The face-off between Tim Kaine, the Democrat running alongside Hillary Clinton, and Mike Pence, Republican Donald Trump’s running mate, is the kind of thing you feel like you have to watch because everyone’s going to be talking about it, but it was as dry as over-cooked turkey.
If you turned off the screen and just listened, you might find it impossible to tell apart the soft baritones of the two-middle-aged white men speaking calmly.
If you managed to stay awake for the entire hour-and-a-half, there were moments of clarity and memorable lines. If not — or if you just want to relive the highlights — here are the five most memorable moments from the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night (and one bonus moment from the post-debate spin):
#ThatMexicanThing
The most memed moment of the night came when Pence said “you whipped out that Mexican thing again,” after Kaine attacked Trump’s derogatory comments about Mexicans. The comment came during a longer, heated exchange on immigration, and Pence’s dismissal of concerns about Trump’s language towards Mexicans and other immigrants was quickly seized upon by the Clinton campaign. ThatMexicanThing.com now redirects to the Clinton campaign website.
The phrase also become a hashtag being used by many first- and second-generation Americans to highlight how their families contributed to the country.
#ThatMexicanThing where undocumented immigrants pay more taxes than @realDonaldTrump does. #VPDebate
— Pili Tobar (@pilitobar87) October 5, 2016
#thatmexicanthing is my mom who immigrated to this country, pays her taxes and put two kids through college while managing a business ❤️💪🏾💪🏾
— Frank Ramirez (@frankemilio) October 5, 2016
#ThatMexicanThing watching your previously undocumented mom, now citizen, make her first campaign contribution ever for @HillaryClinton
— AJ Juarez-Rubio (@funkybadness) October 5, 2016
The heavy-handed high road
Throughout the debate, Kaine hammered Pence for “defending the insult-driven campaign that Donald Trump has run.” He repeated the phrase “insult-driven campaign” almost as much as Clinton used “Trumped up, trickle down” economics in the first debate. That said, Kaine attacks on Trump’s serial offences may have lasted through the morning __news cycle, but more than once Kaine was a bit too self-righteous in his delivery. At one point, he listed a series of misogynistic insults Trump has spewed and added: “I don’t like saying that in front of my wife and my mother” — which was a bit too patronizing for a man who wants to serve under the first female president of the United States.
Not to be outdone, Pence countered that the Clinton-Kaine campaign has been an “avalanche of insults,” presumably because of that one time Clinton said many Trump supporters are simply “deplorables” because of their support for an overtly sexist, racist man.
“Did you work on that one a long time?”
After Kaine delivered a blistering attack on Trump’s past support of myriad dictators and oligarchs around the world, Pence masterfully deflected the clearly canned volley, saying, “Did you work on that one a long time?”
Talking over foreign policy
Moderator Elaine Quijano, a CBS reporter, shone during an exchange on foreign policy when all either candidate seemed to be able to do was talk over the other one. It happened a few times, and she was quite good at inserting herself — “all right, gentlemen, just a moment,” she said multiple times — to get them back on track.
Trump’s taxes (or lack thereof)
Pence repeatedly defended Trump as someone who is not a “career politician.” Whether it was Trump’s bizarre rants or bigoted comments or his avoidance of taxes, Pence just kept replying it’s cause he’s “a businessman.”
The “implicit bias” of policing
Pence said recent debates about police use of force in the United States have “got to stop” because the discussion of “implicit bias” paints all law enforcement offices with “a broad brush.” “We ought to stop seizing on these moments of tragedy,” Pence said. Kaine interjected, “If you’re afraid to have the discussion (about police bias), you’ll never solve it.”
“Like he had a tic”
Trump campaign spokesperson Kellyann Conway displayed her camp’s typical measured and respectful rhetoric when she said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday morning Kaine acted “like he had a tic” because he mentioned Donald Trump’s name so many times. Conway said Kaine mentioned Trumo’s name 160 times, compared to Pence mentioning rival Clinton’s name 70 times.
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