critic of the former president. "For them, it must have been 90 minutes of enormous relief. Oh, and Vance’s excellent reviews will enrage Trump. So will the fact that Vance seemed more interested in repairing his own image than being Trump’s attack dog."

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Vance and Walz sparred on a wide range of issues, from foreign policy to the economy to abortion to Jan. 6.

While Vance largely managed to stay levelheaded and even-spoken through the debate, in contrast to Trump's performance in which he repeatedly lost his composure while Harris spoke, he had a few gaffe moments, one of the most serious being when he complained about the moderator fact-checking the legal status of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.

Trump, spent much of the night tweeting his own thoughts on the matter, often praising Vance's performance but also getting angry at the moderators himself.