 At the vice presidential debate, COVID-19 expectedly came up and Mike Pence had his work cut out for him because he had to do two things in order to be effective. First of all, he had to prove to Americans that he's at least one of the grown-ups in the room when dealing with this virus because we know that Trump is incapable of acting like an adult. So we just had to prove to us that he's at least a little bit more responsible than Donald Trump. Second of all, he had to somehow defend what's effectively indefensible. He had to defend and explain himself to the American people as to why this administration, one was untruthful about the severity of this virus and why 210,000 Americans are dead on their watch. How you do this, I don't know, but before I show you what he had to say, this was the opening sequence of the debate and this was the first question that Kamala was asked. You can tell by the way that she shreds him, it's going to be really difficult for him to try to save himself here because, again, this is difficult to defend, something that's indefensible. But the way that she attacked him for bungling this pandemic, it really was brilliant. Take a look. What would a Biden administration do in January and February that a Trump administration wouldn't do? Would you impose new lockdowns for businesses in schools and hotspots, a federal mandate to wear masks? You have two minutes to respond without interruption. Thank you, Susan. Well, the American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. And here are the facts. 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. Over 7 million people who have contracted this disease. One in five businesses closed. We're looking at frontline workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers. We are looking at over 30 million people who in the last several months had to file for unemployment. And here's the thing. On January 28th, the vice president and the president were informed about the nature of this pandemic. They were informed that it's lethal in consequence, that it is airborne, that it will affect young people, and that it would be contracted because it is airborne. And they knew what was happening and they didn't tell you. Can you imagine if you knew on January 28th as opposed to March 13th what they knew what you might have done to prepare? They knew and they covered it up. The president said it was a hoax. They minimized the seriousness of it. The president said, you're on one side of his ledger if you wear a mask, you're on the other side of his ledger if you don't. And in spite of all of that today, they still don't have a plan. Well, Joe Biden does. And our plan is about what we need to do around a national strategy for contact tracing, for testing, for administration of the vaccine, and making sure that it will be free for all. That is the plan that Joe Biden has and that I have, knowing that we have to get a hold of what has been going on. And we need to save our country. And Joe Biden is the best leader to do that. And frankly, this administration has forfeited their right to reelection based on this. So she really did a good job right there. I think that that's effective. I think that's going to land. And I was a little bit worried when she, you know, she was asked basically, what would you do differently? And I was worried that she was taking too much time pointing out what Donald Trump did wrong. But she did actually land on some solutions and she didn't spend as much time on that. But the way that she presented it made it seem as if, oh, well, the solution actually is pretty simple. We need contact tracing. We need to make sure we do more testing. And these are things that Trump says he's doing. We have more testing than any other countries. But I mean, you keep talking, you keep saying that you're doing all of this stuff, but we're seeing cases spike again. 40,000 new cases a day, 45,000 new cases a day, 210,000 deaths. So the solution, it isn't that complicated. Kamala Harris, I think she did a great job at explaining how you failed and why it's really not that difficult. You just need a serious person to get in there and fix it. So, you know, that right there, if people tuned in just for like the first 10 minutes of the debate and then tuned out and all they saw was that Kamala Harris is coming away looking really good. Now, if they saw this, Kamala Harris is coming away looking even better because Mike Pence tried to defend himself and he came off as smug and fake. And what he says is honestly just embarrassing. And that was he suspended all travel from China, the second largest economy in the world. Now, Senator Joe Biden opposed that decision. He said it was xenophobic and hysterical. But I can tell you, having led the White House Coronavirus Task Force, that decision alone by President Trump bought us invaluable time to stand up the greatest national mobilization since World War II. And I believe it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Because with that time, we were able to reinvent testing, more than 115 million tests had been done to date. We were able to see to the delivery of billions of supplies so our doctors and nurses had the resources and support they needed. And we began really before the month of February was art to develop a vaccine and to develop medicines and therapeutics and saving lives all along the way. And under President Trump's leadership, Operation Warp Speed, we believe, will have literally tens of millions of doses of a vaccine before the end of this year. The reality is when you look at the Biden plan, it reads an awful lot, like what President Trump and I and our Task Force have been doing every step of the way. I mean, quite frankly, when I look at their plan that talks about advancing testing, creating new PPE, developing a vaccine, it looks a little bit like plagiarism. Which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about. And I think the American people know that this is a president who has put the health of America first in the American people, I believe with my heart, can be proud of the sacrifices they have made. It's saved countless American lives. Senator Harris, would you like to respond? Absolutely. Whatever the vice president is claiming the administration has done, clearly it hasn't worked. When you're looking at over 210,000 dead bodies in our country, American lives that have been lost, families that are grieving that loss. And you know, the vice president is the head of the Task Force and knew on January 28th how serious this was. And then thanks to Bob Woodward, we learned that they knew about it. And then when that was exposed, the vice president said, when asked, well, why didn't y'all tell anybody? He said, because the president wanted people to remain calm. Well, let's get to that. No, but Susan, this is important. And I want to add that if Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking, I'm speaking. You can get 15 more seconds and then we'll give the vice president a chance to respond. So I want to ask the American people, how calm were you when you were panicked about where you're going to get your next roll of toilet paper? How calm were you when your kids were sent home from school and you didn't know when they could go back? How calm were you when your children couldn't see your parents because you were afraid they could kill them? Let's give vice president Pence a chance to respond. Vice presidents, you have one minute to respond. You know, there's not a day gone by that I haven't thought of every American family that's lost a loved one. And I want all of you to know that you'll always be in our hearts and in our prayers. But when you say what the