Exercise in Dishonesty

‘It Will Be an Exercise in Dishonesty, But It Will be Disciplined.’

A Q&A with the man who played JD Vance in debate prep in 2022.

By Ben Jacobs

Before Pete Buttigieg was playing JD Vance in debate prep, there was Danny O’Connor.

A local elected official in Columbus, Ohio, O’Connor assumed the role of Vance in debate prep for then-Rep. Tim Ryan during their fierce 2022 Senate race.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, O’Connor discussed what Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz should expect from Vance at the debate next week — including his extraordinary discipline and a propensity for awkward laughter.

“Generally he’ll laugh if something is absolutely true that he needs to defuse,” O’Connor said.

With another presidential debate looking increasingly unlikely, the Oct. 1 vice presidential face-off may be the last major set-piece event of the presidential election. That means that for both Walz and Vance, the stakes of this traditionally second-tier event will be even higher.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you prepare to be Vance in Tim Ryan’s debate prep? How did you try to get inside his head?

It was a lot of watching what he was saying and his nuanced answers to specific questions. For Vance, it wasn’t too hard, because it was clear that he was being told exactly what to say. There’s not really much in terms of original thought.

The hard thing about Vance is there’s a million iterations. He changes every single election cycle. There’s no honesty there. Even since 2022, he pivots in every way, shape and form for whoever is telling him he needs to pivot. So the hard part about prepping for Vance is that he is just one of the most dishonest human beings I’ve ever encountered or read about or studied. So whenever you’re prepping for someone like that, it’s kind of like if you prep for a game in football, and the other team usually runs the I formation, but they come out and run shotgun the entire game. But with Vance, you can kind of figure it out by just following what Trump’s saying. Or Project 2025 is saying.

What are his tics? What are his nervous habits while debating?

Well, he thinks he’s really clever, and we’ve seen that, whether it was the awkward Diet Mountain Dew joke he made when he gave at his first solo campaign rally or a whole host of other things. He thinks he’s the smartest person in the room, and he’s just going to try and be smart and funny, and it just doesn’t work, because he’s not really that funny or smooth.

He’s going to scoff at a lot of points. Walz could make a fantastic point about Vance’s record on trade or labor, or the cost of living families are facing. And Vance will laugh it off like it’s something that really doesn’t matter and that everyone should be indifferent about. So he has a remarkable lack of sense of where voters are and what people are looking for out of their leaders.

Are there any surprises or tricks that Walz should be on the lookout for?

Not that I can recall. There wasn’t any smoking gun moment or Matlock moment, so to speak, where he ambushed Ryan. It was consistent stuff about President [Joe] Biden linking himself to Tim and stuff like that. But Vance is going to be very, very short on plans, because, as we all know, Trump said he had concepts of a plan as it relates to people’s health care in the debate. So I think that’s what Vance is going to do — talk generally without specifics.

You mentioned Vance laughing before. Is that his go-to move, and how does that work?

If someone were to say, “Senator Vance, you’ve supported a national ban on abortion in the past,” I guarantee he’ll laugh at that and say that’s not true, and then say why he doesn’t support it. Generally he’ll laugh if something is absolutely true that he needs to defuse.

What is Vance good at in debates and what should Walz be prepared for?

He’s disciplined; he’s going to do exactly what he’s told. This is the guy who’s gotten where he is by kind of having a career of obedience. He’s going to do exactly what he’s told to do by the folks in the Trump campaign, the folks who are cooking up Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, folks like that. And so he’s going to repeat, rinse, repeat what the message is. He’s going to throw out stuff — attacking the vice president in a way that doesn’t really make any sense, but it’s stuff that they’ve poll-tested, that they think makes sense. So it will be an exercise in dishonesty, but it will be consistent, and it will be disciplined.