Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Tom McCarthy, Scott Bixby and Amber Jamieson

Pence and Kaine spar in vice-presidential debate – as it happened

These guys.
These guys. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Summary

The first and only vice-presidential debate of 2016 is in the can. Here’s what happened:

  • It was punchy, not a bit flat, it moved fast, covered a lot of policy ground, and featured Virginia senator Tim Kaine going after Donald Trump’s jugular like a bloodthirsty terrier while Indiana governor Mike Pence projected, mostly, a demeanor of steely calm and determined focus.
  • Pence was criticized afterward for failing to defend most any of the controversial statements Trump has made, instead pretending that Trump had not said those things.
  • Kaine was criticized afterward for interrupting Pence too much. Many of those interruptions included a call for Trump to release his tax returns, which Kaine mentioned many many times.
  • Each side accused the other of running a campaign of insults. An “avalanche of insults,” Pence called it.
  • At which Kaine rattled off about 16 insulting things Trump had said and accused Trump of having “kind of a personal mount Rushmore” of dictators he likes.
  • “Oh please,” Pence replied. “Did you work on that one a long time? Because it had a lot of creative lines.”
  • “See if you can defend any of them,” Kaine retorted, pointing out that he was merely repeating verbatim things Trump had said.
  • There were fireworks. Kaine said Trump was exactly the “fool or maniac” Ronald Reagan had warned about when it came to nuclear weapons. “Senator,” Pence replied, “that is even beneath you and Hillary Clinton, and that is pretty low.”
  • Pence denied that Trump had proposed punishing women for abortion, then sort of admitted Trump had said that, explaining: “He’s not a polished politician.”
  • Pence also denied that he had called Russian president Vladimir Putin “a stronger leader” than Barack Obama, denied past support for privatizing social security and denied that Trump had called for more nations to get nuclear weapons.
  • The unflappable Pence did show some frustration with Kaine on “this whole Putin thing,” “this Iran thing” and, in an unfortunate choice of words, at one point said, “Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again.”
  • Pence rolled out a Syria policy that Trump hasn’t mentioned, including safe zones and a muscular American response if Russia continues its involvement in the bombing of civilians.
  • Kaine successfully tied Trump’s apparent non-payment of taxes to non-support for US troops. Pence: “Donald Trump would support our troops.” Kaine: “He doesn’t pay taxes.”
  • Two different world views were on display. Pence: “You’ve got to err on the side of the safety of the American people.” Kaine: “By trashing all Syrians? By trashing all Muslims?”
  • “The thought of Donald Trump as commander in chief scares us to death,” Kaine said of himself and Clinton.

Reactions II

Twitter’s top moments.
Twitter’s top moments. Photograph: Twitter

Updated

Reactions

Fact check: abortion

Pence: ‘Donald Trump and I would just never support legislation that would punish a woman for making the heartbreaking decision to terminate a pregnancy’

Kaine is correct that Trump suggested women should be punished for having abortions – he then recanted the idea at the end of a day of flip flopping positions. Unlike Pence, Trump has not been pro-life his whole life. In 1999, he said: “I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for, I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject, but still I just believe in choice.”

Fact check: the Clinton foundation

Pence: the Associated Press found that more than half of Clinton’s meetings as secretary of state were with donors to the Clinton Foundation

The AP story on Clinton’s meetings did not include her meetings with people in the US government and from foreign governments – who were by a huge margin the people she met with while serving as the top diplomat of the United States.

The news agency deleted a tweet about the story – virtually verbatim to what Pence said– for lack of context, and AP’s vice president for standards John Daniszewski wrote a blog post about the decision.

Updated

That’s it! It’s done. Who won? Did Kaine rattle Pence? How did Quijano do?

Many have been asking what kind of pin Tim Kaine is wearing on his lapel tonight.

Answer: A Blue Star Pin, worn by the families of those who serve in the military, in honor of his son Nat.

Earlier this year, the North Carolina GOP derided Kaine as “shameful” for wearing the Blue Star Pin, which they wrongly thought was a Honduras flag pin. (Kaine was a missionary in Honduras in 1980).

Last question: How would you bring the country together if elected?

Kaine: Clinton was first lady, senator and now the nominee. I’m surprised all the time by how well people say they worked with her. He names children’s health care and care for 9/11 survivors. “She has a track record of working across the aisle to make things happen.” He mentions he had two Republican- controlled legislatures while governor.

Pence: Thank you thank you. “This is a very challenging time in the life of the nation. .. an economy that’s truly struggling... more taxes, regulation, Obamacare, war on coal, trade deals that have put American workers in the backseat. “The best way we can bring American workers together is through change in Washington DC... The American people want to see our people standing tall again... and Donald Trump’s entire career has been about building... finding a way... to fight forward. When Donald Trump because president of the United States, we’re going to have a stronger America.

Kaine: Trump wants to punish women for abortion

Quijano: describe your faith life.

Kaine: This question is easy. Irish Catholic, Jesuit, Catholic missionary, people should worship as they please. As state governor, he says, he struggled with Virginia’s death penalty. He opposed it based on religion. “But I know how to take an oath and uphold the law... it was very very difficult to allow an execution to go forward... that was a real struggle” but people of faith can’t just substitute their own views on everyone.

Pence: Wonderful question. “My Christian faith is at the very heart of who I am.” We went to church and had grace. “With my wife at my side, we followed the calling into public service.” I have a great deal of respect for senator Kaine’s sincere faith. But the sanctimony of life... out of the blue... ancient principle... God says... great compassion for the sanctity of life.. non-abortion alternatives.. pro-adoption. “What I can’t understand with Hillary Clinton... to support a practice like partial birth abortion... that a child almost born could still have their life taken from them is just anathema to me...Clinton wants to repeal” ban on tax funds for abortion. Still Pence talking here. “I like to spend a little bit of time on my knees every day.”

Kaine: “This is a fundamental question... we really feel that it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else... we support Roe v Wade... the constitutional right of American woman to... make their own decision about pregnancy. We trust American women to do that. And we don’t think that women as Donald Trump said should be punished.. “ Pence wants to overturn Roe.. “The very last thing that government should do is to make laws that would punish women.” And that “is the

Pence: “Donald Trump and I” don’t favor punishing women for abortion.

Kaine: Trump said he did.

Pence: “He’s not a polished politician.”

Kaine: The gospel of Matthew says, “From the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” So Trump meant it. And he called Mexicans rapists.

Pence: “Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again.”

Kaine: “Can you defend it?”

Pence: “There are criminal aliens that come into this country...”

[talk talk]

Kaine: Why doesn’t Donald Trump trust women to make that choice for themselves?

Pence: Because a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable... I couldn’t be more proud to be standing with a pro-life candidate.”

Updated

The candidates are asked about their faith. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner has taken a look at their different Catholic-inspired visions:

Updated

It’s all about the Benjamins Putin(s)

Kaine says that Trump owes $650m including to the bank of China.

Pence is shaking his head and frowning. Pence seems really offended by Kaine saying all this stuff with a smile.

Pence says that the Clinton foundation lets the Clintons travel the world but we’d know a lot more about it if Hillary Clinton would release 33,000 emails she released.

Kaine is asked whether he would take action if North Korea launched a nuke that could hit the USA.

“You have to take action,” Kaine says. Seems like a solid answer?

Fact-check: Trump & taxes

Kaine: Trump ‘doesn’t pay taxes’

Nobody except Trump and his current accountant seem to know for sure whether Trump pays taxes.

Last weekend Trump’s 1995 returns were published by the New York Times, which had them mailed by an anonymous source and verified by Trump’s former accountant. The documents showed that Trump reported losing $916m in his businesses that year, meaning that he could avoid paying federal income taxes for the next 18 years.

Trump has not denied that he paid no federal taxes for nearly two decades, and instead said that avoiding taxes would show that he was “smart”.

Earlier in his career Trump did pay a few taxes. A 1981 report to New Jersey’s casino control commission, which reviewed Trump’s taxes from 1975 to 1979, shows that he paid federal income taxes for three of those five years. He did not pay taxes in two of those five years because he lost more money, $3.8m, than he made.

Kaine says the Clinton foundation is great. It provides Aids drugs and helps Americans with opioid addictions. And Clinton as secretary of state took no action on behalf of the foundation.

“The Trump foundation..[he means Trump organization?] is an octopus-like foundation around the world...whose conflicts of interests could only be known if Donald Trump releases his tax returns... it’s not a nonprofit. It’s putting money into Donald Trump’s pockets and the pockets of his children...

