On Tuesday, vice president hopefuls, Tim Walz and JD Vance took to the debate stage. There will be plenty for partisans on both sides to feel good and not so great about in this debate. It likely won’t move the needle in this campaign, but here are some takeaways from an interesting night:
Below are some true and very false claims the candidates made.
- WALZ CLAIM: Gov. Walz said, “The persons closest to them, to Donald Trump, said he is unfit for the highest office. That is Senator Vance.”
- FACT-CHECK: True
- VANCE CLAIM: Sen. Vance said, “We’ve got 20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.”
- FACT-CHECK: False
- VANCE CLAIM: Vance said Iran has “received over $100 billion… thanks to the Kamala Harris administration.”
- FACT-CHECK: False
- VANCE CLAIM: Vance said, “There’s an application… where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status.”
- FACT-CHECK: False
And he got his mic cut for his outbursts-see below.
“Margaret, 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,” he protested.
- WALZ CLAIM: Walz said, “Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in the last 15 years.”
- FACT-CHECK: False
- Trump’s tax records since 2020 have not been made public.
- WALZ CLAIM: Walz was in China during the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing
- FACT-CHECK: False
- VANCE CLAIM: Vance says Walz ended protections in Minnesota for babies born alive
- FACT-CHECK: False
- Infanticide, the crime of killing a child within a year of its birth, is illegal in all U.S. states.
- WALZ CLAIM: Walz said, “Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies.”
- FACT-CHECK: Needs context
- Walz has falsely claimed that Project 2025 will require pregnant women to register with a new federal agency designed to monitor their pregnancies. While the Project 2025 policy proposal is firmly against abortion, it does not call for monitoring pregnancies.
- It does, however, call for states to track abortions more meticulously than current CDC rules mandate, or else face punishment like cuts to federal funding.
- VANCE CLAIM: Vance claimed that Trump made the Affordable Care Act stronger
- FACT-CHECK: False
- WALZ CLAIM: Walz claimed children are NOT being used a drug mules
- FACT-CHECK: Mostly true
- According to Mexican immigration officials, it is very uncommon for children to be used to smuggle drugs. However, the federal government has warned in the past of youth being used by drug cartels.
- Tim Walz claim: The Inflation Reduction Act created 200,000 new jobs
- The question of how many jobs were created by the law, which allocated billions for clean energy investments in the U.S., does not have a clear answer, but Walz’s number is in line with estimates.
- JD Vance claim: Trump ‘peacefully’ ceded power to Biden in 2021
“He peacefully gave over power on Jan. 20.”
- This is missing a glaring piece of context given what happened 14 days earlier.
- Tim Walz claim: Trump created the largest trade deficit with China
- “Donald Trump was the guy who created the largest trade deficit in American history with China.”
- Assigning responsibility for a trade deficit to a president may be an oversimplification, according to industry experts and media reports that point to both policies and the habits of consumers abroad as drivers of deficits.
- But the numbers do show the trade deficit with China hit a record high in 2018 under Trump, reaching $419.2 billion, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The largest gap during the Biden administration was $367 billion in 2022, according to the U.S. Trade Representative.
- JD Vance claim: No ‘major conflict’ during Trump presidency
- “When was the last time that an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out? The only answer was during the four years Donald Trump was president.”
- This claim echoes one Trump made during his Republican National Convention speech that “we had no wars,” and it depends on how you define a major conflict.
- It’s true that no new wars started during Trump’s term. Nor were there any authorizations of military force.
- Tim Walz claim: The US is producing more oil and natural gas than ever
- This is largely true, although natural gas production is projected to dip slightly in 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration.
- Vance mischaracterizes Harris’ role on border policy
- Sen. JD Vance claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed the “border czar” during the Biden administration. “The only thing that she did when she became the vice president, when she became the appointed border czar, was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” Vance said.
- Facts First: Vance’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
- Vance falsely says he never supported a national abortion ban
- Sen. JD Vance said at Tuesday’s debate that he never supported a national abortion ban. “I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban … in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody is trying to get rid of that, or at least, I hope not, though I know the Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance,” Vance said.
- Facts First: This is false. Vance previously said he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” in 2022 while running for his Senate seat in Ohio. He did say that he supported a “minimum national standard” to ban abortion in 2023. During the current campaign, however, Vance has deferred to former President Donald Trump’s stated view that each state should set its own abortion policy.
