The Daily Show tries its best with a "boring as shit" veep debate

What’s this? A Tuesday Daily Show update? There must have been something of modest importance tonight. There was, dear reader. Very modest. This evening, the Vice Presidential debate between Governor Tim Walz and Senator JD Vance took place on a fact-checkless CBS, allowing Vance the opportunity to prove he doesn’t know what a vice president does and Walz the chance to agree with Vance whenever possible. The Daily Show was live to make sense of an event best described as “boring as shit.”

Taking his place at the desk, host Michael Kosta (isn’t it fun checking in with different hosts) did his best to find angles into this story. Kosta’s laid-back, dude-bro style was the perfect salve for an election event that probably doesn’t matter, won’t sway voters, and doesn’t even need to happen. But since we’re legally obligated to hear Vance downplay January 6, here we go.

While the show was live, The Daily Show wasn’t only looking at the debate. The episode opened by checking in with the protestors outside the event, where a clash between “we’re not going back” and “suck my dick” raged in the streets but wasn’t reflected inside the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City. “It was surprising seeing these two candidates being civil with each other even though they did disagree,” Kosta said. “It was surprising and, personally, boring as shit.”

The left-leaning Daily Show didn’t let Walz off easy. Kosta examined how Tim Walz believed himself to be a lousy debater, and Walz got his chance to prove it. Focusing on Walz’s response to whether he went to China in the spring or summer of 1989, which is somehow a controversy, Kosta could see the lousy debater Walz allegedly warned Kamala Harris about. Thankfully, Walz has charm, and as Kosta noted, the Governor has stolen much of the Republican moveset, such as being folksy and harnessing a working knowledge of the Bible. “What’s next?” Kosta said. “He’s going to find out he’s the webmaster of NudeAfrica.com.”

Having spent the last five years on the podcast circuit, Vance was comfortable dehumanizing immigrants but less comfortable answering the question of whether he’ll separate children from their parents at the border. He also couldn’t answer a simple question like “Who won the 2020 election?” Still, without Trump’s flop sweat, Vance slickly weaved around questions about January 6, abortion, immigration, and the time he called Trump “Hilter.” Often, he’d wonder why Kamala Harris hasn’t already fixed this thing or that, indicating that he doesn’t have a firm grasp on the position he’s currently interviewing for.

“To his credit, Vance did a great job in the debate,” Kosta said. “He was smooth. He was confident. He was prepared. The only problem was his memory.” When Vance boldly declared the Trump administration brought peace throughout the world, Kosta noted that there wasn’t even peace in this country.

Ultimately, this debate hit differently because it was so cordial. There were no conspiratorial outbursts, arguments about golf handicaps, or weird stalking of the Democratic nominee. Sure, there was that moment when the moderators gleefully shut off the candidate’s mics, but that’s only because CBS foolishly opted not to fact-check this one live. This is our third presidential election cycle with Donald Trump at the center, and as Kosta noted, it’s the first time we’ve seen a little midwestern niceness among the candidates. The word of the night was “agree,” which is weird. But the Michigan-born Kosta knows what “midwestern nice” actually means.

“The thing I took away from this debate was that both of these men made the Midwest proud,” Kosta said. “This debate was an oasis of Midwestern nice and just like Midwestern nice it was a mask covering deep-seated hatred and resentment.”