Recap: Vance, Walz spar over abortion, immigration and guns at debate

A CBS News rapid poll found debate watchers were divided evenly over which candidate did better in the evening’s showdown.

A poll from the host network found 42 percent of viewers surveyed said Vance won the debate, compared to 41 percent who said Walz won. Seventeen percent said it was a tie.

The poll also found 88 percent of viewers said the tone of the debate was “generally positive,” compared to 12 percent who said it was “generally negative.”

The former president heaped praise on his running mate following the debate.

“JD crushed it! Walz was a Low IQ Disaster – Very much like Kamala,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Our Country would never be able to recover from an Administration of these two. Can you imagine them representing us with sharp, fierce Foreign Leaders? I can’t!”

In a separate post, Trump wrote: “Great job JD — We will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Walz stopped for pizza in New York after the debate, alongside his wife, Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz.

The two stood at the counter at Justino’s pizza and picked out a pepperoni pizza, surrounded by staff and security.

The governor told reporters on the stop that it was a “good debate.”

When asked what he believed his strongest moment of the debate was, Walz replied, “The public got to see a contrast, and I think the ending sums it up. The democracy issue is important.”

Former President Barack Obama urged Americans to back the Harris campaign and offered praise for Walz following the debate.

“Tonight’s debate is a reminder of what’s at stake in this election. @Tim_Walz is focused on real solutions for working families and Americans across this country. We need leaders like him who will fight for progress,” Obama posted on X.

CNN political commentator Van Jones criticized Sen. JD Vance following the vice presidential debate, saying the Ohio Republican “changes personalities like most people change suits.”

“His job was to come out tonight and try to sane-wash the crazy: Sane-wash all that crazy stuff he said against women, against Haitians, sane-wash Donald Trump,” Jones said of Vance.

“And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for the pesky fact that he lied the entire night,” Jones said.

“Donald Trump is the gas lighter in chief, and [Vance] is his loyal lieutenant, who came out here to try to polish up the crazy and I think Americans need to be very, very careful. This is a very, very deceptive guy,” Jones said on CNN.

“Don’t fall for it,” he warned.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon praised Walz after his debate performance, saying he is a “leader who cares about the issues that matter most to the American people” and arguing that the exchange about certifying the results of the 2020 election was the most critical moment of the night.

“He stood up for our Constitution, while JD Vance admitted he’d put Trump ahead of the country,” she said in a statement.

O’Malley Dillon also said that Walz will be “an experienced governing partner” for Harris and is a “powerful force” on the campaign trail, focused on holding Vance accountable and warning Americans about Project 2025.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham said she believed Walz helped Vance come off as “more human” in the debate in how he approached the debate and his opponent.

“I think JD Vance was actually made more human by Tim Walz. Tim Walz effectively conceded that JD Vance is a serious person, and we agree on some issues,” she said.

Vance has struggled with his favorability rating in the lead-up to the debate, with polls showing voters view him the least favorably of all four members of the two presidential tickets that the parties put forward.

Ingraham also argued that Vance “maneuvered” well after Walz attacked him for his past comments that he has made critical of Trump.

“That kind of nicked him. It really didn’t go deep,” she said of Walz’s criticism.

Fox News pundit Brit Hume called the moderators of the Vance-Walz debate “obnoxious” and said they “made it feel like three-on-one on Vance, and Vance was just fine.”

“His skills as a debater and a speaker seem to have honed,” Hume continued. “If you’re rating this on points, Vance had a good night.”

The debate concluded Tuesday just after 10:45 p.m. after each candidate gave a brief closing statement.

Walz went first, presenting optimism about the future. He cited Trump’s 2017 inaugural speech in which the now-former president discussed ending “American carnage,” using the opportunity to once again warn the public about a Trump second term.

Vance brought up the issue of energy and argued that Harris’s policies have made affording it more difficult for families. He also hammered her on her policy proposals, once again arguing that she could have accomplished what she’s promising on the campaign trail while she served as vice president.

After the debate concluded, the candidates once again greeted each other and shook hands with their spouses joining them. The four of them spoke briefly with each other before departing the debate stage.

The rare show of political civility was in stark contrast to the end of the Trump-Harris debate when the two candidates did not engage with each other at the end of the night.

Vance went after major technology companies for what he claimed has been censorship of Americans’ views in a larger discussion about the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

“I believe that we actually have a threat to democracy in the country, but unfortunately, it’s not the threat of democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz wants to talk about,” he said. “It is the threat of censorship. Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics.”

“It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens and it’s Kamala Harris saying that, rather than debate and persuade her fellow Americans, she’d like to censor people who engage in misinformation. I think that is a much bigger threat to democracy than anything we’ve seen in this country in the last four years in the last 40 years,” he continued.

He went on to say Harris has “engaged in censorship at an industrial scale,” on a number of issues including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vance and Walz got into a back-and-forth over the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and Trump’s continued claims that the 2020 election was impacted by widespread fraud.

“Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own 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. Remember, he said that on January the sixth the protesters ought to protest peacefully,” Vance said.

He’d been asked whether he would seek to challenge this year’s election results even if every governor certifies them.

