Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Republican nominee JD Vance and Democratic nominee Tim Walz was, for the most part, a civil exchange, focused on policy—especially when compared to last month’s presidential debate.
However, there was one dramatic moment in the debate where things got heated, leading CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan to fact-check Vance, and eventually leading to both nominees having their microphones cut.
In response to a question about immigration, Vance claimed that in Springfield, Ohio, and across the country, schools and hospitals are overwhelmed and housing is “unaffordable because we’ve brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”
Brennan directly fact-checked Vance’s claim, saying Springfield’s Haitian migrants “have legal status, temporary protected status.”
“Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance protested.
His continued response prompted a back-and-forth rebuttal from Walz, leading Brennan and co-moderator Norah O’Donnell to ask both candidates to refrain from further discussion, finally cutting both mics.
At the beginning of the debate, the moderators said their role was “to provide the candidates with the opportunity to fact-check claims made by each other.”
After last month’s presidential debate, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and some of this supporters had complained that the ABC moderators fact-checked Trump during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Immigration, one of the hot-button issues for voters in this election, came up a number of times in the debate and has been one of Trump’s talking points on the campaign trail.
As for the mics, CBS News and the vice presidential nominees did agree to ground rules allowing the moderators to cut off microphones when necessary.
With just 33 days left until the election, both vice presidential nominees were back on the campaign trail courting voters on Wednesday in two highly contested battleground states. Vance is in Michigan while Walz is expected to campaign in central Pennsylvania.
Harris is headed to Georgia to discuss hurricane relief efforts in the aftermath of Helene, then onto Wisconsin on Thursday.