The foundation was just fined for an ... illegal contribution and then they tried to hide it.. and the person they donated to was somebody’s office who was trying to investigate Trump University.

Fact check: Russia, Putin, Crimea and Ukraine

Kaine: Trump has praised Vladimir Putin and ‘it’s clear that he has business dealings with Russian oligarchs who are dealing with Putin’

Trump has repeatedly called Russia’s president a “strong leader” and spoken approvingly of this strength and Putin’s polling numbers. For instance, on 18 December 2015 he told MSNBC: “I’ve always felt fine about Putin. I think that he’s a strong leader.”

He added: “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.”

Last September, he told Fox News: “In terms of leadership [Putin’s] getting an A.” In a 10 March debate, Trump tried to hedge on semantics. “Strong doesn’t mean good,” he said. “Putin is a strong leader, absolutely. He is a strong leader. Now I don’t say that in a good way or a bad way. I say it as a fact.”

Pence also said, as Kaine points out, that it’s “inarguable” that Putin is a stronger leader than Obama.

Kaine also said that Putin “has run his economy into the ground, he persecutes LGBT folks and journalists”.

The caliber of Putin’s leadership is debatable in and of itself. Russia’s economy under Putin’s 16 years of leadership has become over-reliant on oil and hamstrung by economic sanctions, themselves prompted by Putin’s aggressive military action in Ukraine. The value of the ruble has collapsed, and the Kremlin started hinting that it would start to reach into its reserves. The economy has shrunk to a smaller GDP than Spain, according to the IMF, and Russia’s newly active military is involved in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria that appear to have no resolution in sight. In Ukraine nearly 10,000 people have been killed, and in Syria nearly 500,000. Putin has passed anti-LGBT laws, clamped down on the press, and been accused of murdering opponents, including journalists.

Kaine: ‘Donald Trump on the other hand didn’t know that Russia had invaded Crimea’

Pence: “He knew that.”

Here’s what Trump told ABC’s This Week in August: “He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.”

Host George Stephanopoulos: “Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?”

Trump: “OK, well, he’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of Nato and all of this. In the meantime, he’s going away. He takes Crimea.”

Back in 2014, Trump called the invasion of Ukraine “so smart”.

Pence: ‘That [diplomatic] reset [overseen by Clinton] resulted in the invasion of Ukraine’

This claim strains credulity. Russia invaded Ukraine in the wake of the country’s 2014 revolution, which ousted a pro-Kremlin president who had reneged on a pledge to join an economic pact with the EU.

There is an argument, vaguely, that a lack of American or Nato forces in eastern Europe may have encouraged Russia’s actions, but this is speculative at best. Ukraine is not a member of Nato, the history of Crimea and Russia goes back centuries, and the continued war in eastern Ukraine is being fueled by both the Kremlin and local forces.

On to North Korea. How to stop them from developing a missile capable of reaching the USA?

Pence: we need to rebuild the American military and marshal American forces to build a coalition to fight the problem. “When Donald Trump is president,” Pence says, “we’re going to go back to the days of peace through strength.”

“All this talk about tax returns, and I get that you’re going to keep bringing it up...” Pence says.

Then he opens an attack on the Clinton foundation, which he says accepted tens of millions from foreign donors in a “pay-to-play” arrangement.

“The Clintons found a way to create a foundation where foreign governments could donate millions” and then Clinton took meetings with donors, Pence says.

Pence: 'this is crazy'

Quijano for Pence: Why would Putin respect a Donald Trump administration.

Pence: “Strength, plain and simple.”

Then Pence refers again to “this whole Putin thing” and says America is stronger than Russia in every way.

Pence says that Putin being stronger than Obama is “stating painful facts.”

Kaine says that Pence said inarguably that “Vladimir Putin is a better leader than Barack Obama... if you mistake leadership for dictatorship...”

Pence sharply denies he said that.

Pence: “This is the grade school thing again? This is crazy.”

Kaine: “Donald Trump’s sons say that they have all these business dealings with Russia. And that could be explained with tax returns.”

Kaine has brought up Trump’s taxes about 50 times.

Fact check: the FBI on Clinton

Kaine: ‘A Republican FBI director’ concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would charge Clinton with wrongdoing

FBI director James Comey was George W Bush’s deputy attorney general, and a registered Republican, but is no longer registered with the party. Comey did say that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” against Clinton over her use of a private email server while secretary of state. But Comey also excoriated Clinton for “extremely careless” practices, and found that she had spoken falsely repeatedly about the system.

Updated

Pence: 'I'm just trying to keep up'

Kaine says that Pence is not even attempting to defend his running mate’s position.

I’ll defend them one at a time, Pence says.

“More nations should get nuclear weapons, try to defend that,” Kaine says.

Pence denies Trump said that. Good thing the Internet hasn’t been invented yet or he might get away with that prevarication.

Quijano asks about confronting Russia.

Kaine says that first off, you don’t praise Putin, and the Republican ticket has.

Pence denies it.

Trump “praises Vladimir Putin all the time... had a campaign manager with ties to Putin.. who had to be fired... when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America’s bottom line, or Donald Trump’s bottom line?’

We’d know if he released his tax returns, revealed his business dealings, Kaine says.

Pence scoffs.

“I know he thinks this is funny,” Kaine says.

Pence: “I’m just trying to keep up with this insult driven campaign.”

Kaine: “I’m just saying what your running mate said.”

Pence can’t quite keep up, can he?

Updated

Cross·talk (/ˈkrôsˌtôk/)

  1. Unwanted signals in a communication channel (as in a telephone, radio, or computer) caused by transference of energy from another circuit (as by leakage or coupling)

2

  • a : conversation that does not relate to the main topic being discussed
  • b : conversation or repartee engaged in for an audience

(h/t: Merriam-Webster)

Kaine says Trump is Reagan's nuclear 'fool or maniac'

Pence: “To see the weak and feckless leadership was the architect of..”

Kaine; “He doesn’t want to acknowledge that we stopped the Iranian nuclear weapons program. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that HIllary Clinton was part of the team that got Bin Laden.

Kaine quotes Ronald Reagan warning about “some fool or maniac” getting ahold of a nuclear weapon and says that applies to Pence’s running mate.

It’s the attack of the night, and Pence is dumbfounded for a moment.

“Senator, that is even beneath you and Hillary Clinton, and that is pretty low,” Pence says ... Let me go back to this Iran thing.

Kaine says Trump didn't pay taxes on 9/11

Question about Syria. Russian-backed Syrian forces and Russian forces are bombing Syrian civilians. Should the United States get involved.

Pence says Syria is a mess. “We’ve got to begin to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership. It begins by rebuilding our military...

Pence calls for the establishment of safe zones in Syria, working with Arab partners and an American response to Russian aggression in Syria:

“The provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength.. if Russia chooses to continue to strike... the United States should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime.

Kaine hits Trump for Russian ties:

“Donald Trump again and again has praised Vladimir Putin and it’s clear that he has business connections..” Kaine notes Trump fired former campaign operative Paul Manafort over his Russia ties.

“If you don’t know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you’ve got to go back to the fifth-grade civics classes,” Kaine says.

Then he says that the NYT tax story suggests Trump did not pay taxes on 9/11 and that Trump would not rebuild the military.

Pence: “Donald Trump would support our troops.”

Kaine: “He doesn’t pay taxes.”

Pence is kind of seized up on this. He hasn’t stopped Kaine from tying non-payment of taxes to non-support of troops.

Updated

Fact check: mass deportations & Syrian refugees

Kaine: Donald Trump supports the mass deportation of 11 million people

During a 10 November primary debate, Trump expressed support for Dwight Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback, the forcible deportation of hundreds of thousands of migrants, sometimes under inhumane circumstances. He was pressed on this support in an interview with O’Reilly, who himself called the operation “really brutal”.

“Well, well, I’ve heard it both ways. I’ve heard good reports, I’ve heard bad reports,” Trump told the Fox News host. “We would do it in a very humane way.”

But Trump has given mixed messages since his early calls for mass deportation, and he has used the phrase “deportation force”. In August of this year, he appeared to have doubts, until finally promising “no amnesty” and a “humane” removal of migrants.

