WASHINGTON—Vice President Mike Pence defended the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday in Salt Lake City, Utah against repeated attacks by Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris, who said President Donald Trump and Pence knew in February how dangerous the coronavirus was but hid it from the American people.
But, in the only vice presidential debate of 2020, Pence also put Harris on the spot with a question about whether former Vice President Joe Biden would try to add justices to the Supreme Court if he wins the Nov. 3 election; Harris avoided answering.
The Supreme Court
In one of the most controversial moments of the debate, Pence pushed Harris for a firm answer on whether Biden would pack the court.
Americans “would like to know if you and Joe Biden are going to pack the Supreme Court if you don’t get your way in this nomination,” Pence said.
Harris responded by saying, “The American people are voting right now. And it should be their decision about who will serve on this most important body for a lifetime.”
Pence said he hopes Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, federal judge Amy Coney Barrett, “gets a fair hearing,” and accused Harris of attacking now-Justice Brett Kavanagh on his religious beliefs during his confirmation hearing.
Vice President Pence says a Biden-Harris administration would pack the Supreme Court and asks Sen. Harris to state her position on the subject on the record, but she refuses. [PBS NewsHour]
Burgat noted that Biden could not add more justices to the high court unilaterally.
“There’s no executive order that would put more justices on the court,” he said. “It would take an act of Congress, which means they would have to build broad consensus or, more likely, get rid of the filibuster to get it done.”
Coronavirus
Harris forcefully and repeatedly attacked Trump and Pence about the fact that they knew how serious the novel coronavirus was early in the pandemic, but Trump told author Bob Woodward that he didn’t share the information publicly so that people wouldn’t worry.
“You respect the American people when you tell them the truth,” Harris said. “You respect the American people when you have the courage to be a leader who speaks of those things that you may not want people to hear, but they need to hear so they can protect themselves.”
But Pence said he and the president “trust the American people to make the best choices for their health.”
“We’re about freedom and respecting the freedom of the American people,” he said.
Both nominees said their coronavirus strategies were based heavily on testing and science-backed strategies, but Harris emphasized the disproportionate death toll from the virus in the U.S. compared with other countries and the failure of the administration to curtail its effects both on Americans and the economy.
Pence repeated Trump’s statement that the impact of the virus would have been much worse if the president hadn’t shut the country’s borders at the start of the outbreak.
Justice reform
One of the most dramatic policy divides of the evening was made clear when moderator Susan Page asked the nominees for their thoughts on the verdict in the death of Breonna Taylor.
“The family of Breonna Taylor has our sympathies,” Pence said. “But I trust our justice system, a grand jury that reviews the evidence.”
“Justice will be served, but there’s also no excuse for the rioting and looting that followed,” Pence added about the death of George Floyd, sidestepping the opportunity to condemn racism in much the same way that Trump avoided the question at last week’s debate.
Sen. Kamala Harris pushes Vice President Pence on his administration’s refusal to condemn white supremacy at the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate. [PBS NewsHour]
She also said, “Bad cops are bad for good cops. We need reform of our policing in America and our criminal justice system.”
“I think we’re seeing a very consistent attempt to appeal to two policies of color,” said Tabitha Bonilla, a political science professor at Northwestern University. “One side is appealing to the idea that race doesn’t matter and the other side is saying, yes, it does matter, because of these specific policies.”
She also said that the vice president “was incredibly dismissive about systemic racism in this country and implicit bias.”
Climate change
The candidates drew clear lines on their parties’ positions on climate change.
“The climate is changing,” Pence said, “but the question is what’s the cause, and what do we do about it?”
After Pence said that the Biden-Harris campaign would stop all fracking as part of their energy policy, Harris made clear that “Joe Biden will not end fracking.”
Harris called climate change “an existential threat to us as human beings” and said Biden would rejoin the Paris Climate Accord.
Asked about the record-breaking wildfires and hurricanes this year, Pence instead talked about Trump’s “commitment to conservation and to the environment.”
He also said Harris supports House Democrats’ Green New Deal. Harris did not use the term at all throughout the night, although the vice president and Page brought it up at least 15 times.