'Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking’: Harris, Pence spar over COVID-19 response in vice presidential debate

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and VP Mike Pence traded barbs on a range of topics during their first and only 2020 debate Wednesday night — with a particular focus on the Trump administration’s widely criticized coronavirus response — but the rhetorical clash proved a far more civil affair than the verbal food fight their bosses got into last week.

The vice presidential hopefuls, separated on stage by plexiglass barriers out of COVID-19 concerns, did not hold back by any means, but the debate in Salt Lake City stood out as unusually polite simply because the candidates didn’t incessantly interrupt each other or lob deeply personal attacks.

“The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” Sen. Harris (D-Calif.) said of the coronavirus — which has killed more than 211,000 Americans on President Trump’s watch — as Pence looked on silently. “Frankly, this administration has forfeited their right to re-election based on this.”

She added: “They still don’t have a plan.”

Pence acknowledged that “our nation’s gone through a very challenging time this year" — a response that’s hard to imagine would ever be emulated by Trump, who remains in quarantine at the White House after testing positive for COVID-19 last week.

But, the vice president continued, “I want the American people to know, from the very first day, President Trump has put the health of America first" before promising that the administration is developing a COVID-19 vaccine at record speed.

Pence’s vaccine pledge set off one of the night’s most heated exchanges, as Harris said she does not trust Trump enough to take the vaccine at his word.

"If Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us to take it, I’m not taking it,” Harris said.

Pence called Harris' comments “unconscionable."

“Your continuous undermining of confidence in a vaccine is unacceptable,” Pence said.

Despite Pence’s vaccine swipe, Trump’s push for a vaccine to be ready before the Nov. 3 election has raised concern among public health experts, who say that timeline is unrealistic.

Unlike last Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Joe Biden, there were few interruptions.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking," Harris said calmly but firmly after Pence at one point tried to talk over her as she lambasted Trump for not being upfront with the American people about the pandemic.

Pence abided and allowed Harris to go on.

Though he largely avoided getting bogged down in many of Trump’s most controversial statements, Pence echoed his boss in declining to commit to a peaceful transfer of power by simply claiming “we’re going to win this election."

He also repeated Trump’s fact-challenged claims about mail-in voting, saying it’s “ripe for fraud,” even though the method has proven remarkably safe this year.

Though he’s stuck at the White House recovering from COVID-19, Trump couldn’t resist stealing some of the spotlight from Pence.

“Mike Pence is doing GREAT! She is a gaffe machine,” Trump tweeted mid-way through the debate, resorting to the type of name-calling that the vice president avoided on stage.

An unexpected breakout star of the debate was a fly that landed on Pence’s head in the middle of an exchange about police brutality. Pence did not acknowledge the uninvited guest, which flew away on its own after nearly two minutes on his silver-white hair.

As the side-kicks of the presidential race, Pence and Harris focused most of their rhetorical jabs on the records of Biden and Trump respectively.

There were a handful of exceptions, though, including Pence accusing Harris of harboring anti-Christian beliefs because she opposes Trump’s unprecedented rush to fill the Supreme Court seat left open by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“Joe Biden and I are both people of faith, and it’s insulting to suggest that we would knock anyone for their faith,” Harris said.

Harris also put Pence in his place after the vice president accused her and Biden of being weak on crime because they have offered support for racial justice protesters outraged by recent police killings of Black Americans.

“I will not sit here and be lectured by the vice president on what it means to enforce the laws of our country. I’m the only one on this stage who has personally prosecuted everything from child sexual assault to homicide,” said Harris, who was the attorney general of California before being elected to the Senate.

Pence, in turn, got riled up after Harris referenced a recent report on Trump allegedly calling U.S. war dead “losers and suckers” in private.

"My son is a captain in the Marine Corps,” Pence said. “The sons and daughters serving in our military — President Donald Trump not only respects, but reveres them. Any other suggestion is ridiculous.

One of the debate’s only cheap shots came from Pence, as he claimed Biden’s campaign plan for combatting COVID-19 was a carbon copy of the Trump administration’s strategy.

“It looks a little like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little about,” Pence said, referring to the plagiarism scandal that upended the former vice president’s 1988 bid for the White House.

Harris chuckled in response.

“Whatever the vice president is claiming the administration has done, clearly it hasn’t worked,” Harris said, noting that the American coronavirus death toll is the worst in the world while the U.S. economy remains in shambles because of the pandemic.

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