When the question kicked over to Walz, the Minnesota governor stressed that Trump “lost this election, and he said he didn’t,” and stressed that “a president’s words matter.”

“To deny what happened on January 6, the first time in American history that a president or anyone tried to overturn a fair election and the peaceful transfer of power – and here we are four years later, in the same boat,” Walz said.

Vance called it “really rich” for Democrats to claim Trump “ is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.”

Walz put pressure on Vance to directly say that Trump lost the 2020 election and argued that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack was a result of Trump’s unwillingness to admit defeat.

Walz asked Vance if Trump lost, but Vance avoided directly answering, instead saying he is “focused on the future” and asking back if Harris “censored” Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, as conservatives have argued the Biden administration did.

“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz said.

Vance shouted out former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard saying he is “proud” to have their endorsements.

“I’m really proud, especially given that I was raised by two lifelong blue collar Democrats, to have the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, lifelong leaders in the Democratic coalition. Of course, they don’t agree with me and Donald Trump on every issue. We don’t have to agree on every issue, but we’re united behind the basic American First Amendment principle,” he said.

Both Kennedy and Gabbard, a former U.S. representative from Hawaii, were originally Democrats but have left the party and been sharply critical since. Kennedy ran in the Democratic primaries but failed to gain traction before launching an independent bid. He eventually dropped that bid too and endorsed Trump.

Gabbard ran in the Democratic primaries in 2020 but dropped out and endorsed President Biden. She is now backing Trump.

Walz pressed Vance on his campaign’s plans to build housing on public lands.

Vance said that former President Trump has said that “we have a lot of federal lands that aren’t being used for anything.”

“They’re not being used for a national park. They’re not being used and they could be places where we build a lot of housing,” he added.

“We have a lot of land that could be used. We have a lot of Americans that need homes.”

In response, Walz asked, “Are we going to drill and build houses on the same federal land?”

“These are really important pieces of land,” Walz added.

“This is when you view housing and you view these things as commodities — that there’s a chance to make money here: ‘Let’s take this federal land, and let’s sell it to people,’” he added.

Vance said he agreed with Walz that “we should get out of this idea of housing as a commodity,” but said that what turned housing into a commodity is giving it away to people who “who have no legal right to be here.”

Walz said Trump’s claim that he had “concepts of a plan” on healthcare during the presidential debate “cracked him up.”

“It cracked me up as a fourth grade teacher, because my kid would have never given me that,” Walz said.

Walz went on to attack Vance saying that the planned he laid out was “more dangerous” since it would raise premiums for Americans who have pre-existing conditions.

Vance sought to clean up Trump’s response in his debate with Harris that he had “concepts of a plan” for replacing the Affordable Care Act, citing the healthcare policies the former president enacted while in office.

The Ohio senator pointed to the hospital price transparency rule that was enacted under the Trump administration as evidence of Trump’s ability to pass effective healthcare policies.

“It’s not perfect, of course, and there’s so much more than we could do, but I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to put in place some better health care policies. He’s earned it because he did it successfully the first time,” said Vance.

Vance avoided expanding on how he and Trump planned to protect coverage for people with preexisting conditions, which is ensured by the ACA.

“Of course we’re going to cover Americans with preexisting conditions,” Vance said, latter adding, “We want to keep those regulations in place, but we also want to make the Health Insurance Marketplace function a little bit better now.”

Walz mocked Trump, saying fourth graders he previously taught would never offer “concepts of a plan” as an answer.

Trump attacked Walz for an apparent misstatement that the governor made that he became “friends with school shooters” while discussing why he supports gun control measures.

Walz was asked why he changed his position to be against an assault weapons ban before signing one into law in Minnesota as governor, and he changed after meeting with people affected by gun violence.

“Sitting in that office with those Sandy Hook parents. I’ve become friends with school shooters. I’ve seen it,” Walz said, in what appeared to be a slipup.

Trump took the opportunity to pounce in posts on Truth Social, saying “He isn’t even qualified to be Governor, let alone Vice President. Walz and Kamala DO NOT HAVE WHAT IT TAKES!” and asking “Is he insane?”

Vance and Walz shared a notable moment of mutual respect and civility after the Minnesota governor shared a story about his son witnessing gun violence.

“I got a 17 year old and – and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don’t leave you,” Walz said.

Vance appeared to shake his head and say “awful” as his rival spoke.

Though Walz contended that Republicans’ proposals on gun violence “aren’t far enough,” he said this was “a good start to the conversation” and he was confident both he and Vance agreed the issue of school shootings was “abhorrent.”

“Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting. I’m sorry about that and I hope that he’s doing okay. Christ, have mercy,” Vance said when it was his turn to take the question.

Vance said schools need to increase security after moderators asked about gun violence.

“We have to increase security in our schools,” Vance said, suggesting more school resource officers and locked and stronger doors and windows.

“I don’t want my kids to go to school in a school that feels unsafe,” Vance said.

Walz focused on how schools in Europe do not see the same gun violence in their classrooms and rebuffed the idea of schools looking like a “fort.”

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R), who authored a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that former President Trump opposed, responded to Walz’s name-check on immigration by saying he would vote for Trump.

