WASHINGTON — Now that presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, have faced off in the ring, it's time to tag their partners in. In the right corner hailing from Ohio, is Senator J.D. Vance. In the left corner Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will represent the Democratic party.
Vance and Walz negotiated terms and rules with the network and they are as follows:
VP Debate Rules:
The candidates will stand behind lecterns, will not make opening statements and will not be allowed to bring notes during the 90-minute debate. Microphones will not be muted while the other candidate talks, though CBS said it does reserve the right to mute the candidates' microphone.
Candidates are only allowed to have a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.
In terms of fact-checking, the network said that it will be up to the candidates to keep each other honest at Tuesday's debate — a sticking point from earlier debates this year.
In the June debate between Trump and Biden, CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash limited follow-up questions and did not fact-check either participant. In the September debate between Trump and Harris, ABC's David Muir and Linsey Davis interjected with matter-of-fact corrections to some of Trump's most glaring misstatements.
With the rules in place, it's time to see who will take home the belt.
Topic: Would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?
Walz response: When our allies see Donald Trump turn to Putin, turn to North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness around holding the coalitions together. We will stay committed and as our Vice President said today, 'we will protect our forces and our allied forces and their will be consequences.'
Vance response: I want to answer the question, but I actually want to give an introduction to myself... I was raised in a working class family. My mother required food assistance for periods of her life. My grandmother required social security to help raise me and she raised me in part because my mother struggled with addiction. Now to answer this question we have to remember... Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world and he did it by establishing effective deterrence, people were afraid of stepping out of line. Iran which launched this attack, has received over $100B in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. They used that money to launch weapons which they are now using against our allies. It is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe and we should support our allies wherever they are when they're fighting the bad guys. I think that's the right approach to take
Walz rebuttal: When Donald Trump was in office, it was Donald Trump who had a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran's nuclear program in the inability to advance it. Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon they were before because of Donald Trump's fickle leadership.
Topic: What responsibility would the Trump administration have to try and reduce the impact of climate change?
Vance response: A lot of people are worried about these crazy weather patterns, I think it's important for us to first of all say, Donald Trump and I support clean air, clean water, we want the environment to be safer. But one of the things I've noticed some of our democratic friends talking about is, a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon drives all of the climate change. Let's just say that's true, so we're not arguing about weird science. If you believe that, what would you want to do? The answer is you'd want to reassure as much American manufactures and you'd want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States because we're the cleanest economy in the entire world. What have Kamala Harris' policy led to? More energy production in China. More manufacturing overseas. More doing business in some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world. If we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers.
Walz response: Senator Vance has said that there is climate change problem, Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beach front properties to be able to invest in. What we've seen out of the Harris administration now, we've seen the investment. The biggest in global history, that we've seen in the global reduction act has created jobs all across the country. 200,000 jobs across the entire country, the most we've seen in North America. But my farmers in Minnesota know climate change is real, they've seen 500 year droughts, 500 year floods back-to-back. We're producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have, we're also producing more clean energy. So the solution for us is to continue to move forward, that climate change is real, reducing our impact is absolutely critical.
Topic: How does your campaign plan to implement the country's largest deportation plan in history?
Vance response: We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris said she wanted to undo all of Donald Trump's border policies. This has opened the flood gates. It has allowed for more fentanyl to come across the border. I had a mother who struggled with opioid addiction and has gotten clean. I don't want people who are struggling with addiction to be deprived of their second chance because Kamala Harris let in fentanyl. We have to reimplement Donald Trump's border policies, build the wall, reimplement deportation. First thing we do, is start with the criminal migrants, about one million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally. You start with deportation on those folks. Then make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of the American workers. A lot of people will go home, if they can't work for less than minimum wage in our own country.
Walz response: The fentanyl is a crisis, the good news on this is over the last 12 months we saw the largest decrease in opioid deaths in our nation's history. A 30% decrease in Ohio and there's still more work to do. Kamala Harris is the only person in this race who's prosecuted transnational gangs for human trafficking and drug intervention. That's why we had the fairest and toughest bill on immigration that this nation has seen. It was crafted by a conservative senator from Oklahoma, democrats and republicans worked on this piece of legislation. As soon as it was getting ready to pass Donald Trump said "no" told them to vote against it because it gives him a campaign issue. What would Donald Trump talk about if we did some of these things? As far as a deportation plan at one point Senator Vance said it was so unworkable it would be laughable.
Topic: Housing crisis
Walz response: The problem is we have a lot of folks who view housing as another commodity. Those are not folks living in those houses. When I think of a house, I'm thinking of Christmas services after midnight mass where you go with your family. This program that the Vice President is pushing is something we did in Minnesota. We in the state invested in making sure our housing was the biggest investment that we'd ever made in housing. It starts to make it easier, we cut some of the red tape, making it easier for local folks to build those homes. We're implementing a state program to make sure we give some of that down payment assistance. People with stable housing, end up with stable jobs. The fact of the matter is we don't have enough affordable housing. But we can make sure that the government is there to help kick start and create that base.
Vance response: First of all, we don't want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices. But we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country. Which does drive up costs. Tim mentioned a bunch of ideas and some of those ideas are actually halfway decent and some of them I disagree with. If we open up American energy, you will get immediate pricing relief for American citizens, not just in housing. But, in a whole host of goods too.