Kaine: the nuclear deal with Iran has prevented Tehran from developing weapons

The nuclear deal with Iran was finalized in July 2015, three years after the end of Clinton’s term as secretary of state, and it does not completely remove Iran’s nuclear program. It removes a reserve of medium-enriched uranium, cuts into its low-enriched uranium, and allows access to international inspectors.

Kaine also appears to exaggerate how quickly Iran could have developed a bomb. During negotiations, intelligence officials and analysts said they believed Iran was two to three months away from bomb capabilities. The terms of the deal extend that “breakout” ability to a year, and have restrictions extending over 10, 15 and 25 years.

Pence: the US doesn’t know who Syrian refugees are and should block them

The government has a fairly clear idea about how many people are in the US without legal authorization. Using data from the Census, Department of Homeland Security, Office of Refugee Resettlement and surveys and analysis from Mexico and Latin American countries, the DHS and nonpartisan Pew Research have each been able to estimate the number, and arrived at similar figures in recent years: around 11.3 to 11.5 million people. The margin of error for these figures is generally around a million people at most – not 20 million as Trump says.

Pew and the DHS both try to account for deaths, under-counted groups, arrivals and departures, and have adjusted their calculations based on decades’ worth of research. Both have found that net migration has stabilized in recent years, and that more undocumented Mexicans are leaving the US than entering it. In other words, recent net migration into the US has hovered near its lowest levels of the last 20 years.

Kaine: blocking Syrian refugees is unconstitutional

On Monday, the seventh circuit court of appeals accused Pence of baseless “nightmare speculation” and compared the governor’s attempt to block refugees to an attempt to exclude black people from his state, Indiana. Pence tried to deny 174 refugees resettlement aid, and the case was taken to court.

“The governor of Indiana believes, though without evidence, that some of these persons were sent to Syria by ISIS to engage in terrorism and now wish to infiltrate the United States in order to commit terrorist acts here. No evidence of this belief has been presented, however; it is nightmare speculation,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in the opinion.

#TBT:

Updated

They’re still talking about counter-terror. Kaine says alliances are crucial.

That’s why Donald Trump’s claim that Nato is obsolete is so dangerous.

Pence wants to talk about cyber-security.

“We have got to bring together the best experience of this country to understand that cyber warfare is the new warfare... It’s important to remember in this moment that Hillary Clinton had a private server in her home... her private server was subject to being hammered.

An investigation concluded that not one prosecutor would take one additional step, Kaine said.

Pence says that “if your son or my son conducted themselves the way Clinton did, they’d be imprisoned.”

“That is not true,” Kaine says. “That is not true.”

Pence: 'you've got to err on the side of safety'

Two different world views on display:

Pence: “You’ve got to err on the side of the safety of the American people.”

Kaine: “By trashing all Syrians? By trashing all Muslims?”

Kaine: 'focus on danger, not on discrimination'

Pence says that the Obama administration created Isis by failing to renegotiate a status of forces deal in Iraq. Pence says that the Iran nuclear deal put Iran on the path to a nuclear weapon.

Kaine says the opposite is true.

Quijano asks how Trump’s flagship counter-terror proposal, “extreme vetting” for immigrants, doesn’t address the problem of homegrown terror.

Great question, Pence says, before totally not answering it. He’s talking about Syrian refugees.

Kaine says “you’re violating the constitution by blocking people based on their national origin.”

Kaine:

Hillary and I want to focus on danger. These guys say all Mexicans are bad. ... Donald Trump said keep them out if they’re Muslim.

We should focus on danger, not upon discrimination.

Kaine promises that a Clinton administration would not conduct an anti-terror policy based on discrimination.

We take a break from our regularly scheduled fact-checking and live updates to bring you some wacky hand gestures:

Democratic candidate for Vice President Tim Kaine gestures during the vice presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia on October 4, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
Tim Kaine Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Mike Pence
Mike Pence Photograph: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
Tim Kaine
Tim Kaine Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP
Mike Pence
Mike Pence Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Kaine says Trump has 'personal Mt Rushmore' of dictators

Next question: Is the terror threat worse now or better? Most Americans feel it’s worse.

Kaine says it’s not as bad, because bin Laden is dead, but we face major challenges.

Kaine then unloads on Trump for his wild speechifying on foreign policy:

“Donald Trump can’t start a Twitter war with Ms Universe without shooting himself in the foot,” Kaine says.

“He said, I have a secret plan,” then he says he knows more than generals, then he says he’d fire the generals:

He trash-talks the military... he wants to tear up alliances... third, he loves dictators, he’s got kind of a personal mount Rushmore... Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations had nuclear weapons.

Pence is rolling his eyes and rocking. “Oh please,” he says. “Did you work on that one a long time, because it had a lot of creative lines,” Pence says.

“See if you can defend any of them,” Kaine retorts.

Fact check: 'open borders' and 'deplorables'

Pence: Clinton and Kaine support “open borders”

Neither ticket supports “open borders”, which the US does not have. Pence appears to be using the word to denigrate Barack Obama’s support for immigration reform and protection for some undocumented people from deportation. But Obama has deported a record more than 2.5 million people since he took office, including a record 438,421 people in 2013, and increased Border Patrol staff to a record 21,444 agents in 2011; his policy could not reasonably be described as “amnesty” or “open borders”.

Clinton supports reform to let people pass background checks and pay back taxes in order to stay in the US, and she supports Obama’s executive actions to shield some migrants, such as people who were brought to the US as children. Like Obama, she supports the deportation for people with criminal records.

Kaine: Trump has “called Mexicans rapists and criminals … He attacked an Indiana born federal judge and said he was unqualified. … He said African Americans are living in hell.”

Kaine is right that Trump has broadly characterized immigrants in derogatory terms, but Trump also almost always gives himself a way out. On 16 June 2015, when he announced his candidacy, Trump said: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump’s claim is patently false, as we and fellow fact-checkers have repeatedly shown, since most migrants leave their homes for work or family and the Mexican government has nothing to do with their emigration. Statistics on crime by noncitizens mostly suggest that Mexican migrants – more of whom are leaving the US than entering – don’t affect overall crime rates.

Trump has indeed called judge Gonzalo Curiel unqualified because the American judge is “Mexican”, and said that African Americans are “living in hell”.

Pence: Clinton called half of our supporters “deplorable”

At a fundraiser Clinton said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables”. This group, she said, included “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” people. She later regretted the generalization of “half”.

Polling suggests that Trump’s supporters are more likely than other voters to express negative sentiments about minorities. Polls also show lower but significant such sentiment among supporters of Clinton. Her generalization pointed to real racial animus, ignored it among her own supporters and showed how difficult it is to attach a number to racism, even while separate polling shows racism is affecting millions in widespread and systemic ways.

Trump’s complaint contradicts his own past remarks. In 2012, after Mitt Romney was lambasted for dismissing 47% of Americans, Trump agreed, telling Fox News: “You do have a large percentage of people that feel they’re entitled.” Last year he similarly dismissed half of all Americans, telling Fox: “We have a society that sits back and says, ‘We don’t have to do anything.’ Eventually the 50% cannot carry, and it’s unfair to them, but cannot carry the other 50%.”

Kaine: Trump hasn’t apologized to anyone

Trump has expressed regret for having said “the wrong thing” but not said what that thing was or whom he had caused “personal pain”.

Kaine says that Trump would go door-to-door, house-to-house, and deport undocumented migrants with a deportation force.

Pence pretends that when Trump said “deportation force” he was just talking about ICE: “We have a deportation force, it’s called immigration and customs enforcement.”

Quijano pushes Pence: Would these migrants be removed?

Pence says, as he has before, that Trump’s plans acknowledges priorities, the first of which is “criminal aliens,” and then visa overstays... these are elements of previous bipartisan plans for reform.

Kaine: “He’s trying to fuzz up what Donald Trump has said. He said we’re building a wall, he said, quote, “they will all be gone”... “We’re a nation of immigrants. .. when Donald Trump says Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals... said Judge Gonzalo Curiel was unqualified because his parent was Mexican, I can’t imagine how you can defend that.

Pence does not try to defend that. He looks at Quijano, waiting for the next question.

Pence: Trump insults 'small potatoes' compared with 'basket of deplorables'

Next up is immigration reform. Pence says that “Donald Trump has a plan.”

Yes, we know.

Pence describes the plan as increasing border security, helping border patrol, remove “illegal aliens and people who have overstayed their visas,” then we’ll deal with the others.

He doesn’t mention the wall.

Then Pence pivots: “When I listened to the avalanche of insults coming out of senator Kaine...”

