Republican Vice President Mike Pence and his Democratic rival Sen. Kamala Harris on Wednesday clashed over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic and their country’s standing on the global stage during their first and only debate ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
The 90-minute head-to-head kicked off with tense exchanges over the novel coronavirus, with Harris, a 55-year-old prosecutor-turned senator, saying that the American people have witnessed the “greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” citing as evidence the 210,000 Americans who have died during the pandemic.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence participate in the vice presidential debate at the University of Utah on Oct. 7, 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The vice presidential candidates only meet once to debate before the general election on November 3. (Getty/Kyodo)
Pence, 61, defended the administration’s response, saying that President Donald Trump’s order to ban the entry of travelers from China, where the virus was first detected, saved “hundreds of thousands” of American lives and asserting that a vaccine is on way “in record time.”
The competition for the second-highest office in the United States has drawn widespread interest as Republican Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden are both in their 70s, raising the stakes as the vice president is next in line if a president is no longer able to serve.
Biden, vice president to former U.S. leader Barack Obama and a longtime senator, is widening his lead over Trump in national polls following last week’s first presidential debate and the news that Trump has been infected with the coronavirus.
The vice presidential debate was conducted in a much more civil manner than the Sept. 29 presidential debate that was dominated by interruptions and insults.
Harris, who is the first black woman and Asian American nominated to be vice president by a major U.S. party, went toe-to-toe with Pence on a range of issues including foreign policy.
She criticized the Trump administration for engaging in a “failed” tit-for-tat tariff war with China that she says led to the loss of manufacturing jobs, and said Trump’s “unilateral approach to foreign policy coupled with isolationism,” as seen in his withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, hurt the country.
“You got to keep your word to your friends, got to be loyal to your friends. People who have stood with you, you got to stand with them. You got to know who your adversaries are, and keep them in check.”
“But what we’ve seen with Donald Trump is that he has betrayed our friends….and embraced dictators around the world,” she said.
Pence, known as a China hawk, hit back at Harris, saying that the Trump administration has stood up to Beijing to address what it sees as unfair trade practices and other issues, which he said Biden had not tackled during his decades-long political career.
“We are going to hold China accountable for what they did to America with the coronavirus,” he said, supporting Trump’s assertion that China is to blame for the global spread of respiratory illness called COVID-19.
With a growing number of White House staffers testing positive for COVID-19 after Trump himself was found to have been infected, extra safety precautions were taken for the debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, including the installation of plexiglass barriers between the two.
If Biden wins the November poll, Harris would make history as the first woman ever to serve in the second-highest office in the United States.
Biden would become the oldest U.S. president ever at the date of inauguration at age 78, raising speculation that he may not run for a second term. In that case, Harris could be well positioned to run atop the Democratic ticket in the 2024 presidential election.
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