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Vance-Walz debate live: VP candidates sidestep question about supporting preemptive Israeli strike on Iran

Vance-Walz debate live: VP candidates sidestep question about supporting preemptive Israeli strike on Iran


Key events

Walz says Iran closer to being nuclear power, adding allies know ‘Trump is fickle’

Walz responds by saying that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before because of Donald Trump’s leadership.

US allies “understand that Donald Trump is fickle,” Walz says.

He will go to whoever has the most flattery.

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Tim Walz just referred back to a moment from earlier today, when Donald Trump appeared to suggest that US troops with traumatic brain injuries weren’t really that injured.

Trump was asked about Iran injuring 100 US troops in 2020, and here’s how he responded:

Wow — in response to a question about Iran injuring US 100 troops in 2020, Trump suggests they weren’t really hurt

“Because they had a headache?”

He then says “Iraq” when he means “Iran” and attacks the report who asked him the question pic.twitter.com/IyzhNa2DKP

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2024

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Vance says that it is up to Israel to do what they need to do to keep their country safe.

“We should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys,” he says.

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It’s Vance’s turn to answer the question, but he begins by talking about his background “because I recognize a lot of Americans don’t know who either one of us are”.

Vance says he knows that a lot of Americans are worried about “the chaos in the world” and “the feeling that the American dream is unattainable”.

Vance says Donald Trump “consistently made the world more secure” and that Trump, as president, recognized that “you needed peace through strength”.

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Walz goes on to say that “steady leadership” is fundamental, and says Donald Trump “talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment”.

Walz notes that Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, said the former president was “the most flawed human being he’d ever met” and that Trump’s secretaries of defense and his national security advisers “said he should be nowhere near the White House”.

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The CBS moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan will be focusing on enforcing ground rules, but they’re not planning on any aggressive fact-checking. Instead, CBS said the candidates will have opportunities to fact-check each other.

Of course, Guardian journalists will be fact-checking both candidates on this blog, in real time.

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Candidates asked if they would support pre-emptive strike on Iran by Israel

The first question is about the Middle East.

Both candidates are asked whether they would support or oppose a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran.

Walz begins by saying “let’s keep in mind where this started” and talks about the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel.

Israel’s ability to defend itself is “absolutely fundamental”, he says.

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Walz and Vance take to the stage

Tim Walz and JD Vance are on the stage at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City before the vice-presidential debate.

The pair were pictured shaking hands.

Tim Walz and JD Vance shake hands as they attend a debate hosted by CBS in New York. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters
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After tonight’s debate, Tim Walz is expected to head out on a bus through Pennsylvania with stops in Harrisburg, Reading and York, according to the Harris-Walz campaign.

Walz will be joined by John Fetterman, the Democratic senator for Pennsylvania.

The tour marks Walz’s second time campaigning in central Pennsylvania and fifth trip to the battleground state since he was tapped to serve as Kamala Harris’s running mate, the campaign said.

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Robert Tait

Robert Tait

JD Vance enters Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate with arguably more to gain.

Since his selection as Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance’s approval figures have been consistently in the negatives amid a string of disclosures over derogatory comments about childless women.

Vance has also drawn fire for his role in promoting a debunked rumour about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets, before later telling CNN – unapologetically – that he’s willing to “create” stories for the purpose of calling attention to “the suffering of the American people”.

Tim Walz, by contrast, has achieved more encouraging polling numbers yet has adopted a low-key posture since Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate.

He has given few media interviews and had settled for a lower profile following the acerbic attacks on Vance and other Maga Republicans that were first brought to national attention in the summer – and prompted Harris to select him.

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Elise Stefanik, the Republican congresswoman for New York, spoke to reporters in the spin room ahead of the vice-presidential debate.

JD Vance will have the chance to speak directly to voters without the media picking and choosing what to focus on during tonight’s debate, Stefanik said, AP reported. She told reporters:

I think it’s an opportunity to speak directly to the American people.

In response to questions on the Ohio senator’s past comments about “childless cat ladies” and similar remarks, Stefanik said Vance has often talked about the important role of women in his life, including his grandmother and his highly accomplished wife.

Representative Elise Stefanik speaks to the media in support of JD Vance in the spin room before the vice-presidential debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, New York, USA, 01 October 2024. Photograph: Sarah Yenesel/EPA
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Vance arrives at debate site

JD Vance arrived at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City shortly after Tim Walz, the network said.

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Robert Tait

Robert Tait

With Donald Trump continuing to refuse demands from Kamala Harris for a second presidential debate, much may ride on tonight’s clash between Tim Walz and JD Vance.

The 90-minute duel will have added piquancy after Walz memorably described Vance as “weird” while casting him as a key architect of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for a radical shake-up of American government and society that would crack down intensely on immigration, vanquish LGBTQ+ and abortion rights, diminish environmental protections, overhaul financial policy and take aggressive action against China.