“if Donald Trump had said all those things you said he said in the way he said him, he wouldn’t have insulted a fraction of the people Hillary CLinton did when she said we had a basket of deplorables.

That’s small potatoes compared to Hillary Clinton calling a half of Donald Trump’s supporters a basket of deplorables.

Kaine says that Clinton apologized for that remark. Then Kaine asks whether Trump apologized for a long list of bad things that Trump has said and that Kaine has responsibly memorized.

Fact check: debt and tax returns

Kaine: ‘The debt explosion on the Trump side is much much bigger than anything on the Clinton side’

Kaine is correct, according to conservative and nonpartisan thinktanks alike. Clinton’s proposed tax plan would add $191bn to the debt over the long term, according to the Committee for a Responsible Budget, a conservative thinktank. The Tax Policy Center, however, estimates that she would add $1.1tn in revenue in a decade, though much of that would be offset by increased spending. The Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s plan would add $5.3tn to the debt.

Kaine: Even Richard Nixon released his taxes

Richard Nixon did not release his tax returns while running for president in 1960 or in 1968 – he released them in 1973, after his second term began. In 1968, Nixon only gave a limited glimpse of his to a magazine writer, and only released the returns under pressure from the Watergate inquiry. He released the returns despite an audit by the IRS, which Trump had repeatedly claimed was his reason for not releasing returns.

You can look at Nixon’s returns at the Presidential Tax History Project. You can look at Trump’s 1995 returns at the New York Times.

(PS: If you somehow have access to Trump’s later returns, feel free to send copies along to our offices at 222 Broadway, New York, NY 10038.)

Kaine: Trump and Pence want to privatize social security

Neither Clinton nor Trump has proposed privatizing Veterans Affairs, though Trump has suggested he would appoint someone with private-sector experience to lead the agency (something Barack Obama did in 2014). Trump has also proposed giving veterans an ID card that they could use outside the federal VA system. Pence, on the other hand, supported a 2005 plan that would have modified the program into a private system.

Kaine notes, correctly, that black people are more likely than white people to be arrested and given long sentences. They are also more likely to be shot by police.

Updated

Kaine is back: “There is a fundamental respect issue here.. Trump has called Mexicans rapists and criminals.. He’s called women slobs, pigs, dogs... attacked a federal judge... said McCain wasn’t a hero because he’s been captured... and he perpetrated this outrageous and bigoted lie that Barack Obama isn’t a citizen.”

Kaine now flips Pence’s accusation from the top of the debate:

I can’t believe that governor Pence would defend the insult-driven campaign that Trump has run.

Kaine says it’s important to have a conversation about bias.

Pence: “Why would Hillary Clinton accuse that African American police officer of implicit bias.”

Quijano jumps in, noting that South Carolina Republican senator Tim Scott said on the senate floor that he’s been stopped six times for being black.

Pence says he has the deepest respect for senator Scott and “we need criminal justice reform nationally.”

They’re back to agreeing. In fact Pence just referred to “institutional bias in criminal justice.” We just shouldn’t assume the worse about law enforcement, Pence says. “Law enforcement is a force for good.”

Relax, everyone. It’s “no contest!”

Pence says his uncle was a cop and he would marvel at his uncle’s sidearm. Police officers are the “best of us,” Pence says.

Pence says, “at the risk of agreeing with you,” I think community policing is a great idea.

Great, everyone agrees! We’re only a half-hour in and everybody agrees.

Then Pence stops agreeing with the Democrat. He decries “the bad-mouthing of people, who seize upon tragedy to use as a broad brush to accuse law enforcement of institutional bias.”

Pence says Clinton has referred to “implicit bias” in law enforcement. “We ought to stop seizing on these moments of tragedy,” Pence says. “Enough of this seizing on every opportunity to demean law enforcement.”

Kaine says people should not be afraid to bring up the issue of bias in law enforcement.

“I’m not afraid,” Pence says.

Fact check: wages and Trump's business

Pence: ‘He’s created a business that’s worth billions of dollars’

There is no direct evidence that Trump’s business is worth billions of dollars – the only tax return publicly available, published by the New York Times last weekend, shows that he reported a $916m loss in 1995. Trump could prove the worth of his business by publishing his returns. Forbes estimates Trump is worth $3.7bn, far lower than his claimed $10bn.

Kaine: Trump would let states decide whether to be rid of the minimum wage

Kaine is correct insofar as Trump has a position on minimum wages, if he’s talking about the federal minimum wage, specifically.

Trump has changed his position on the minimum wage at least three times, including within the span of a single interview. On 26 July, when Fox News host Bill O’Reilly asked him where he would set a federal minimum wage, he repeated a stance from May that the US does not need one: “There doesn’t have to be.”

He then immediately changed his position: “Well, I would leave it, and raise it somewhat.” A day later in Florida he said he wanted a $10 an hour minimum wage, up from the current level of $7.25, and confirmed to a reporter: “federal”. He has most consistently said that states should decide a minimum wage.

Updated

Kaine describes a “debt explosion of the Trump plan.”

Next question: law enforcement. Yesterday Trump said the country has race riots every night. Question is, do we ask too much of police officers?

Kaine says, good question. He was mayor of Richmond when there was a high homicide rate there which he cut in half, he says. He says Virginia was a top-ten safe state when he was governor. He says that the key is community policing. Building bonds between communities and the police force.

“That model still works,” Kaine says. Then he hits Trump for backing stop-and-frisk.

“That would be a mistake,” Kaine says, because it hurts police-community relations.

Kaine: “I’m a gun owner, I’m a strong second amendment supporter. But I’ve got a lot of scar tissue.” He talks about the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. He says closing loopholes in background checks are needed.

“We can support the second amendment and do things like background record checks to make it safer.”

Evan McMullin, the independent you may or may not know is also running for president, has weighed in from far (far) off-stage:

Ben Jacobs interviewed Evan McMullin last month about his longshot candidacy.

Fact check: tax cuts and crisis

Kaine claims that the Bush era tax cuts were a direct cause of the financial crisis:

The tax cuts signed by George W Bush lowered taxes on income, capital gains and dividends, and had several provisions to help married people, parents and the poor. They greatly benefited the wealthy, and unsurprisingly became a symbol of the way inequality in the US has yawned into a chasm between the rich and everyone else. But while inequality may be a destabilizing force in the economy, the tax cuts themselves were not one of the factors that drove the 2008 crisis.

A lack of regulation on Wall Street, on the other hand, ranks among the more important causes of the crisis, whose causes include rampant, feckless mortgage lending, irresponsible bundling of those mortgages, and carelessness by ratings agencies and central bankers.

Kaine: ‘15 million new jobs’ gained in the Obama administration

Kaine is cherry picking statistics, and the 15 million figure is not correct in context.

Since Obama took office in January 2009 the US has created 10.8 million private-sector jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Clinton is counting back from the depths of the economic recession, in early 2010, which would erase a full year off of Obama’s presidency.

Social security question. Kaine, his eyes sparkling, says “we will never, ever engage in a risky scheme to privatize social security.”

Kaine notes that Pence was a “chief cheerleader for the privatization of social security” and Trump likes the idea too.

Pence replies: “There they go again.” Wait that sounds familiar from somewhere. Sorta.

Pence says that “this is the old scare tactic.”

Kaine: “But you have voting record, governor. I can’t believe that you won’t defend your own voting record.”

Kaine’s getting the better of him on this? Pence is getting a bit Rubio-repetitive.

Kaine: Trump 'must show Americans his tax returns'

Pence gets the taxes question again.

The returns “show that he faced some pretty tough times 20 years ago... we have a tax code that actually is designed to encourage entrepreneurship... he went through a very difficult time, but he used the tax code just the way it’s supposed to be used,” Pence says.

Kaine interrupts: “How do you know that?”

Pence says Trump created lots of jobs and a great business.

Kaine: “How do you know that?”

Kaine hits Trump hard on not paying his taxes. Pence lamely interrupts, “Senator, you don’t take all the deductions you’re entitled to?”

Donald Trump must show Americans his tax returns to show that he’s qualified to be president.

The candidates talk over one another and Quijano tells them, basically, to shut up. Which they do!

Updated

Fact check: Iraq and donations

Pence: the Obama administration has ‘stifled the economy’

Obama took office in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, and the economy has crawled back into recovery over his two terms, with employment nearly down to pre-crisis levels. It’s arguable that his policies have restricted some growth, but the economy has held to a steadily upward track.

