JD Vance proved exactly who he is at that debate: Trump, but slicker

Vice-presidential debates are not about vice-presidential candidates. They are a chance for the number two on the ticket to hype their prospective bosses for 90 minutes and, if they are lucky, introduce themselves to millions of Americans.

But JD Vance has the unfortunate task of running for the White House alongside Donald Trump, a man who often types out dozens of Caps Lock rants before breakfast.

As a result, he spent much of the debate attempting to sanitize the former president’s many statements, social media posts, verbal assaults and lies.

When Vance was asked if he — like Trump — believed climate change was a hoax, Vance straightened his back and did his duty.

“Well look, what the president has said…” he began, before launching into a revised and unrecognizable version of his boss’s remarks.

It was the first of many times he was forced to translate Trump’s confusing remarks, or his boiling rage.

“Well what President Trump said, Margaret, I just wanna defend my running-mate here a little bit,” he said again when asked about Trump’s comments on the cost of child care to CBS’s Margaret Brennan, one of the two moderators.

Vance has grown into his role as Trump’s anger translator. Once a fierce critic of the former president, the Senator from Ohio has transformed into a fully-fledged MAGA warrior. On the debate stage, he presented himself as a more polished, more coherent salesman for the extreme policies of Trump’s party.

But the extremes are still there. Vance did not run away from Trump’s destruction of Roe v Wade, he dodged a direct question about whether the 2020 election was stolen, and he prevaricated on the causes of climate change.

In one of the most striking examples of Vance’s sanitizing of MAGA policies,