‘You’re hired, you’re fired’

“I think he’s a very fitting running mate for Hillary Clinton,” Pence said of Kaine, because in a season where American families are struggling economically, “Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine want more of the same. It really is remarkable.” Pence said they want “a trillion dollars in tax increases.” Trump’s plan will get the United States back to 3.5 or 4 percent growth, he said.

Kaine shot back that on the economy, Americans face “a fundamental choice”: “Do you want a ‘You’re hired’ president in Hillary Clinton, or a ‘You’re fired’ president in Donald Trump?” The Democrat said Trump and Pence want “massive tax breaks for the very top” — a strategy that under President George W. Bush “put the economy into the deepest recession since the 1930s.”

“I appreciated the You’re hired, you’re fired” line, Pence told Kaine. “You use that a lot,” he said, adding that Clinton uses a lot of “pre-done lines.”

(Credit: Getty Images / Mark Wilson)

Which side has more insults?

“Donald Trump always puts himself first,” Kaine said early in the debate. “I can’t imagine how Governor Pence can defend the insult-driven, selfish, me-first style of Donald Trump,” he added.

The Republican vice-presidential nominee responded, “Senator, you and Hillary Clinton would know a lot about an insult-driven campaign.” Clinton’s campaign “has been an avalanche of insults,” Pence said.

(Credit: Getty Images / Andrew Gombert)

Trump ‘loves dictators’; ‘America is less safe today’ under Obama

Kaine charged that Trump “loves dictators. He’s got like a personal Mount Rushmore: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Moammar Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein.”

After Kaine discussed some of Trump’s remarks on nuclear weapons, Pence replied that the Democrat had come up with “a lot of really creative lines.” He attacked Clinton’s foreign policy leadership as secretary of state, declaring, “America is less safe today than it was the day that Barack Obama became president of the United States. It’s absolutely inarguable.”