Donald Trump Plays Down Expectations for JD Vance in VP Debate

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has implied that he does not expect JD Vance to come off well in the Vice Presidential TV debate because “it will be rigged” against him.
The former President’s running mate is set to go up against his Democratic counterpart Tim Walz on Tuesday, during a debate moderated by CBS News in New York, in what will be the last event both campaigns have agreed to before the election in November.
Trump said he thinks it will be “rigged” as he believes his ABC News debate with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was.
“They’re [debates are] so rigged and so stacked—you’ll see it [on Tuesday] with JD, it will be stacked,” he told his former 2016 campaign manager and White House adviser, Kellyanne Conway in a Fox Nation interview.
When Newsweek contacted Tump’s team for comment, it said “you must be hallucinating to think that [Trump does not believe Vance will do well].”
“Senator Vance is brilliant, as President Trump wrote yesterday, and Tampon Tim will have to defend Kamala Harris’ record of failure and misery,” spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek.
Trump’s remarks had come when he was answering a question about whether he would be prepared to have another presidential debate with Harris.
Before going onto Vance, Trump said: “I would love to have two or three more debates—I like it, I enjoy it, but they’re so rigged and so stacked …”
Trump, who has long insisted that mainstream media is biased against him, called for everyone to be fired at ABC News, after his debate with Harris on September 10, as he claims he was unfairly fact-checked by anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis.
He wrote on Truth Social: “Remember, I wasn’t debating one person, I was debating three. They should fire everybody at ABC Fake News, whose two lightweight ‘anchors’ have brought disgrace onto the company!”
Vance will be moderated by CBS Evening News host Norah O’Donnell, alongside and CBS News foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan and, unlike the ABC News debate, candidates will not be live fact-checked.
Speaking at a recent rally in Michigan, Vance also said he suspects the moderators will be biased.
“What I’m going to try to show is very simple that the team of substance, the team that actually has a record that we’re proud of, is the team of Trump-Vance.
“We’re studying up as much as we can on the issues that matter to the American people and I’m looking forward to it because the moderators may very well be biased, we’ll see about that.
“I know they were the first time but it’s an opportunity for me to get to tell the American people how I think we can make their lives better and how Donald Trump’s policies can make them more prosperous.”
Newsweek has contacted ABC News and CBS News, via email, for a response to these comments.
Trump also told Conway that Vance is “going up against a total moron,” before adding: “How she [Harris] picked him [Walz] is unbelievable, and I think it’s a big factor, there’s something wrong with that guy—he’s sick.”
When Trump was asked about the VP debate after he landed in Georgia for a briefing on Hurricane Helene, he said: “I think JD’s gonna do great, he’s a very smart guy, he’s done a great job, people like him a lot—he’s against tampon Tim.”
Newsweek has contacted teams for Trump, Vance and the Harris-Walz campaign, via email outside of normal working hours, for comment.
Update 10/01/24, 06:44 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from Trump’s team.