Harris, Pence Spar Over Covid-19 At Vice Presidential Debate

A devastating pandemic, flying accusations about policies and a sticky fly: memorable moments at the strikingly less contentious vice presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris have stood out in stark relief against the chaos that marred last week’s presidential bout.

Trading barbs through plexiglass shields, Republican Pence and Democrat Harris turned the only vice presidential debate of 2020 into a dissection of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with Harris labelling it “the greatest failure of any presidential administration”.

Pence, who leads the president’s coronavirus task force, acknowledged that “our nation’s gone through a very challenging time this year”, yet vigorously defended the administration’s overall response to a pandemic that has killed 210,000 Americans.

A firm admonishment before the debate in Salt Lake City from moderator Susan Page, of USA Today, set an expectation of basic courtesy between the vice presidential candidates.

“We want a debate that is lively. But Americans also deserve a discussion that is civil. These are tumultuous times, but we can and will have a respectful exchange,” Page said.

Single-virus-issue race?

The meeting, which was far more civil than last week’s face-off between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, unfolded against an outbreak of coronavirus now hitting the highest levels of the US government. Trump spent three days at the hospital before returning to the White House on Monday, and more than a dozen White House and Pentagon officials are also infected, forcing even more into quarantine.

With less than four weeks before Election Day, the debate was one of the final opportunities for Trump and Pence to reset a contest that could be slipping away. They’re hoping to move the campaign’s focus away from the virus, but the president’s infection (and his downplaying of the consequences) are making that challenging.

Trump and Biden are scheduled to debate again on October 15, though the status of that meeting is unclear. The president has said he wants to attend, but Biden says it shouldn’t move forward if Trump still has coronavirus.

Republicans desperately want to cast the race as a choice between two candidates fighting to move the country in vastly different directions. Biden and Harris, they say, would pursue a far-left agenda bordering on socialism; the Democrats say Trump’s administration will stoke racial and other divides, torpedo health care for people who aren’t wealthy and otherwise undercut national strength.

Covid-19

In the opening moments of what was the only meeting between the vice presidential candidates, Harris said Trump’s response to Covid-19 was the “greatest failure” of any US administration.

“On January 28, the vice president and the president were informed about the nature of this pandemic. They were informed that it’s lethal … and they knew what was happening and they didn’t tell you,” Harris said.

Trump’s VP lashed back saying the president “has put the health of America first”.

Pence said thatTrump “suspended all travel from China,” claiming that Biden criticised the move as “xenophobic”.

An AFP fact-check found vice president’s statement on travel is inaccurate. Rather than barring all travel from China, Trump imposed restrictions that were subject to multiple exemptions.

A New York Times analysis found that tens of thousands of travelers entered the US from China in the two months following the restrictions.

Biden has accused Trump of trading in xenophobia in tweets this year, but it is not clear if he was specifically referring to the president’s China travel measures.

Vaccine

When asked about vaccines, Harris made it clear that “if the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely, but if Donald Trump tells us to take it, I’m not taking it”.

Pence fired back by accusing Harris of undermining the public faith in any virus vaccine that could become available under Trump.

“I think [that] is unconscionable,” he said.

“The reality is when you look at the Biden plan (to fight the pandemic), it reads an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way … it looks a little bit like plagiarism.”

READ MORE: Latest global Covid-19 updates

Race and policing

Harris, 55, made history by becoming the first Black woman to stand on a vice presidential debate stage. She condemned the police killings of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and George Floyd in Minnesota and spoke about the protests against racial injustice in policing that followed, which Trump has portrayed as “riots” as he calls for law-and-order.

“We are never going to condone violence but we must always fight for the values that we hold dear,” Harris said.

“I’m a former career prosecutor. I know what I’m talking about. Bad cops are bad for good cops.”

A brief fly-ing interlude

There was briefly another participant swooping into night’s vice presidential debate.

For several minutes, a fly landed in Pence’s hair, not moving as he answered questions about racial injustice and whether justice has been done in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Pence, 61, said his heart breaks for Taylor’s family but he trusts the US justice system. He called it “remarkable” that Harris, as a former attorney general and prosecutor, would question the grand jury’s decision in the case not to charge an officer with killing her.

He also pushed back against the existence of systemic racism in police departments and rejected the idea that law enforcement officers have a bias against minorities.

“I want everyone to know who puts on the uniform of law enforcement every day, President Trump and I stand with you,” Pence said. “We don’t have to choose between supporting law enforcement, proving public safety and supporting our African American neighbours.”

China trade wars

Pence and Harris sparred over the Trump administration’s relationship with China, as well as the country being the source of the coronavirus.

Harris said Pence’s claiming of a trade war victory with China was incorrect. “You lost that trade war, you lost it.”

Harris claimed the trade dispute with China cost 300,000 manufacturing jobs, saying “we are in a manufacturing recession”.

Pence responded that Biden never fought a trade war with China and that he was instead “a cheerleader for Communist China over the last several decades”.

Pence commended Trump’s decision to shut off travel from China, saying the decision bought invaluable time to coordinate the country’s response to the pandemic.

But Trump’s move only cut off some travel from China, and tens of thousands were still allowed to pour into the country.

READ MORE: Four takeaways from a raucous first US presidential debate

Trump’s financial transparency

The candidates also clashed on taxes, or specifically, Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns four years after repeatedly promising to do so. The New York Times reported last month that the president pays very little personal income tax but owes hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

“It’d be really good to know who the president owes money to,” Harris said.

“The one thing we know about Joe, he puts it all out there. He is honest, he is forthright,” she added. “Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been about covering up everything.”

Pence defended Trump as a job creator who has paid more than his fair share of taxes and shifted toward Biden: “On Day One, Joe Biden’s going to raise your taxes.”

While the debate covered a range of topics, the virus was at the forefront.

READ MORE: Supreme Court orders Trump financial records released to NY prosecutors

Healthcare

“If you have a pre-existing condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they’re coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, they are coming for you,” Harris said about Trump’s healthcare approach.

Harris said Trump is “in court right now trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which means you will lose protections if you have pre-existing conditions”.

Trump’s Justice Department has argued in a brief to the US Supreme Court that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) should be struck down, which would, as Harris said, end the protection for people with pre-existing conditions that it currently provides.

Pence responded that “President Trump and I have a plan to improve healthcare and protect pre-existing conditions”.

No such plan has been presented to Congress.

On September 24, however, Trump signed an executive order stating that it is US policy to “to ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions can obtain the insurance of their choice at affordable rates”.

But legal experts say it is not a replacement for the protection provided by the ACA.

The fly with a Twitter account

The stray housefly briefly commanded the US national stage.

Conversation about the fly briefly dominated corners of Twitter, where debate watchers discussed their distraction and inability to focus on Pence and Harris’ answers.

Some joked about the need to test the fly for the coronavirus, as it had skirted the plexiglass partitions separating the candidates and moderator.

The insect sat there for several minutes during the matchup, distracting viewers who perhaps may have been looking for a break from all the talk of taxes and trade.

“The fly won the debate,” Jeanne Duncan, an Oregon writer, posted on Twitter.

A short time later, it was gone, but its legend was only growing.

On Twitter, an account named @MikePenceFly swiftly gained thousands of followers.