Politics

Live Blog: The Vice Presidential Debate

By Mark Joyella 

There will be no do-overs for the vice presidential candidates, as Tim Kaine and Mike Pence meet to debate just once–tonight, at 9 p.m. ET.

Most–though not all–of the networks will carry the debate, with your choice of shouty political panels for hours afterwards.

Tonight’s moderator, Elaine Quijano of CBS News, will sit at a table with the candidates in front of an audience at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.

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There won’t be any Donald Trump tonight, but his name will certainly fix into the debate, and Trump has promised to share his thoughts through the evening on Twitter (surprise!):

CNN’s John King, however, reports the Trump campaign “plans to have his team around him” as he comments on the debate, which may take all the fun out of it.

Screen Shot 2016-10-04 at 1.12.26 PMOne question: will Pence keep it clean, or will his potty mouth return, as it did in the lead-up to tonight’s debate.

No matter what he says, it sounds like some have already declared Pence the clear winner of the debate. A blog post on the GOP.com website says the debate we have yet to see was totally one-sided:

8:45 p.m. ET: Donald Trump, who has repeatedly said he does not watch CNN, has concluded he can’t watch CNN any more tonight:

Ct9yYfBWcAACJH18:54 p.m. ET: Elaine Quijano takes the stage, says she is “honored and humbled to be here tonight,” and warns the audience not to applaud–or let their phones ring during the debate.

9:05 p.m. ET: Kaine is wearing a red tie, and Pence is wearing blue–reversing the traditional Republican-Democratic color choices. In the first presidential debate, Clinton wore red and Trump wore blue.

9:10 p.m. ET: Wait. What? We missed this from earlier:

9:21 p.m. ET: Is Quijano holding the candidates’ feet to the fire, or letting them slip away from her questions?

Quijano has just admonished the candidates to stop interrupting and taking over each other. “Gentlemen, the people at home cannot understand you when you speak over each other.”

9:29 p.m. ET: Mike Pence, who knocked Kaine for canned zingers, grabbed for one of the classic debate zingers of all time, Ronald Reagan‘s epic “there you go again.”

9:47 p.m. ET: While Donald Trump’s tweet about Batman is getting most of the live-tweeting attention, we pass this along without comment:

9:53 p.m. ET: RATHERISM!

10:17 p.m. ET: Is Meghan McCain bored by the debate?

10:23 p.m. ET: Russia, Russia, Russia:

10:35 p.m. ET: The debate has ended. The fact-checking–and the spinning–is about to begin.

10:40 p.m. ET: Instant polls and focus groups are about to serve up their verdicts. In the meantime, we have this:

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