Both vice-presidential candidates had their microphones briefly cut off following a fact-checking fracas during Tuesday’s debate, in one of the evening’s most contentious moments.
JD Vance and Tim Walz kept Tuesday’s debate mostly civil as they squared off on issues of abortion, immigration and the economy, but that Midwestern niceness appeared to dissolve when the topic of Springfield, Ohio, was raised.
Vance, a senator from Ohio, has faced considerable flak in recent weeks for pushing an unfounded narrative that Haitian migrants in Springfield are eating residents’ pets (local officials have said there are no credible reports of this happening). Donald Trump further platformed that narrative during the presidential debate against Kamala Harris. Days later, Springfield was inundated with bomb threats that forced people to evacuate schools and government buildings.
Vance refrained from pushing the pet-eating claim during Tuesday’s debate, but he doubled down on allegations that “illegal immigrants” are overwhelming Springfield’s infrastructure.
“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’ve brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said.
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After Walz responded, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan stepped in to fact check Vance’s statement.
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“And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status,” Brennan said.
Vance immediately protested the interjection.
“Margaret, the rules were that you weren’t going to fact check,” he said, speaking over co-moderator Norah O’Donnell as she attempted to move on to the next debate topic.
CBS News, which hosted the debate, had earlier said that Brennan and O’Donnell would not offer live fact checking during the broadcast. Instead, it was up to the vice-presidential candidates to fact check each other. A QR code was also present on-screen for viewers to visit CBS News’ online fact checking.
“Since you’re fact-checking me, it’s important to say what is actually going on,” Vance said. He criticized the legal process by which immigrants can apply for temporary status and parole as the “facilitation of illegal immigration.”
Brennan allowed Vance to speak briefly before cutting him off in an attempt to move on to other issues. Walz also jumped in out of turn to say those immigration laws have been “on the books since 1990.”
Vance began to push back against Walz’s interjection but his words didn’t make it to broadcast because CBS News had cut off both Vance and Walz’s microphones.
“Gentlemen, the audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut,” Brennan said. “We have so much we want to get to. Thank you for explaining the legal process.”
Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to back up his running mate after the quarrel over fact checking.
“Margaret Brennan just lied again about the ILLEGAL MIGRANTS let into our Country by Lyin’ Kamala Harris and then she cut off JD’s mic to stop him from correcting her!” he wrote.
Trump also personally attacked moderator O’Donnell, writing: “I thought Norah was fired from CBS for Low Ratings. Why is she still on?”
In another post, Trump called both moderators “extremely biased Anchors!”
Other Republicans piled on, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who said the moderators had “offered two gratuitous editorial statements” and were taking shots at Vance “under the guise of ‘fact checking.’”
Fact-checking was an issue during last month’s debate between Trump and Harris after moderators corrected Trump at least four times, angering the former president and his supporters. When Trump debated President Joe Biden last spring, CNN moderators did not attempt any on-air corrections.
The VP debate may have represented the last chance for viewers to see representatives of the two presidential campaigns duke it out onscreen. Harris has called for a second debate between her and Trump, but the Republican candidate has not accepted the challenge.
— with files from The Associated Press