Pence: ‘The Clinton Foundation accepted foreign donations while she was secretary of state … she kept that pay to play process in’

Pence is correct that the foundation took donations from foreign governments, and that the charity did not disclose every contribution – in violation of an agreement to identify donors that it made with the Obama administration. But no one has yet produced evidence of a quid pro quo exchange between the Clinton Foundation and its donors.

Pence: ‘It was a failure of the secretary of state’ to acquire a status of forces agreement with Iraq

The argument that Hillary Clinton’s failure to secure an agreement with Baghdad over keeping American troops in Iraq ignores several key facts, including that the Bush administration similarly failed. It also ignores that Isis’s first segments formed out of the post-invasion civil war in Iraq, while George W Bush was president; that the group took root in Syria’s civil war, where the US did not intervene until the airstrike campaign began in 2014; that Obama withdrew American forces in 2011 under the timeline agreed on by Bush and Baghdad. Pence also voted for the Iraq war, and unlike Clinton has not expressed regret for the vote.

Trump supported the destabilizing invasion of Iraq in 2002 and supported “surgical” intervention to remove Libyan dictator Muammar Ghaddafi in 2011, though he now claims otherwise. He also supported withdrawal from Iraq in 2007 and 2008.

Updated

Pence hits Kaine for 'rolling out the numbers' on jobs

Pence takes a question about Trump’s taxes. Trump said he used the laws to pay as little tax as possible.

Pence returns to Kaine’s “you’re hired you’re fired thing”. Pence says that Clinton-Kaine would introduce $2tn in more spending, debt, more government.

He says that Obama-Clinton have run the country into a ditch.

Kaine: “Fifteen million new jobs?”
Pence: “Honestly, senator, you can roll out the numbers, but people in Scranton know different.. this economy is struggling.”

Kaine asks, do you want a “you’re hired president under Hillary Clinton, or a you’re fired president with Donald Trump”?

Then he goes into a riff on pre-K education, tax relief for the middle classes, small business tax relief and support.

In contrast, Kaine says, Trump wants to eliminate the federal minimum wage. Kaine notes that in congress Pence voted against minimum wage increases. The GOP plan also has “trillions of dollars in tax breaks just like Donald Trump.”

Kaine says Trump-Pence wants to take the country back to the bad old days.

Quijano, rather gently, gets control back.

This is kind of punchy. Who’s swinging better?

The question is about debt. Pence gets to talk about it. He says under Obama the national debt almost doubled. Fact-check please. Unleash the Yuhas. Hello?

Pence is still talking. He says that Kaine tried to raise taxes as governor of Virginia, and that Kaine “wants more of the same” – “a trillion dollars in tax increases.”

“Even former president Bill Clinton calls Obamacare a crazy plan,” Pence says. Then he asserts that he and Trump have a plan “to get the economy moving again.” We’d note that growth is higher and unemployment is lower than any Republican candidate promised years ago, and that household incomes are climbing at a record pace.

Kaine cuts off Pence, who’s now on to the Clinton foundation, which Pence says accepted foreign contributions in exchange for foreign influence.

Kaine gets the mic. When Hillary CLinton became Secretary of state, Kaine says, bin Laden was alive, many troops were in Afghanistan and Iran had an active nuclear program.

Kaine says that Clinton worked to reduce Russian’s nuclear weapons stockpile, to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and reduce troop employments.

Pence says that Iraq is overrun by Isis because CLinton failed to negotiate a status-of forces disagreement.

Kaine drops some history on Pence, telling him that George W Bush negotiated the agreement.

Fact check: Norwood v Longwood

Mike Pence: ‘Norwood University’

In his opening statement, Pence misstated the name of the university hosting the debate. It is Longwood University, not Norwood.

He also said that Barack Obama has raised more taxes to extraordinary levels – this isn’t quite right.

There were two major changes to the tax code in Obama’s two terms: the 2012 expiration of tax cuts created by George W Bush (with extensions for people making less than $400,000 a year), and levies to fund the Affordable Care Act, (including a penalty for not having health insurance, a 10% tax on tanning services and a 3.8% tax on investment income for top earners).

Obama also enacted temporary cuts meant to spur investment and help Americans in the depths of the financial crisis, but all in all tax rates for most American have not changed much since George W Bush’s presidency, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Updated

Pence: Clinton campaign 'has been an avalanche of insults'

Pence takes the same question. Voters don’t like your guy. Why?

Pence picks a fight with Kaine:

Senator you and Hillary Clinton would know a lot about insult... she is the architect of the Obama administration’s foreign policy... Syria today is the result of a failed foreign policy.

Kaine interrupts. “These guys have praised Vladimir Putin as a great leader.”

Pence says the campaign of Kaine and Clinton “has been an avalanche of insults.”

That’s a loser thing to say. Sad!

Now for Kaine. He’s praised Clinton’s character. Why do 60% of voters not trust Hillary Clinton? Quijano mentions “emails and her foundation.”

Kaine says he trusts Clinton because “Hillary Clinton has that passion” to serve others with a special focus on civil rights. “It’s always been about putting others first, and that’s a sharp contrast with Donald Trump. Donald Trump puts himself first.”

Kaine digs into Trump a bit. HE notes that Trump started his political career by calling Mexican rapists and that Trump promoted “birtherism” for years.

Pence is talking now. He says these are dire times for the nation. Conflicts overseas and Obamacare at home.

He says he’s a small-town boy who grew up near a cornfield. He says his mom and dad built a family, a good name and a business. He says he never imagined he’d be governor “let alone be sitting at a table like this.”

“I would hope that if the responsibility ever fell to me, that I would meet it... with a lifetime of experience.” Growing up, serving in Congress and “leading a state that works.”

Kaine: 'Trump as commander-in-chief scares us to death'

Quijano poses the first question. Kaine won a coin toss and takes it first.

Why are you qualified to be president?

Kaine, paraphrased:

Thanks for having me. It’s great to be in Farmville. 65 years ago Barbara Johns made history by protesting school segregation here which led to Brown v Board of Education. “I’m so proud to be running with another strong, history making woman.”

Hillary told Kaine why he’s the running mate, he says. The test of their administration will be changing lives for the better, he says.

“She said to me, ‘you’ve been a missionary and civil rights lawyer, mayor, lieutenant governor and governor, and now a senator.’” You have the experience.

“The thought of Donald Trump as commander in chief scares us to death,” Kaine mentions.

Candidates take debate stage

Once again, the candidates reverse their respective parties’ identifying colors. Pence is in a blue tie, Kaine in red.

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod is on CNN making this debate sound as exciting as we can imagine: the stakes are, Pence has to stop his campaign’s bleeding until Trump can get onstage Sunday night and not do any new bleeding, Axelrod says.

Let’s go with that. Pence the paramedic arrives on the scene and ... but here now, we’re starting.

It’s 90 minutes, no commercials. If you’ve not yet used the loo, it may be too late.

Vice-presidential debate: live video feeds

Moderator Elaine Quijano has admonished the crowd to silence their cell phones and refrain from reaction to the action onstage. She’s seated in place at the round table.

Did we mention there’s a round table? Unlike the first presidential debate, which used lecterns, the candidates will debate tonight while seated across from one another and the moderator.

Here’s a live video stream via Reuters:

And, because we adore you, here’s another one, which will employ multiple cameras, via PBS Newshour:

Become a Guardian member

Since you’re here, we’ve got a quick request. The Guardian is an independent voice in this year’s election. That means no bias or corporate owner influencing our coverage. But in-depth political reporting takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. If everyone who reads this blog helps to pay for it, our future will be more secure.

Please consider supporting the Guardian with a monthly payment, or a one-off contribution.

Fabulous people attend vice-presidential debate

Friends. Former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, left, and RNC chair Reince Priebus, right.
Friends. Former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, left, and RNC chair Reince Priebus, right. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
The Trump family has dispatched second son Eric to the event.
The Trump family has dispatched second son Eric to the event. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe in the house.
Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe in the house. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images
At first we thought that was a “USA” vacuum.
At first we thought that was a “USA” vacuum. Photograph: Joe Raedle/AP

Welcome to our live debate coverage

If you’re just joining us – welcome to our live-wire coverage of the first and only vice-presidential debate of the 2016 presidential election. This is one-night-only, folks – and we’re thrilled to be sharing it with you.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine will face Republican nominee Mike Pence onstage at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, starting in just a few moments now, at 9pm ET. Elaine Quijano of CBS News will be moderating.

