SALT LAKE CITY _ Vice President Mike Pence defended President Donald Trump on coronavirus, trade and foreign policy Wednesday night, while California Sen. Kamala Harris argued the GOP administration is a historic failure and must be terminated.
The Pence and Harris debate was the year's only encounter for the vice presidential hopefuls, and might be the last in-person encounter between the two major-party tickets.
At times, the rivals for the nation's No. 2 spot got chippy, speaking over one another and showing exasperation at being interrupted. Overall, though, their performance was far more sedate than last week's raucous clash between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden _ the first of three top-of-ticket encounters scheduled before Trump's contraction of COVID-19 threw the campaign's close into disarray.
Coronavirus precautions at the University of Utah, where the debate took place, were in force _ widespread testing and social distancing.
Harris wasted little time going on the attack.
"The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country," she said.
Speaking of journalist Bob Woodward's revelations about when Trump knew of the deadliness of COVID-19, Harris said both Trump and Pence didn't let Americans in on the grim news.
"They knew what was happening and they didn't tell you," she said. "They knew and they covered it up."
Pence, though, accused Biden and Harris of copying the Trump administration's plan for containing coronavirus.
"From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first," he said.
"I want all of you to know that you'll always be in our hearts _ and in our prayers," Pence said, looking to camera.
On testing, vaccines and therapeutics, Pence said the Biden-Harris plan "reads an awful lot like" the White House's plan.
"It looks a little bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about," Pence said, referring to revelations in Biden's first run for president _ in 1988 _ that he'd lifted lines from a British politician and exaggerated his academic record.
Harris, ignoring the shot, said Trump and Pence underestimated Americans' grit.
"This administration stood on information that if you had as a parent, if you had as a worker, knowing you didn't have enough money saved up, and now you're standing in a food line _ because of the ineptitude of an administration that was unwilling to speak the truth to the American people," she said.
Moving from defense to offense, Pence parroted Trump and played up the administration's decision to bar some travelers from China from entering the U.S. last winter. He said Biden had opposed the move as xenophobic.
Debate moderator Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today, asked Harris if she would take a COVID-19 vaccine approved by the Trump administration before next month's election.
Harris replied that if Dr. Anthony Fauci and other experts advise taking such a vaccine, she would.
"Absolutely," she said. "But if Donald Trump tells us to take it, I'm not taking it."
Pence, ignoring Page's next question about possible use of the 25th Amendment in case of presidential disability, denounced Harris' vaccine remark.
"The reality is we're going to have a vaccine ... in record time, in unheard of time, in less than a year," he said. "The fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine ... is unconscionable."
Because of their advanced ages _ Trump is 74; and Biden, 77 _ their running mates' encounter took on added significance.
Based solely on what's happened to the 44 presidents the country has had, with fatal illnesses and assassinations, Harris or Pence would have a 1-in-5 chance of ascending to the Oval Office over the next four years. And that's not factoring the ages of Trump and Biden, or the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Trump did last week, Pence repeatedly spoke of Biden's "47 years in public life" and said if the Democrat is elected, he would undercut what Pence claimed is currently a "V-shaped recovery" from the recession caused by the pandemic.
Pence said the Biden agenda would harm the oil and gas industry, raise taxes and "bury our economy under a $2 trillion Green New Deal."
Harris responded that Biden wouldn't raise taxes on "anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year," wouldn't ban fracking and would protect people's health care, which she said the Republicans want to take away. Pence, though, said that by repealing the Trump tax cuts, Biden would take away a $2,000 break for ordinary Americans.
The rivals split on the Affordable Care Act. Harris said it has brought health coverage to 20 million Americans. Pence spoke of it in the past tense, as "a disaster."
Biden's climate change "makes no sense, it will cost jobs," Pence said.
Turning to trade, Harris said Trump's tariffs have hurt manufacturing.
"You lost that trade war" with China, she said.
Pence shot back, "We lost the trade war with China? Joe Biden never fought it."
On the military, Harris questioned why Trump hasn't spoken to Russian leader Vladimir Putin about reports that Russians placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan.
"Donald Trump has talked at least six times to Vladimir Putin and never brought up the subject," she said.
Harris also cited a recent article in The Atlantic magazine that quoted unnamed current and former administration officials as saying Trump had belittled military veterans as "suckers" and "losers."
Pence, though, called them "slanders." He noted his son in law was deployed as a Marine.
On Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to a seat on the Supreme Court, Pence said, "We hope she gets a fair hearing."
Referring to Harris' role in questioning Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing in 2018, Pence added, "We particularly hope that we don't see the kinds of attacks on her Christian faith ... we saw before."
"It's insulting to suggest that we would knock anyone for their faith," Harris shot back.
If elected, Biden would become only the nation's second Roman Catholic president, she noted.
Pence returned fire about the high court.
"Are you and Joe Biden going to pack the court?" he asked.
Harris, as Biden did last week, changed the topic to the precedent she said Abraham Lincoln set to not push through a Supreme Court until after the 1864 election.
"That's the non-answer Joe Biden gave," Pence said. "If you cherish the Supreme Court, if you cherish the separation of powers, you need to reject the Biden-Harris ticket."
Harris responded that professional groups such as the American Bar Association have rated Trump's federal judicial appointees as "substandard." Of 50 appellate judges the incumbent president has named, "not one is Black," she said.
On policing, as he did four years ago in his vice presidential debate with Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Pence called it insulting to police to require them to be trained on "implicit bias."
After Harris discussed this year's deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in police custody, Pence called the events lamentable.
"But there's also no excuse for rioting and looting," he said. Speaking of the Kentucky grand jury that found no reason to indict two officers in Taylor's shooting death, while accusing a third only of wanton endangerment, Pence reproached Harris:
"It really is remarkable that as a former prosecutor, you would assume an empaneled grand jury looking at all the evidence got it wrong," he said.
Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general bristled.
"I will not sit here and be lectured by the vice president on what it means to enforce the laws of our country," she replied.
Pence accused Democrats of spending more than three years trying to undercut Trump's and his legitimacy. He lambasted the news media for saying Trump last week declined to denounce white supremacy.
"President Trump has Jewish grandchildren," Pence said. "This is a president who respects all of the American people."
