Vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz faced off in their first and only debate Tuesday night, squaring off over everything from foreign policy and the economy to the 2020 election and abortion rights.
The debate was remarkably courteous — especially compared with this year’s presidential debates — but both candidates ran afoul of the facts at times.
Here’s what the VP nominees got wrong and right and everything in between.
Fact-checking Walz on his China claims
Pressed about claims that he was in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre, despite contemporaneous news reports that placed him in Nebraska at the time, Walz downplayed his past comments.
“All I said on this is that I got there that summer and misspoke on this. I will just — that’s what I said, so I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests,” Walz said.
He’s downplaying his own previous false claims.
Walz had said he was in Hong Kong in May and June, including on the day the massacre occurred in Beijing.
“I was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, when, of course, Tiananmen Square happened. And I was in China after that. It was very strange, ’cause, of course, all outside transmissions were, were blocked — Voice of America — and, of course, there was no, no phones or email or anything. So I was kind of out of touch. It took me a month to know the Berlin Wall had fallen when I was living there,” he said in a June 2019 radio interview, according to CNN.
Contemporaneous newspaper reports — first reported by Minnesota Public Radio News and APM Reports — place Walz in Nebraska at the time.
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Fact-check: Have the current administration’s energy policies driven up heating costs?
“We are a rich and prosperous enough country where every American, whether they’re rich or poor, ought to be able to turn on their heat in the middle of a cold winter night. That’s gotten more difficult thanks to Kamala Harris’ energy policies,” Vance said.
This is mostly false.
Home heating and cooling costs have risen in many parts of the country in recent years, but not because of Biden-Harris administration energy policies.
Extreme seasonal temperatures are largely at fault, particularly the scorching summer weather that drives up air-conditioning usage and strains electricity demand. That, in turn, has stretched a long-standing federal aid program for low-income households that was originally designed only to subsidize winter heating bills.
Renewable power generation has been getting cheaper as more sustainable sources come online, though that hasn’t always translated directly to lower costs for users. Domestic crude oil production is already at record levels, with the U.S. outpacing both Russia and Saudi Arabia every year since 2018.
Fact-check: How many jobs did the Inflation Reduction Act create?
“The Inflation Reduction Act has created jobs all across the country … 200,000 jobs across the country,” Walz said.
This needs context.
It is difficult to quantify the specific number of jobs created by the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that Biden signed in August 2022, which, among other things, invested heavily in clean energy and related technologies. But some left-leaning organizations, including the Center for American Progress, have conducted analyses that found that the law helped create about 171,000 clean energy jobs within its first year.
Fact-check: Does the U.S. have the world’s cleanest economy?
“We’re the cleanest economy in the entire world,” Vance said.
This is false.
Vance defined a “clean economy” as “the amount of carbon emissions they’re doing per unit of economic output” but didn’t offer further explanation.
There is little evidence to support the assertion. Yale’s Environmental Performance Index ranks the U.S. 34th globally across 11 metrics, from carbon emissions to sustainable agriculture. The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. 19th globally in the transition to clean energy. In addition, Global Carbon Budget calculates that the U.S. produces nearly 15 metric tons of carbon emissions per capita. That number is higher than other developed nations like Ireland, Norway and Spain.
Fact-check: Is housing 60% more expensive during the Biden administration?
Harris “had the opportunity to enact all of these great policies, and what she’s actually done instead is drive the cost of food higher by 25%, drive the cost of housing higher by about 60%, open the American southern border and make middle-class life unaffordable,” Vance said.
This is an exaggeration.
Vance is on the money about the run-up in food costs, though the jump was mainly driven by pandemic-era shifts in demand and supply-chain shocks. But his housing cost claim appears to be exaggerated — or at the very least, limited to homebuyers, not renters.
A pair of Washington Post analyses found that home prices have surged 54% since 2019, while rent prices have risen by 19% since 2019. A separate Realtor.com report in August found that the typical listed home price has grown by 32.6% since July 2019.
Fact-check: Did Trump’s economic policies deliver the highest take-home pay in a generation?
“When people say that Donald Trump’s economic plan doesn’t make sense, I say look at the record, he delivered rising take-home pay for American workers. … You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver rising take-home pay, which of course he did,” Vance said.
This needs context.
At least three times during the first 40 minutes of the debate, Vance claimed that Trump’s economic policies were responsible for rising take-home pay. At one point, he claimed that Trump’s policies delivered “the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country.”
In theory this is true, but it’s important to note that net compensation has essentially risen every year for the last 33 years.