Pence left Kaine right.
Pence left Kaine right. Composite: Reuters & Rex Features

For neither man is this a first trip to the rodeo. Both Kaine, a senator from Virginia, and Pence, the governor of Indiana, have experience running for elected office going back to the 1990s, and both men have had previous national exposure.

Pence was a member of the Republican congressional leadership from 2009-2011 and Kaine, the governor of Virginia during the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, campaigned widely for Barack Obama in 2008 and was on a short-short list to be Obama’s running mate.

Vice-presidential debates have a reputation for not mattering much when it comes to election outcomes, with voters focused on the top of the ticket. To which we say: bosh. There’s no telling what will happen once the lights go up, and even if it turns out not to be a decisive night, none can attest that vice-presidential debates aren’t bound to be fun – just ask Dan Quayle.

If the candidates decide to turn on each other, instead of the tops-of-ticket, Kaine might attack Pence for a history of benighted statements and legislation on women’s equality, homosexuality and same-sex marriage, while Pence might echo a Republican ad attacking Kaine for legal defense work on behalf of violent criminals.

Or, they might just fight about good old Donald and Hillary. Either way, we’re glad you joined us, thanks for reading – and please join us in the comments.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller says that Trump’s campaign CEO, his spokeswoman, a key campaign surrogate and the digital media director will all be present as the candidate live tweets.

How are they going to do this, a tweet occurs to Trump, he writes it and then passes it around for everyone to edit? Hope he got a suite!

Updated

Donald Trump is watching the debate, his tracking pool of reporters says, from inside the Trump hotel in the Las Vegas strip.

Judging from his Twitter feed, the Republican presidential nominee is in position. Did he order room service? He’s been torturing himself with CNN, by the sounds of it. Change the channel already!

Wonder if we have a picture of that hotel in our system? Let’s see – yes.

Turns out it’s a gaudy gold middle finger directed at laborers and culinary workers, according to a protest outside the hotel two weeks ago.

Here’s a picture of Laborers’ International Union of North America members and Culinary Union members protesting what they say is an anti-union stance by the hotel, on 21 September:

Trump: watching the debate somewhere in there.
Trump: watching the debate somewhere in there. Photograph: John Locher/AP

Updated

Mike Pence hosted a conservative talk show for five years in the 1990s after two failed congressional bids. (He went on to become a six-term congressman and a member of the Republican leadership.)

On YouTube you can find footage of the final three minutes of Pence’s show. Trigger warning: it’s nuclear-grade patriotic and pretty sappy: “When those planes fly over speedway Indiana, there’ll be a little bit of mist in this American’s eyes, cause you got the job done.”

When Tim Kaine gets around a microphone, meanwhile, a different kind of patriotism spills forth – the kind you blow through a harmonica on the Robert Johnson tune Travelling Riverside Blues:

Let’s have an audience quiz: Who played it better? Tim Kaine – or Led Zeppelin?

Clinton: ‘Go get ’em, Tim’

And you know what, frankly? If he screws up, the Democrats can just...

(NB: this is not just a gratuitous Elvis Costello song embed in the blog. Kaine’s former body man told Politico in July that whenever Kaine was getting beat up in politics he would joke that Blame it on Cain was his favorite song, and then he’d play the song.)

Updated

GOP announces Pence won debate

While you’re shooting pool, the national Republican party is playing three-dimensional chess.

For example, tonight they have already released statements declaring Mike Pence the winner of the debate and Hillary Clinton the loser.

(The debate hasn’t happened yet.)

Update:

Updated

Clinton camp: we're preparing for a better prepared Trump

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook tells reporters before tonight’s debate that the campaign expects Trump to be better prepared next time around (even without, apparently, Nigel Farage’s help).

Mook refers to two hours of videos of a Trump deposition in a lawsuit against a restaurateur that was released last week. In the deposition Trump is indeed poised.

Meet the moderator: Elaine Quijano

A veteran of the White House, Pentagon and supreme court beats and a former CNN talent, Elaine Quijano anchors politics coverage on CBSN, the live-streaming digital version of CBS News.

She grew up in a Chicago suburb, majored in engineering and “lucked into a broadcast journalism career”, she tells an interviewer in the Filipinas Magazine clip below:

If Quijano can’t make it, there’s a backup: CSPAN’s Steve Scully, who has been hailed by comedian John Oliver as the most patient man on television:

Politico’s Hadas Gold has spoken with Scully about his preparations for the big night:

While covering the debates like the hundreds of other journalists who descend upon the four universities hosting the debates, Scully has also done the work to prepare his own separate sets of questions for every debate, as though he will be the moderator. That’s because he could end up being one.

“I have the file with me,” Scully said ahead of the debate at Hofstra University last week. “If they call me at 8:59 p.m. I’m ready to go, and if they do in the next three debates I’m ready to go as well.”

Read the full piece here. (thx @bencjacobs)

Bill Clinton: 'don't lock him up. Vote'

The potential future first gentleman modifies a Barack Obama line – “don’t boo. Vote!” – to stop a crowd in Ohio from chanting “Lock Him Up” – a line in turn borrowed from Trump supporters who enjoy saying “Lock Her Up” about Hillary Clinton.

Not calling for the imprisonment of one’s patently criminal opponent: this qualifies as high-level political discourse:

Trump say's he'll live-tweet the debate

Trump, having just spoken in Arizona, is flying to Las Vegas to stay at a hotel and watch the debate, the pool of reporters covering his campaign says.

Trump has promised to live-tweet the debate:

HOWEVER, we’d remind our readers that the last time Trump promised to live-tweet a debate, it was a kind of lame six-tweet dribble.

On the eve of a five-way Democratic debate on 13 October 2015, Trump tweeted:

Here was Trump’s electrifying commentary:

From Lloyd Bentsen’s “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” to Geraldine Ferraro’s “I almost resent, vice president Bush, your patronizing attitude” to Sarah Palin’s “Say it ain’t so, Joe” – USA Today has a medley of top moments from previous vice presidential debates (click through if video player below is not working for you):

Updated

Michelle Obama: 'Clinton is tough'

Michelle Obama campaigned for Clinton in Charlotte, North Carolina, today.

There’s a striking moment when the first lady is talking about Clinton’s resilience and taps her microphone in apparent reference to Trump’s blaming his lost debate Monday on a microphone malfunction:

Hillary Clinton is tough. I watched her. When she gets knocked down, she doesn’t complain. She doesn’t cry foul. No, she gets right back up, comes back stronger.

Michelle Obama pleads for women to vote for Hillary Clinton

Clinton hits Trump on PTSD remarks

Clinton convened a news conference after a rally today in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to discuss Trump’s remarks about veterans with PTSD, which vice president Joe Biden criticized passionately on Monday.

“Our troops deserve a commander-in-chief who respects and understands the sacrifices they make,” Clinton says.

Then she takes a question about Trump’s taxes, saying “there are some very successful business people in America... but [Trump is] unable to release his tax records because there’s more in there... Someone who’s claiming to run for president based on his business success should be judged on his business success.”

Then Clinton takes a softball question about how she will appeal to potentially crossover Republicans sick of Trump. And that’s where she mistakenly refers to the 35 days left in the election as 35 years (see earlier).

Clinton also says she’s “very confident and excited about Tim Kaine in the debate tonight.”

Clinton is asked what she learned from the first debate:

I learned that preparation is important.”

Updated

Trump is done in Arizona. He tells people to vote on 8 November but doesn’t tell them they can start voting early in the state in about two weeks and doesn’t tell them they can vote by mail.

Arizona is good for 11 electoral votes. Polling averages have Trump leading in the state, which voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 but before that had not gone Democratic in a presidential election year since Truman.

HuffPost Pollster’s rolling average in Arizona.
HuffPost Pollster’s rolling average in Arizona. Photograph: Huffpost Pollster

Each side has produced a video attacking the other side’s vice presidential nominee (the attack on Pence was produced by the Clinton campaign; the attack on Kaine was produced by the Republican national committee).

Here they are:

“America Deserves Better”

Updated

What does the C stand for again? (That’s a joke at Clinton’s expense.) (And if you have to explain humor, it’s bad.)

Trump is addressing a crowd now in Prescott Valley, Arizona. He’s talking about murders in Chicago. Watch it live here:

Follow baseball? There’s a wildcard playoff game tonight between the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays. The game begins just after 8pm ET. And a lot of you out there on social media sound conflicted about what to watch...

