Sen. JD Vance is no stranger to debates — people close to him told NOTUS that he actually enjoys them — and those around him are not trying to lower expectations for Tuesday night.
During his first campaign for public office in 2022, Vance endured nearly a dozen debates against seasoned politicians as he ran for Ohio’s open Senate seat. It was during those debates that he first caught the eye of one person in particular: former President Donald Trump.
After Trump observed Vance’s performances, he decided to look past Vance’s previous critiques and endorse the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, a source close to Vance told NOTUS.
“He loves the sparring because he knows he’s good at it, and it’s a venue for him to show off the intellectual capacity difference between him and his opponent,” the source close to Vance said.
Vance’s love for debates hasn’t stopped now that he’s Trump’s running mate. Sources told NOTUS he’s been looking forward to the showdown since before he knew his opponent. In fact, he was relishing the idea of taking down Kamala Harris.
“I’m kind of pissed off about that if I’m being honest with you,” Vance said at his first solo rally as Trump’s running mate, after Joe Biden had dropped out of the race and he figured out he wouldn’t get to debate Harris.
But the question for Vance isn’t how much he loves debating; it’s whether Tuesday night’s showdown will love him back.
In the weeks leading up to the debate, Vance has spent countless hours in “murder-board prep sessions” where he was peppered with questions and attacks from advisers, allies, even his wife. Additionally, he went through a mock debate last week with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer playing Tim Walz and former Fox News analyst Monica Crowley serving as the moderator.
A source with direct knowledge of the debate preparations said the sessions have gone well and that Vance held up during the mock debate, even though Emmer was “super prepared.” (The source added that Emmer had Walz’s mannerisms down cold and knew the opposition research book on Vance “front to back.”)
But it’s not just the official debate preparations that has the campaign feeling confident. They also view the sheer number of interviews, press conferences and gaggles that Vance has done as preparation in and of itself, this source added.
“The good thing with JD is that he’s done so much media that he’s been hit with oppo and defended himself so much,” the source told NOTUS. “He does multiple interviews a week where he’s being hit with tough questions. JD is fully comfortable answering the attacks on himself and has experience doing it, whereas Walz does not.”
The source close to Vance agreed. “All these people he was sitting for interviews with was a pool of candidates to moderate his debate,” the source close to Vance said. The Ohio senator and his staff knew the interviewers were “not going to treat him any differently in the interviews than the debate.”
“It’s a fact of life they’re going to be biased and they’re going to be unfair and our thinking was we’re just going to let them do JD’s debate prep for him,” the source close to Vance told NOTUS.
While the campaign and those close to Vance are bullish on his debate abilities and privately express confidence that he will dominate Walz on Tuesday night, they said they aren’t underestimating the Minnesota governor, who is known as a policy wonk and a sharp debater himself.
Rather than lower expectations for Vance, GOP sources were instead just trying to raise expectations for Walz.
Through studying Walz’s past debates and rallies, Vance’s team has come to the conclusion that he has an unique ability to connect with voters through his “folksy” nature. Additionally, they believe that when Walz gets on the debate stage, he’s going to be prepared.
“Walz is very good in debates. I want to repeat that. Tim Walz is very good in debates. Really good,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters Monday. “He’s been a politician for nearly 20 years. He’ll be very well prepared for tomorrow night. He’s not going to be the wildly gesticulating caricature we see at rallies pointing to Kamala Harris dancing about on the stage. Walz is going to be buttoned up.”
In that light, Vance is “really going to press” Walz on addressing controversies that he has “never really been forced to defend,” such as characterizations that Walz misrepresented his service record, the source with knowledge of the debate preparations told NOTUS. Vance will also “hammer” Walz on additional “oppo around him that has never been litigated,” the source added.
Vance and his team have also been preparing for how to push Walz when he dodges questions, according to a source familiar with the debate preparations. After studying Walz’s interviews, the campaign came to realize that Walz was good at memorizing statistics and details about certain policies. They said he has leaned on that memorization to get him out of tough spots.
The source emphasized that they believe that, if Vance pins Walz during the debate on a certain policy issue, the Minnesota governor will filibuster his way out of it by stringing together a handful of freely associated statistics and numbers. They have prepared Vance on how to deal with that when he does.
Walz’s team, for their part, is trying to raise expectations for Vance.
“He was underestimated in the Senate race against Tim Ryan, who was a very good debater,” said a person close to the Harris campaign. “So I would not underestimate this guy at all. But with that being said, it’s hard to come back of being accused fucking couches.”
The best-case scenario for the Harris team, the person added, is that Vance’s performance leads Trump back to the debate stage.
—
Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS. Jasmine Wright contributed reporting.