“No one in Congress has worked on stopping illegal immigration more than me and I am absolutely voting for the person who will close the border, Donald Trump,” Lankford wrote on X.

“The reason I needed to negotiate the border security bill was the dangerous open border policies of Biden and Harris and their unwillingness to secure America.”

During the exchange, Walz blasted Trump and Vance for opposing the immigration bill negotiated by Lankford, which Walz dubbed “the toughest” in American history.

Vance blatantly acknowledged the GOP’s weakness when it comes to issue of abortion when responding to Walz’s attack on Trump’s record.

“My party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly, just don’t trust us,” said Vance.

Vance shared that an acquaintance who is “actually very dear to me and I know she’s watching tonight” was among the young women he personally knows who terminated their pregnancies.

“I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do. I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word,” Vance added.

Walz’s status as governor of the first state to enshrine abortion access after the overturning of Roe as well as his candor about his infertility struggles has given him an advantage on the campaign trail when it comes to reproductive issues.

Trump and Vance have only just recently begun touching on the topic as Vice President Kamala Harris spoke more about it than President Biden did as candidate..

Walz brought up Project 2025 in his response about reproductive rights issues, warning against some provisions in the conservative movement’s plan.

“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies. It’s going to get more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception. And limit access, if not eliminate access, to infertility treatments. For so many of you out there listening, me included, infertility treatments are why I have a child. That’s nobody else’s business,” Walz said.

When questioned if a future Trump administration would track pregnancies, Vance replied, “certainly we wont.”

Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025 and has said that it goes “way too far” on abortion policy.

Walz sought to defend his past claim that he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests in China, calling himself a “knucklehead” in a windy response, but eventually saying he misspoke.

Margaret Brennan asked him about the claim and reporting that found Walz did not travel to Asia until August of that year, a couple months after the protest took place.

“I try to do the best I can, but I’m not perfect. I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said.

Walz detailed his background coming from Nebraska through becoming a member of Congress and eventually governor of Minnesota before saying he can sometimes “get caught up in the rhetoric.”

Brennan pressed him on explaining his past statement, and Walz said he arrived to the area that summer and misspoke.

“I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, and from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance,” he said.

Moderators asked Vance about his past comments about Trump, including calling the former president “America’s Hitler” and “unfit for the nation’s highest office.”

Vance, who has addressed those past comments repeatedly, said he “was wrong first of all because I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record. But most importantly Donald Trump delivered for the American people.”

Vance also brushed off his past criticisms of Trump’s record, saying Congress should have done more to act on issues like the economy and immigration.

Walz and Vance traded barbs over the governor’s criticisms that former President Trump repeatedly dismisses the insights of experts.

“I’ve made a note of this. Economists can’t be trusted. Science can’t be trusted. National security folks can’t be trusted. If you’re going to be president, you don’t have all the answers. Donald Trump believes he does,” Walz said.

“My pro tip of the day is this. If you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, not Donald Trump,” he added.

Vance hit back, arguing that experts had for decades provided poor guidance on economic policy. He said the country would not solve its issues “by listening to experts, we’re going to stop it by listening to common sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.”

Vance challenged CBS News moderators after the network’s Margaret Brennan attempted to clarify comments about immigration in Springfield, Ohio.

The Ohio senator interjected after Brennan clarified for debate viewers that Springfield “does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status.”

“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check,” Vance said as the moderators attempted to move on to a question on the economy. “And since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

Brennan interrupted Vance’s attempt to expound, stressing “we have so much to get through.”

Walz also attempted to add to the conversation, prompting moderators to cut the candidates’ mics.

Vance hit Harris for being an absentee “border czar,” though she’s never been responsible for tactical deployments at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I’ve been to the southern border more than our border czar Kamala Harris has been, and it’s actually heartbreaking, because the Border Patrol agents, they just want to be empowered to do their jobs,” Vance said.

Vance repeated a common GOP attack line that’s been effective against Harris, whose portfolio includes leading relations with Central American countries that are a source of migration.

Walz said he was “surprised” that Vance decided to “create stories” that “vilified a large number of people who were legally here.”

“The Republican governor said it’s not true,” Walz said. “Don’t do it. There are consequences for this. There are consequences…and the consequences in Springfield were the governor had to send state law enforcement to escort kindergartners to school.”

Vance responded by saying that while Walz is “worried about the things I said in Springfield,” he is worried about “the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border” in the city.

Moderators read a fact check at the end of the exchange, saying that Springfield has a large number of legal Haitian immigrants, leading Vance to retort by saying moderators had agreed not to fact-check either candidate. He then explained the Customs and Border Protection process followed by some Haitian immigrants.

CBS cut the mics of both candidates after they refused to stop speaking during a discussion on immigration.

“We have so much to get to tonight, gentlemen,” Brennan said as the network cut audio of both mics.

Vance claimed there are 20-25 million undocumented immigrants in the country, more than double the number of undocumented immigrants estimated by experts.

Vance also said “about a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally.”

If Vance’s figure were accurate, about one in ten undocumented immigrants would also be criminals. According to multiple studies by the Cato Institute, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than natural-born U.S. citizens.