Andrew Anthony has interviewed Ann Coulter for the Guardian. Coulter is a perennially relevant conservative shock-jock whose inTENSE enthusiasm this election cycle for Donald Trump and his scorched-earth immigration policies was only temporarily shaken when Trump appeared this summer to be leaving those policies behind.

Then he got back in line and she got back in line. From the interview:

Do you think the Republican party will survive Donald Trump?

The only way it can survive is with Donald Trump. What’s really hurting his message more than anything else, especially among black voters, is that he’s a Republican. That’s what the Republican party has done to the brand. The sooner it gets rebranded the Trumpian Republican party the better. Finally, we have a candidate who cares about Americans and not just the donor class.

Updated

Quick make a joke about this tweet:

BUZZER too late, that one’s been taken:

(h/t @nicolepuglise)

On the off chance your vice presidential debate night expectations are so low that they’re bringing you dangerously close to that territory of, “Hell, no, I’m not going to watch the vice-presidential debate! I’ve got closets to organize” – well, reminder: Tim Kaine has a Donald Trump impression up his sleeve.

Sure, when he rolled it out at the national convention, it was widely panned, although most people gave him credit for trying, which was nice of them:

Clinton hits Trump for body-shaming women

At a town hall rally Tuesday, a student told Hillary Clinton that Trump does damage “when he talks about women and how they look” and asks how she would fix it.

Clinton says Trump has taken body shaming to a “new level of ..meanness.”

“There are too many young women online who are being bullied about how they look. And who are being shamed and mistreated.”

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton talk women’s equality with Elizabeth Banks

Links to “stories” by the bug-eyed conspiracy site Infowars have been tweeted approvingly this year by Trump père and by both Trump sons. The Trump campaign seems to think of Infowars, like Breitbart, as a kind of opposition research wing, or at least a useful whip for the base. The problem is that Infowars flies over the cuckoo’s nest on its commute to work.

Alex Jones, the program’s star host, thinks George W Bush did 9/11 and actors staged Sandy Hook. Jones’ audience has expanded immensely thanks to the Trump spotlight. Here is him last night mad that Wikileaks’ Julian Assange did not leak documents damaging Hillary Clinton as Assange hinted he would do:

White Stripes 'disgusted' by use of song in Trump video

The White Stripes, who broke up in 2011, have issued a statement of repulsion that the song Seven Nation Army was used in a Trump booster video – not a Trump campaign official video, it appears, but a video made by an outside fan group identified in at least one place as Downstream Politics (the video was taken down from the Trump subreddit site and elsewhere).

Update: other famous people disgusted by Trump:

Updated

What kind of dad are these two men? The Hill’s Reid Wilson has an answer:

Vice president Joe Biden’s advice for the debaters tonight seems to be, “drop out if you’re Mike Pence”.

What’s Kaine supposed to do with that?

Gary Johnson’s presidential campaign has announced that television host Drew Carey has joined the campaign as an honorary campaign chair for the state of California.

Gary Johnson.
Gary Johnson. Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP

“I couldn’t be more honored,” Johnson said in a statement. “Drew’s support means a great deal to Bill Weld and me, and his willingness to take such a prominent leadership role is extremely gratifying. His voice reaches millions of Americans across all ages and political persuasions. I look forward to joining Drew on the campaign trail in California and beyond.”

“Getting behind Gary Johnson was an easy choice,” said Carey. “Gary Johnson is reasonable. He’s a real person. He’s a pragmatic problem-solver who knows how to govern.”

“I’m happy to join Gary Johnson and to campaign for a candidate, here in California and across America, who doesn’t want your money to be wasted or want your children put at risk in a needless war.”

Gary Johnson: Ignorance is an asset

No words:

Alex Jones has promised a game-changing leak of information on Hillary Clinton’s campaign tomorrow - clearly, he’s up to something.

Vice president Joe Biden crashed a college party today, starring in a public service announcement about preventing sexual assault on university campuses.

Alongside actor Adam Devine, the vice president poses as a college student - complete with aviator glasses - before cutting the music and teaching college kids about consent.

“So, like, if you see a buddy and he’s talking to someone who’s too drunk to consent, you tell that buddy, like, ‘Yo, buddy, chill!’” Devine announces. “And then you make sure that drunk person gets home safe, right?”

“Exactly. You’ve got this,” Biden replies. “It’s easy to make a difference this school year.”

Updated

It’s turning out to be an awful week for Donald Trump. The Republican nominee for president is worth some $800m less this year than he was last year, according to the Forbes 400, an annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest people.

Donald Trump.
Donald Trump. Photograph: Marshall/REX/Shutterstock

Trump’s net worth fell from $4.5bn to $3.7bn between the 2015 and 2016 ranking. He is now tied for 156th place in the magazine’s annual wealth competition with fellow real estate developers Jerry Speyer and Igor Olenicoff, FedEx founder Frederick Smith, and Steven Spielberg, who saw his own net worth rise by about $100m. Trump is down 35 places from 2015.

His fall came as the rich got even richer. The country’s 400 richest were worth $2.4tn this year and had an average net worth of $6bn, both record highs. For the23rd straight year, the wealthiest person on the list was Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Gates gained $5bn in the last year – his net worth has increased from $76bn to $81bn.

Trump’s net worth has been a subject of much debate over the course of his presidential campaign, as his steadfast refusal to release his tax returns has kept most details of his financial dealings out of the public eye. The New York Times revealed last week that Trump had declared a $916m loss on his 1995 state tax returns; the partial returns provided to the Times by an anonymous source are the largest single disclosure of Trump’s financial dealings.

Fortune’s research into Trump’s wealth has the advantage of 35 years of research on the man – the first time Forbes published an estimate of Trump’s wealth was on its first-ever Forbes 400 in 1982, when he was worth a mere $100m. Nowadays, young Trump wouldn’t even make the list – the poorest person on the 400 is car dealership magnate Gail Miller, with $1.7bn. Even adjusted for inflation, Trump’s $100m in 1982 is “only” $249m.

Hillary Clinton campaigns in Haverford, Pennsylvania

Watch it live here:

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) looks like he’s getting ready for a future campaign run, speaking at the Iowa GOP’s Annual Reagan Dinner this Saturday night before the debate.

Cotton has been a hesitant Trump supporter. Cotton is pro NATO and thinks the Iraq War is just, he completed combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He also served as a platoon leader at Arlington National Cemetery, where he ran military honors funerals. He’s seen as a rising star of the GOP.

Bernie Sanders is busy campaigning for Hillary Clinton with a packed schedule on Thursday, thanks to rallies in Dearborn, Ann Arbor, East Lansing, and Grand Rapids.

The first of the four events on Thursday begins in Dearborn, a predominantly Arab-Muslim community just outside of Detroit, won by Sanders in the primaries.

But someone might need to remind President Bill Clinton that Sanders is a friend now.

Updated

Filings suggest Trump Foundation helped fund 2016 run

Donald Trump used his foundation to donate at least $286,000 to conservative political groups to fuel his presidential run, according to an investigation by RealClearPolitics.

RealClearPolitics reviewed the foundation’s tax filings and say they found donations by Trump’s foundation from 2011-2014, totaling at least $286,000, that helped Trump secure speeches and endorsements as part of his campaign to become the Republican nominee.

President of the Palmetto Family Council, Oran Smith, said after he met with Trump to speak about conservative politics and the chance of a presidential run, Trump sent him a $10,000 check for Palmetto from the Trump Foundation.

RealClearPolitics explains how Trump donated money to specific organizations:

Although sources familiar with the thinking behind the donations cautioned that Trump did not explicitly ask for favors in return for the money, they said the contributions were part of a deliberate effort by Trump to ingratiate himself with influential conservatives and brighten his political prospects.

“He was politically active starting in 2011,” said one source with ties to Trump, and at that point he “started to make strategic donations.”

The lion’s share of those donations came from Trump’s personal funds and went straight to political campaigns or parties. But others, in particular those directed to the nonprofit arms of conservative policy groups, originated with Trump’s foundation.

“If he could do 501(c)(3) to 501(c)(3), he did it that way,” said the source, using the tax code designation for nonprofit organizations.

Yesterday to New York Attorney General placed a cease-and-desist on the Trump Foundation soliciting money in New York as part of an investigation into the Trump Foundation.

