SALT LAKE CITY — With the country facing four different crises at once and with 27 days until Election Day, Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris took the stage in Utah for the first and only vice presidential debate.
In case you missed it, here are four key moments from Wednesday’s debate.
Harris hits Pence on COVID
Mrs. Harris came out swinging right out of the gate, taking the Trump White House to task for their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” Harris said.
The California senator pointed to more than 210,000 Americans who have died and over 7 million who have contracted the virus. Combine that with the over 30 million people have filed for unemployment.
“Here’s the thing. On Jan. 28, the vice president and the president were informed about the nature of this pandemic,” Harris said. “They knew and they covered it up. The president said it was a hoax. They minimized the seriousness of it.”
Harris held her own
Mrs. Harris proved that she is no pushover and would not put up with Mr. Pence interrupting her. There were little raised voices and cross-talking but when the Vice President interrupted her, she was classy in telling him to kindly be quiet.
“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said.
She said that a total of three times during the night. She used her time to talk about her running mate’s plans. Joe Biden has said he wouldn’t raise taxes for those who make less than $400,000, nor would he ban fracking.
Pence calls out Biden’s campaign for “plagiarism”
The Vice President wasted no time in attacking Mr. Biden, saying his plan to address the coronavirus pandemic “looks a little bit like plagiarism.”
“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,” Mr. Pence said.
In her response, Mrs. Harris appealed to voters by questioning if the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic was swift enough to get the virus under control.
“How calm were you when you were panicked about where you were going to get your next roll of toilet paper?” Harris said. “How calm were you when your kids were sent home from school, and you didn’t know when they could come back? How calm were you when your children couldn’t see your parents because you were afraid they could kill them.”
Pence fails to defend Rose Garden event
Mr. Pence defended a Rose Garden event nominating Amy Coney Barrett to be a Supreme Court Justice, despite it being linked to over 30 White House staff and officials testing positive for coronavirus, including President Donald Trump.
“That Rose Garden event, there’s been a great deal of speculation about it,” Pence said. “My wife and I were honored to be there. Many people there were tested for coronavirus, and it was an outdoor event which all of our scientists regularly and routinely advise.”
Very few people at the event wore masks wearing masks and there was little distance between people. Following the event, guests were hugging and shaking hands with one another, many of which now have tested positive for COVID.
