Within just minutes of the vice presidential debate’s conclusion Tuesday, CNN’s Debate Night in America panel was quick to slam Governor Mike Pence and praise Senator Tim Kaine’s performance. “Well, there are two sins in communicating with people. There's small sin and there's big sin,” political commentator Van Jones explained, “And what happened was, you saw in real time essentially Pence invent a running mate and he just lied about you know what this guy stood for.” Jones said that Kaine committed the “small sin” of incessantly interrupting Pence.
Donald Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany was quick to shoot jones down, pointing to Clinton’s own history with lies. “It’s ironic to hear the Clinton campaign talk about lying when you have a candidate who has lied and changed her story on e-mails many times,” she stated before declaring Pence the winner of the night.
She went on to note the two different strategies used by the vice presidential candidates, “we saw insults on the part of Kaine, versus solutions on the part of Pence.” She drew attention to how Kaine retreated to talking about the miss universe contestant after talking about terrorism, while Pence, “Took the opportunity to name a soldier, thank him for his service and say his sacrifice has been undermined by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.”
Attack ad artist Paul Begala had his own smears for Pence, claiming he was there for only himself and his political career. “He threw Trump under the bus. This is about Mike Pence running the primaries in 2020,” he argued and Jones agreed. Begala elaborated:
He had a strategy to promote himself at the expense of Donald Trump, it was remarkable… he had this lovely parts where he kept talking about the conservative philosophy of limited government. That was great, but it was great because we never hear it from Trump. But, we hear it from Pence because he's running in 2020. I’m telling you, he’s throwing Trump under the bus. He thinks this thing’s over.