Eric Trump tried to spin his father’s 3am insulting tweets about Alicia Machado in an interview with Fox News today by saying it showed “he’s a worker” but did note that sometimes Trump’s energy can be a “downfall.”

“Listen, at least my father’s up at 3 o’clock in the morning, right? Which, you know, is great,” said Trump in an interview with FOX News Channel’s America’s Newsroom .

“Maybe that energy is sometimes a little bit of a downfall of his, but he’s an amazing guy and he’ll be there to answer the call, you know, when things go bad,” said Trump.

“The one thing I’ll say about my father is he works harder than any human being alive. He is a worker. He has worked tirelessly on this campaign, he has worked tirelessly his entire career and he’ll work tirelessly for America,” said Trump.

Former Florida Governor Charlie Christ is running for Congress, and his new ad is one of the most charming political ad we’ve seen in a while. It even addresses his well-documented love for fans, to stop him sweating in the Florida humidity.

Republican Senator says Trump 'absolutely' a role model, before recanting

It ain’t easy being a Republican these days.

New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, a Donald Trump sceptic, yesterday said her party’s presidential nominee was “absolutely” a role model for children - and then later flipped and claimed that she “misspoke”.

Ayotte is busy trying to fight for re-election, but is in a complicated spot where she hasn’t endorsed Trump and doesn’t support him but says she will vote for him.

But during a debate as part of the contest for her seat last night, she was asked if she believed Trump was a good example for children: “Would you point to him as a role model?”

She seemed uncertain.

“I think that certainly there are many role models that we have, and I believe he can serve as president, so absolutely I would do that,” said Ayotte.

“If you think he can serve as president, why won’t you endorse him?” asked a moderator.

“Because I’ve had some disagreements with him,” she replied.

Immediately after the debate, she issued a statement.

“I misspoke tonight. While I would hope all of our children would aspire to be president, neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton have set a good example and I wouldn’t hold up either of them as role models for my kids,” she said.
At the weekend Ayotte had struck a more moderate tone, giving away free condoms on the campaign trail to push her plan on birth control. The poster at the event claimed to “Use Condom Sense!”

Ayotte is in a close race with Democratic governor Maggie Hassan, who was endorsed by Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List and NARAL. While it’s unusual for a Republican to favor contraception, Ayotte is certainly attempting to appeal to women by pivoting from traditional party platforms.

Updated

The VP debate takes place at Longwood University in Virginia tonight and the marching band is already warming up.

Columnist Jamie Weinstein says the biggest issue in tonight’s VP debate might be Donald Trump.

If you viewed the presidential debate as a bloody mixed martial arts cage match, the vice-presidential debate is more likely to be akin to a game of patty cakes.

When Tim Kaine and Mike Pence square off in rural Virginia on Tuesday night, many Americans will probably come away feeling like they did after the 2000 vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman: can’t theseguys be at the top of their respective tickets?

Kaine and Pence are both fairly mild-mannered politicos with a deep interest in and knowledge of policy. Even as partisans view Pence and Kaine with disdain for their positions on various social and economic issues, many voters still see them both as more personally appealing than Clinton and Trump, which is empirically the lowest bar in modern presidential campaign history.

But just because the VP debate is likely to be more of a wonkfest than a rhetorical slugfest doesn’t mean there isn’t a potential for fireworks. There is – though mainly at the expense of Mike Pence.

Pence took a risk when he joined the Republican ticket. The Indiana governor tied his political fortunes to an erratic, orange-haired huckster. The upside was he got an escape from a competitive re-election race and, if Trump wins, would be one heartbeat away from the presidency. The downside is that his political career will forever be marred by his connection to a guy who goes around claiming his political rival’s father may have been an accomplice in the JFK assassination.

Pence has been forced to defend some pretty un-Pence-like statements during his time connected with Trump, such as Trump’s half-decade-long birther crusade. But nothing will compare to what Pence might get on the debate stage on Tuesday.

Read the rest here.

Emotional Biden slams Trump over veteran PTSD comments

A furious Joe Biden slammed the podium and called Donald Trump “uninformed” for his comments regarding veteran suicide and strength, getting emotional as he spoke of the toll of military deaths on the community and Trump’s misunderstanding of the issues.

“I don’t think he was trying to be mean. He is just so thoroughly, completely, uniformed,” declared Biden.

His anger sprung from Trump’s comments to a veterans group in Virginia yesterday.

“They see maybe what people in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it,” said Trump.

Many in the military community viewed it as calling those suffering PTSD as not “strong.”

Biden’s response was passionate and emotional, mentioning his own son Beau Biden, a decorated officer who died last year from brain cancer.

He also recounted how on one of his 29 visits to Iraq and Afghanistan a young heroic captain tried to refuse his medal because the person he’d tried to save from a burning truck died.

“Sir, I don’t want the medal,” he said, the vice-president recalled.

“How many night does that kid go to sleep, seeing that image in his head, dealing with it,” roared Biden.

Biden said that every day his staff contact the Department of Defense and gets updated figures on military deaths and injuries. He quoted the death toll of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as 6753, slamming his hand against the podium while he said the number.

“Cause every one of those warriors left behind an entire family, a community, for us. Every one of them,” he declared, noting the 52,490 wounded military officers and the unseen wounds that result in 20 suicides a month in returned veterans.

“We only have one sacred obligation: to care for those we send to war and oto care for them and their families when they come home... That’s the only sacred, sacred, obligation we have,” said Biden.

Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House.

VP debate night

Tonight vice-presidential hopefuls Tim Kaine and Mike Pence will go head to head in the first and only vice-presidential debate.

Rarely have two running mates been so overshadowed by the candidates at the top of the ticket, writes David Smith in his debate preview. Can’t quite remember who they are? Check out our debate primer.

WikiLeaked nothing yet

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, promised a “significant” leak of documents before the upcoming US election – but so far he has still given no detail on what this #octobersurprise might be.

“We are going to need an army to defend us from the pressure that is already starting to arise,” said Assange at a early-morning video-link press conference from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been taking refuge from a Swedish extradition request since 2012.

In August Assange promised to release documents relating to Hillary Clinton.

Polls polls polls

A trio of new polls are out, all showing a lead for Clinton. A NBC News/SurveyMonkey online poll shows the Democratic candidate up six points, the same as last week. A CBS News poll, the first since the presidential debate last week, shows her up four points, 45-41. Before the debate she and Donald Trump had been tied at 42.

A new CNN/ORC poll has Clinton with a five-point lead over Trump, 47-42. The post-debate boost comes from men and independents – and even includes a bump from white people without college degrees, which is Trump’s base, says CNN.

The Real Clear Politics polling average has Clinton ahead by 3.8 points in a two-way race, and four points in a four-way race. That would give her a solid 205 electoral votes in the bag, with Trump winning 165, and 168 to play for. A total of 270 is needed to win.

Pollster Will Jordan from YouGov is noticing a new polling trend:

Events today

Clinton will campaign in Harrisburg, PA, with daughter Chelsea and actress Elizabeth Banks at midday ET. Reporter Dan Roberts will be there. Husband Bill is on his bus tour across eastern Ohio and the Mahoning Valley, Bernie Sanders will campaign for her in Minneapolis and Duluth and the first lady, Michelle Obama, will stump for Clinton in Charlotte and Raleigh.

Trump is hosting a 2pm rally in Prescott Valley, AZ.

Thanks for reading and please join us in the comments.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Black Comedian Faces Backlash After Donning “White Face” To Mock Erika Kirk
The skit features Druski with his face painted white, wearing a blonde wig, heavy makeup, and bright blue contact lenses.
Bored Panda
Bored Panda
Brooks Nader Was Asked About All Those Haters Who Don't Want Her In The New Baywatch
She's responding to the backlash.
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
‘She heard a demon’: Atlanta realtor rushes out of property after client hears something terrifying
TikTok can't decide whether to believe the terrifying story or not.
We Got This Covered
We Got This Covered
Hair compost, sugar waxes and refillable shampoo: inside a California low-waste salon
Scisters Salon & Apothecary in the San Diego area is committed to sustainable beauty and going low-waste
The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
The raccoon raiding your garbage bin might just be solving a puzzle — for the fun of it
Ever woken up to find that a crafty raccoon has overturned your garbage bin and spread the discarded contents of your life across the street?
The Conversation
The Conversation
Florida man drops $500 on dinner, tips low, and then turns the tables by calling for the manager: ‘just being cheap’
This guy is a server's worst nightmare.
We Got This Covered
We Got This Covered
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play