Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance took the same stage for their first and only vice presidential debate this election cycle on Tuesday evening, when the pair had a handful of fiery clashes over top voter concerns.
The CBS News Vice Presidential Debate showcased the two vice presidential candidates’ platforms on issues such as the ongoing war raging in the Middle East, abortion laws and their respective tickets’ economic records. Amid the 90-minute debate, Vance and Walz had a handful of clashes, including moderators turning off Vance’s microphone.
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The CBS debate’s rules included leaving microphones on for both candidates no matter who was speaking, breaking from the two presidential debates this cycle that muted microphones when a candidate was not speaking. The outlet, however, reserved the right to turn the microphones off if they felt it was warranted.
Moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell did mute the pair Tuesday when Vance spoke up to complain that the moderators were trying to fact-check him on his remarks regarding illegal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
“The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border. It is a disgrace,” Vance said referring to about immigration issues in a city in his home state.
After Vance and Walz both delivered responses regarding immigration, Brennan told viewers that Springfield “does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status.”
Vance took issues with the on-air “fact-check” before he was muted.
“The rules were that you were not going to fact-check, and since you’re fact checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” Vance said. “So there’s an application called the CBP. One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand. That is not a person coming in. Applying for a green card and waiting for ten years.”
Moderators tried to quiet Vance before cutting his and Walz’s mics.
“Gentlemen, the audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut,” Margaret Brennan said. “We have so much we want to get to.”
Walz was forced to answer questions regarding his travel to China during Tuesday night’s debate.
Walz has said he was in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989. Minnesota Public Radio and other media outlets, however, are now reporting that Walz actually did not travel to China until August of that year.
CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan asked Walz to explain the discrepancy.
WALZ FORCED TO CORRECT RECORD ON WHETHER HE WAS IN CHINA FOR THE TIANANMEN SQUARE PROTESTS
“Look, I grew up in a small rural Nebraska town, a town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I’m proud of that service,” a visibly shaky Walz said. “I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms and then I used the GI bill to become a teacher.”
“I came back home and then started a program to take young people there. We would take basketball teams. We would take baseball teams. We would take dancers. And we would go back and forth to China,” Walz said, noting the trips were “to try and learn.”
“Look, my community knows who I am. They saw where I was at. I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community, and I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect,” Walz continued.
“And I’m a knucklehead at times.”
Brennan pushed back, reminding Walz of the question and again asking him to explain the discrepancy.
“All I said on this was, as I got there that summer and misspoke on this,” Walz said. “So, I will just — that’s what I’ve said. So, I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests, went in and, from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in in governance.”
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Walz claimed during the debate that a woman in Georgia likely died due to the state’s “restrictive” abortion laws after Roe v. Wade was overturned, sparking a clash with Vance.
“There’s a young woman named Amber Thurman. She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurmond died in that journey back and forth. The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography,” Walz said during the debate while sparring with Vance on abortion laws.
“There’s a very real chance that if Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today. That’s why the restoration of Roe v. Wade,” he said.
Walz’s remarks come after ProPublica published an article last month blaming the deaths of two Georgia women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, on the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the state’s new abortion limits after the women received chemically induced abortions in 2022.
Georgia’s heartbeat law states that “no abortion shall be performed if the unborn child has a detectable human heartbeat except in the event of a medical emergency or medically futile pregnancy.”
Vance shot back that a Minnesota abortion law does not require doctors to save a baby who survives an abortion.
“First of all, governor, I agree with you, Amber Thurman should still be alive, and there are a lot of people who should still be alive. And I certainly wish that she was. And maybe you’re free to disagree with me on this and explain this to me. But as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late term abortion,” he said.
VANCE, WALZ SPAR ON IMMIGRATION DURING VP DEBATE: BEEN TO THE BORDER ‘MORE THAN OUR BORDER CZAR’
“That’s not true,” Walz said.
“Choice or not option that is fundamentally barbaric,” Vance continued.
The pair also sparred over immigration a handful of times throughout the debate, including Vance slamming Vice President Kamala Harris for her handling of immigration.
“First of all, the gross majority of what we need to do to the southern border is just empowering law enforcement to do their job,” Vance said during a discussion on the Haitian migrant surge in Springfield, Ohio, and immigration overall.
“I’ve been to the southern border more than our ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris has been. And it’s actually heartbreaking because the Border Patrol agents, they just want to be empowered to do their job.”
Vance continued by saying that, “of course, additional resources would help,” but that the issue is mostly about the Biden administration not empowering law enforcement to say “if you try to come across the border illegally, you’ve got to stay in Mexico” and “go back through proper channels.”
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“Now, Gov. Walz brought up the community of Springfield, and he’s very worried about the things that I’ve said in Springfield,” Vance said. “Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed. You’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed. You’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.
Walz repeatedly argued Trump shut down a Senate immigration bill earlier this year that he believes would have made strengthened border security.
“It is law enforcement that asked for the bill,” Walz said. “They helped craft it. They’re the ones that supported it. It was because they know we need to do this. Look, this issue of continuing to bring this up, of not dealing with it, of blaming migrants for everything.
“On housing, we could talk a little bit about Wall Street speculators buying up housing and making them less affordable, but it becomes a blame. Look, this bill also gives the money necessary to adjudicate. I agree it should not take seven years for an asylum claim to be done.”
“This bill gets it done in 90 days. Then, you start to make a difference in this, and you start to adhere to what we know, American principles. I don’t talk about my faith a lot, but Matthew 25:40 talks about to the least amongst us, you do unto me. I think that’s true of most Americans. They simply want order to it. This bill does it. It’s funded. It’s supported by the people who do it, and it lets us keep our dignity about how we treat other people.”
The pair of vice presidential candidates also sparred over the threat of censorship on Tuesday, as Walz pressed Vance on the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021.
“It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th, as we have done for 250 years in this country. We are going to shake hands after this debate and after this election,” Vance said after Walz cited Jan. 6, when Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol.
“We have to remember that for years in this country, Democrats protested the results of elections. Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 worth of Facebook ads. This has been going on for a long time, and if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I’m on board. But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had, I don’t buy that, governor,” Vance continued.
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Walz countered that “Jan. 6 was not Facebook ads.”
“This idea that there’s censorship to stop people from doing, threatening to kill someone, threatening to do something, that’s not that’s not censorship. Censorship is book banning. We’ve seen that. We’ve seen that brought up,” he continued.
Walz continued that Trump has repeatedly claimed he won the 2020 presidential election.
“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked Vance of Trump during the last election cycle.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied. “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?”
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said. “I’m pretty shocked by this. He lost the election. This is not a debate, it’s not anything anywhere other than in Donald Trump’s world.”
“It’s a damning non-answer for you to not talk about censorship,” Vance shot back.
The debate was the first and only debate between the pair and was held exactly five weeks before Election Day.
Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller, Brooke Singman, and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
