If you didn’t watch tonight’s debate, this is all you need to know:

JD Vance’s solution to the mass killing of school children is “stronger windows.”

Not one child has ever been shot through a school window. Not one killer ever climbed through a window to get into a school. Not one report after a mass shooting at a school has even mentioned windows.

That is how far JD Vance went in the opposite direction of the thing that caused the death of every child killed in every single school shooting: guns.

Let us recount just a few more of JD Vance’s many lies during the debate:

Asked how he would protect people with pre-existing health conditions, Vance answered, “We already have a law that does that” without acknowledging that the law is Obamacare.

Vance said that Donald Trump “saved” the Affordable Care Act. Trump backed 70 attempts by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and said if elected he would “end it on day one.”

Vance said January 6 was not a threat to democracy. Censorship, somehow attributable to Kamala Harris, “is the threat to democracy we should be talking about.”

Vance claimed that the housing crisis is caused by “25 million illegal aliens” driving up the cost of housing.

The country that during the Biden-Harris administration produced the largest quantity of oil and natural gas in the world “needs more drilling,” according to Vance.

JD Vance claimed to have “never” supported a national ban on abortions. Vance told an interviewer in 2022 that he would “certainly like abortion to be illegal nationally.” Vance went on to say that the problem Republicans have on the abortion issue is, “We’ve got to get better at our message of supporting women.”

By refusing to answer a question asking him whether he believes climate change is a “hoax,” Vance confirmed that he believes it is.

Vance talked over the moderators to push his lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are here illegally. Not only did he get the law wrong, but the law he cited was passed and signed by Donald Trump.

Asked by Tim Walz if he believed that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance answered, “Tim, I am focused on the future,” and said Kamala Harris had censored people “during COVID.”

Vance lied when he said that guns are “coming into this country from Mexican drug cartels.” It is just the opposite: drug cartels regularly smuggle American firearms into Mexico because they have such strict gun laws in that country the cartels can’t get them there.

My wife Tracy turned to me about halfway through the debate and sighed, “Vance is a such a sleazy, oily, adept liar.”

‘Nuff said.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.