American people have done over these last eight months hasn't worked, that's a great disservice to the sacrifices the American people have made. The reality, if I may finish, the reality is Dr. Fauci said everything that he told the president in the Oval Office, the president told the American people. Now President Trump, I will tell you, has boundless confidence in the American people and he always spoke with confidence that we'd get through this together. But when you say it hasn't worked, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx and our medical experts came to us in the second week of March. They said if the president didn't take the unprecedented step of shutting down roughly half of the American economy, that we could lose 2.2 million Americans. That's the reality. So I know that there is a lot of Donald Trump diehards in this country, but even they probably could sense that that was a bullshit answer. That was a horrible answer. So first of all, he defends himself by saying or implying rather that they would have been more competent than Joe Biden because they instituted the travel ban from China, which Joe Biden said was xenophobic. Now, here's the thing and I wish that Kamala Harris would have pointed this out. You knew about the severity of COVID-19. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did not. So forgive everyone else for expecting Trump to just act in a reactionary manner and not really do what is reasonable or logical and just, you know, try to ban people from entering the country. You already have a Muslim ban on the books. So it's like, are we really that unreasonable, especially if we don't know how severe this is? But you do. I mean, you could have been upfront with us and say, look, this is airborne. This is a lot worse than the common cold or the flu. So we have to take these precautions, but you didn't do that. So to just say, well, we did the China ban. That isn't sufficient. Like that doesn't make you look good, especially because you had complete information and everyone else had incomplete information. It actually makes you look worse because if that's all that you did, I mean, I just can't see how he thinks this is going to land. On top of that, he brought up plagiarism. He says, well, look, your action plan looks pretty similar to ours. Looks like it was plagiarized and Joe Biden wouldn't know a thing or two about plagiarism. Now, as I stated in my full debate breakdown, yes, Joe Biden was humiliated before when he ran for president because he was busted, plagiarizing speeches. But you're clearly trying to divert attention away from you and attack Joe Biden. But here's the thing right now. I don't give a flying fuck about that in the face of COVID-19. Like if we're having a conversation within the context of like who's more trustworthy, then maybe you bring up the plagiarism thing. But to bring up plagiarism just randomly and take that potshot while you're talking about a serious issue where more than 200,000 Americans have died because you have bungled it. I mean, the average person is going to think, I don't care if he's a plagiarist so long as he actually handles this virus so my life can return to normal. Like for him to just shoehorn that in, it was out of place. It was off-putting and it's just a bad look because you are the one who's supposed to defend yourself and Kamala is not a plagiarist. So what is she supposed to say to that? You're not even saying this to Joe Biden. So it just, it came off horribly. And I think that Kamala Harris responded in a way that was sufficient. She said, look, whatever you guys are doing, if we're copying your plan, it hasn't worked. And on top of that, you were the head of the task force. So why are we seeing so many deaths? So he just, there was no way that he was able to back himself out of a corner. And you know, to say all of these wonderful things about how, oh, we love the American people. We respect the American people. It's not enough. But the worst moment by far of this exchange was when he misconstrued Kamala Harris' argument deliberately. And he said, you know, when you say that the American people, what they've done hasn't worked, that's just insulting. And I'm paraphrasing, but anyone who's watching sees that it was obvious. Kamala Harris was not saying, oh, the American people are terrible at handling this pandemic. She was referring specifically to this administration. When she says you've bungled COVID-19, why would you extrapolate and think that she is talking about the American people? The American people don't have power in this situation. You have power. You're in control. You're in the White House. You've got the Oval Office. Why are you the ones that are fucking up? It's not the American people. You're fucking up. And there's no way that he believes that that's what she meant. He was trying to get some rubes who vote Republican and are loyal to think, oh, well, yeah, she's saying that I'm the one who messed up, fuck her. No, no. Nobody's going to buy that. So this was a horrible look for Mike Pence. And, you know, I know I just said that that part was the worst part, but I want to talk about the most embarrassing part. And Trump did this as well. And I don't know why they do this, but Mike Pence brought up swine flu. He brought up swine flu in a conversation about COVID-19 where more than 200,000 Americans have died. Take a look. If the swine flu had been as lethal as the coronavirus in 2009, when Joe Biden was vice president, we would have lost 2 million American lives. It is astonishing to me that they think this is persuasive because every time you invoke swine flu, all you do is remind people that Obama and Biden handled that more competently. Because does anyone remember a relative dying from swine flu? The numbers are much, much smaller. Does anyone remember the economy collapsing because of swine flu and their entire lives being changed, losing their jobs because of swine flu? No. So for you to say, well, hypothetically, if, you know, swine flu was as deadly as COVID, then, you know, if you crunched the numbers and you divide by two, then it would have been... No. We're not dealing with hypotheticals. We're dealing with reality. And the fact of the matter is that Obama and Biden handled swine flu adequately. Because guess what? It was gone pretty quickly. That's not the case with COVID-19. And hundreds of thousands of people are dying. So the fact that he would bring up swine flu, like that's the last thing that you want to do. Like if I am advising Donald Trump and Mike Pence, I tell them to stay far away from swine flu because you're just going to remind people that, you know, these types of things can actually be... mitigated. We can contain the spread of viruses if we have someone who's competent. So this was a disaster for Mike Pence. And this is why I think, you know, largely coming away from this debate, even if Mike Pence wasn't as bad as a debater as Donald Trump, not like even bad in terms of debating people. Like I think that Trump probably just turned off more people. Mike Pence is a better debater than Donald Trump. But people right now, they want answers and COVID-19 is the number one issue. This is the number one thing that's affecting people's lives. So for you to not take responsibility for your fuck up and to try to divert attention away to plagiarism and then invoke swine flu to try to, you know, do this gotcha. It just, it makes you look so bad. And, you know, you think that he would have expected this to come up and had prepared a better response for it. And everything he said, I think was rehearsed and pre-written. But the fact that this is all that you came up with, it's just honestly laughable.