During the mostly uneventful vice presidential debate on Tuesday evening, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance continued to spread lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio — and complained about fact checks after moderators corrected him.
CBS News, which hosted the debate between Vance and Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had stated before the debate that moderators wouldn’t be fact-checking the two candidates. Rather, the event would be “a good debate between the candidates” with opportunities for them to “fact-check each other in real-time,” one company executive said.
But as the debate reached the issue of immigration, Vance continued peddling falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian residents, as he has over the past month.
Moderators had originally asked Vance whether he and Donald Trump would reimplement Trump’s “child separation” policy, which saw thousands of migrant children separated from their parents during his presidential tenure. Vance avoided answering altogether, instead attempting to use the question as an opportunity to push his anti-immigrant agenda.
In response, Walz called out Vance for his racism against immigrants, telling him there were “consequences” to his campaign disseminating lies about Haitian residents in Springfield. Notably, as a result of those lies, the city has received multiple bomb threats and Haitian residents have faced violent harassment over the past month.
Since then, Vance has admitted that he was “creating” stories about Haitians in Springfield in order to push an anti-immigrant agenda that would benefit him and Trump politically.
“I believe Sen. Vance wants to solve this,” Walz said in his rebuttal to Vance, referring to the issue of immigration, “but by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point, and when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings.”
In response to Walz, Vance doubled down on his past lies, wrongly claiming that Springfield was “overwhelmed” by Haitian immigrants and that housing was becoming “unaffordable” due to them living there. (City officials have told Vance from the start that his lies regarding Haitian migrants were completely unfounded.)
After Vance finished his statement, CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan clarified to the audience that the immigrants Vance was referring to were not undocumented, as he had implied.
“Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected,” Brennan said.
“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check,” Vance said in response, speaking over the moderators as they attempted to move on to another topic.
When Vance continued to filibuster, the network cut the audio of both candidates’ microphones.
“Gentlemen, the audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut. We have so much we want to get to,” Brennan said, before things calmed down and the event moved forward.
Beyond that, the two candidates were mostly cordial throughout the debate. Flash polls conducted after the event suggest that the debate had been a stalemate, and that it may not have had an impact on voter’s preferences.
Vance didn’t just lie about Haitian immigrants. He wrongly claimed that Trump “saved” the Affordable Care Act, despite the former president’s dozens of attempts to repeal the law. Vance also claimed that he and Trump wouldn’t try to end protections for patients with preexisting conditions, even though the plan for the law that Vance outlined before the debate would essentially do just that.
Vance refused to say whether he believed Trump had legitimately lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, insisting on answering Walz’s simple yes or no question by saying he was “focused on the future.”
Vance also wrongly insinuated that Trump’s departure from the White House after his election loss was a “peaceful” transfer of power, ignoring the events of January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump loyalists, riled up by an incendiary speech Trump had given shortly before, attacked the U.S. Capitol building with hopes of disrupting the official proceedings confirming Biden’s win.
“[Vance] lied the entire night,” CNN’s Van Jones said after the debate had concluded. “He lied about American energy production, which is up, he said it’s down. He said Donald Trump saved Obamacare. … He lied about the insurrection, he said we had a peaceful transfer of power. He lied and said he never supported a national abortion ban.”
“Donald Trump is the gaslighter-in-chief and this is his loyal lieutenant,” Jones added.