Vance, who has reinvented himself as a political attack dog for Trump despite disparaging him before entering politics, has hit back by depicting his opponent as a far-left liberal and accusing him of serially misrepresenting aspects of his military service in the national guard.

He has also thrown the “weird” jibe back at Walz after the Democratic vice-presidential nominee said his children had been born with the help of IVF – which Vance once voted as a senator to oppose – before it emerged that he and his wife had used a different form of fertility treatment.

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Ed Pilkington

Ed Pilkington

The football coach and the “Yale law guy” go head-to-head in New York City on Tuesday night, as two midwesterners with very different styles and vastly diverging messages slug it out over the future of the US.

Apart from the economy, immigration and foreign wars, which are certain to be addressed during the debate, a more amorphous struggle is likely to play out on stage: who will own the mantle of “authentic midwesterner”? Will it be Nebraska-born Tim Walz, or the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, Ohio’s JD Vance?

The rivalry goes beyond mere aesthetics or regional loyalties. It resonates heavily in those states where the election could be decided – the three so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The candidates offer a diametrically opposed vision of the heartland. Walz’s midwest is folksy and homely, a world where neighbors look after each other, where football coaches double up as local heroes (Walz coached the sport at Mankato West high school from 1997), and where joy fills the air.

Vance’s is a much darker picture of drug addiction, broken families and the threat of immigration. His is the midwest of Trump’s “American carnage” dystopia.

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Walz arrives at debate site

Tim Walz’s motorcade has arrived at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City, the network said.

Walz’s motorcade arrived at the debate site shortly after 8pm ET.

Outside the CBS Broadcast Center before the vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, in New York on 1 October 2024. Photograph: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images
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Joe Biden has posted a message of support for Tim Walz, writing: “Coach, I got your back tonight!”

The president said America will tonight see the “strong, principled, and effective” leader that he has known for years.

Coach, I got your back tonight!

Tonight, America will see the strong, principled, and effective leader I’ve known for years—and the contrast you and Kamala provide against the other team. pic.twitter.com/7ojASvwkjw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 1, 2024

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Tim Walz misleadingly claimed that he had been in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests that led to hundreds of protesters being killed by the Chinese government, according to multiple reports.

The Democratic vice-presidential candidate frequently traveled to China as a teacher in the 1990s, leading trips of American high school students.

In a 2019 radio interview unearthed by CNN, Walz said he had been in Hong Kong on 4 June 1989, the day of the Tiananmen massacre.

Earlier, during a 2014 congressional hearing, Walz also suggested he had been in Hong Kong in May 1989. He testified: “As the events were unfolding, several of us went in. I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.”

The Associated Press further found a 2009 congressional transcript in which Walz appeared to insinuate that he had been in Hong Kong during the day of the massacre.

However, according to a Minnesota Public Radio report, Walz had been working in the National Guard Armory in Nebraska in May 1989. It also found a separate story from August 1989 that said Walz would “leave Sunday en route to China” and that he had nearly “given up” participating in the program after student revolts that summer in China.

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What we know so far about the debate styles of Walz and Vance

Rachel Leingang

Rachel Leingang

When Tim Walz and JD Vance square off as vice-presidential picks tonight, it will be the biggest debate stage for both of the politicians, who are newly becoming household names.

Walz and Vance have been honing their public-speaking skills – and their pointed barbs at each other – in TV appearances and at events around the country in the past few months.

Their experiences in electoral debates haven’t reached the levels or notoriety that come with a presidential campaign, but both have faced opponents in public debates in past elections.

And given the tightness of the presidential race, and how poorly the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump went, there will probably be more people tuned in to the vice-presidential debate than in past cycles.

While VP debates don’t usually tip the scales much, they could matter in a close race – and they build profiles for politicians who will probably stay on the national scene for years to come.

Read the full analysis here: What we know so far about JD Vance and Tim Walz’s debate styles

JD Vance speaks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 6 August, and Tim Walz speaks in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 10 August Photograph: Ryan Collerdronda Churchill/AFP/Getty Images
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As we reported earlier, Tom Emmer, the Republican Minnesota representative and House majority whip, has been a stand-in for Tim Walz during debate prep with JD Vance.

Emmer said he spent weeks watching Walz’s previous debates in order to play him. He told CBS News:

My team and myself spent about a month going through every debate Tim Walz has ever done in the last 20 years. My job was to get not only his phraseology, his slogans down, but his mannerisms. We wanted to give JD the best facsimile impression of Tim Walz that we could.

He described Walz as an “excellent debater” who will come across on the debate stage as a “folksy” and “outdoorsman”-type guy, but said “there’s no substance after that”.

On a call with reporters on Monday, Emmer said it had been “tough” standing in for Walz “because he is really good on the debate stage”. He added:

He will stand there, and he lies with conviction, and he has these little mannerisms where it’s just hey, I’m the nice guy, but he’s not nice at all.

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