Social Security Administration data shows that average net compensation has actually risen every year since 1991, with only one exception (2008 to 2009).
Fact-check: Have 1 million migrants who crossed the border illegally committed other forms of crime?
“I think the first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants. About a million of those people have had some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally,” Vance said.
This is false.
According to a letter addressed to Congress from acting ICE Director P.J. Lechleitner, there were 662,566 noncitizens with pending charges or convictions on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement docket as of July 21.
However, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News on Saturday that some of the data predates the Biden administration, going back as far as four decades. When it comes to migrants who have arrived during the Biden administration, an estimated 10 million encounters have been recorded between and at U.S. ports of entry. Among those, about 115,000 noncitizens have been flagged to have criminal backgrounds.
Fact-check: Did Iran receive $100 billion in unfrozen assets from the U.S.?
“Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration,” Vance said.
This is misleading.
As part of the nuclear deal the Obama administration brokered with Iran in 2015, the U.S. unfroze $50 billion in Iranian assets.
Harris wasn’t a member of the Obama administration. As part of a prisoner exchange the Biden administration negotiated with Iran last year, $6 billion more in Iranian assets were unfrozen. The Obama and Biden administrations unfroze a total of $56 billion in Iranian assets, not $100 billion.
Fact-check: Did Trump save Obamacare?
Trump “saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership,” Vance said.
This is false.
Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, declined by more than 2 million people during Trump’s presidency, and the number of uninsured people rose by 2.3 million, according to an analysis published in Health Affairs.
During his term, Trump made numerous threats against and attempts to repeal the ACA. While he was unsuccessful, in 2017, Republicans in Congress eliminated the tax penalty linked to the law’s individual mandate, which required people to have health insurance or pay a tax. The mandate is still in place, but people no longer pay a penalty if they don’t enroll.
As president, Trump also promoted short-term health plans — also known as junk plans — which often come with substantially lower monthly premiums than other forms of insurance but tend to offer less coverage. Many of the plans don’t cover pre-existing conditions or prescription drugs.
Fact-check: Are border crossings down compared to when Trump left office?
“Look, [border] crossings are down compared to when Donald Trump left office,” Walz said.
This needs context.
According to the latest Customs and Border Protection data available, there were an estimated 2,756,646 migrant encounters between and at U.S. ports of entry in fiscal year 2024.
While the number of migrant encounters has dipped during the Biden administration in recent months, in part because of a June executive action putting limits on migrants seeking asylum between ports of entry, the total number of national encounters during the Biden administration so far is about 10 million, compared with an estimated 3 million during the Trump administration.
Fact-check: Vance suggests Trump simply wanted to ‘debate’ 2020 election ‘problems’
“What President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square. And that’s all I’ve said, and that’s all that Donald Trump has said,” Vance said.
This is misleading.
Vance vastly understated Trump’s handling of his 2020 election loss by claiming he simply wanted to have a peaceful debate about problems with the election.
Trump has been indicted twice for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He repeatedly and falsely claimed that he won the election, making baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud. He made the false claim even as votes were still being counted, and as Congress was certifying the results on Jan. 6, 2021. Speaking to the crowd that would march on and attack the Capitol, Trump falsely claimed the election had been stolen from him and that he could still take the presidency if Vice President Mike Pence did “the right thing.”
Fact-check: Does Minnesota’s abortion protection law allow doctors to deny lifesaving care to infants?
“The Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion,” Vance said.
This is false.
The law Walz signed in Minnesota in January 2023 states that “every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health” and that “every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to continue the pregnancy and give birth, or obtain an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise this fundamental right.”
The policy enshrined into state law its existing protections for reproductive care at the time.
Passage of the 2023 law led to the removal of certain language from Minnesota statutes, including language that required physicians to “preserve the life and health” of an infant “born alive.” State statutes now say that “all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice … shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to care for the infant who is born alive.”
Anti-abortion-rights advocates have claimed that language means infants who survive abortions can be denied care.
While some Democrats, including Walz, support broad access to abortion, infanticide is illegal in every state, and no Democrats advocate for it.
In addition, abortions late in pregnancy are exceedingly rare — nationally and in Minnesota. Just 1% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they are typically due to serious medical causes.
Although the Minnesota law doesn’t state a specific time in pregnancy after which an abortion isn’t permitted, the state previously restricted the procedure after a fetus reaches viability — usually around 24 weeks. That restriction remains enjoined.
The Minnesota Health Department’s most recent annual report on induced abortions (for 2022) found that there were only two recorded abortions in the state after the 25th week of pregnancy.
