WASHINGTON — More than in the two previous presidential debates, when vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz meet Tuesday, a lot more rides on how the CBS moderators handle the 90-minute showdown.
It’s not just about the questions “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan ask Vance and Walz during their only debate, to start at 8 p.m. Chicago time. It’s much more about crucial decisions they will have to make about whether to mute a microphone and if they really will just sit there and let egregious lies go either unanswered or without follow-up.
Observations about the debate, to take place at a CBS studio in New York:
On fact checking and open mics: It appears that CBS wants Walz and Vance to fact check each other.
The CBS rules are different from the presidential debates on CNN and ABC and this could significantly impact the outcome. On Tuesday night, the CBS microphones will not be automatically muted when the candidate is not speaking. However, the rule states “CBS News reserves the right to turn off candidate microphones.” .
The ABC rules for the Donald Trump-Kamala Harris clash this month stated that candidates’ microphones would be live only when they were speaking and muted when they were not.
The rules in the CBS debate about microphone muting give Vance and Walz lots of room to question each other.
During the CNN debate, the muted mics were not a factor. President Joe Biden did so badly that Trump was more or less content to hold his fire and watch as Biden melted down.
Then there is this big one. The ABC rules stated moderators would seek to “ensure a civilized discussion.” That allowed some minimal fact checking in the ABC debate, mainly for the Trump whoppers about Democrats backing “executing” babies “after birth”; that immigrants were eating people’s dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio; and that Biden did not win the 2020 election.
Harris was not fact checked by ABC moderators, but her slips did not rise to the level of Trump’s dangerous lies. There is a difference between going 5 miles over the speed limit versus 50.
Watch for: Vance and Walz to find ways to turn the open-mic cross-talk opportunity to their advantage. Republican Vance, an Ohio senator, is far more combative on the stump than Democrat Walz, the Minnesota governor. Walz has too much at stake to just be Minnesota nice.
Will Vance be asked to answer for Trump’s ugly dog whistles? At rallies over the weekend, Trump tried to motivate his base by using scorched language to attack Harris personally. In Wisconsin, on Saturday, Trump said, “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way.” Trump also called her “mentally disabled.” Will Vance repeat this? Will he be asked to defend it?
O’Donnell and Brennan have a tough job: what to do if facts don’t matter: Even if they do want to challenge Vance on why he keeps repeating the false claim about Haitians in Springfield eating pets, he has said he does not care about what is true. Vance told CNN, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” he said, “then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Likely to come up, even if not asked: Both Vance and Walz served in the military. Vance has been attacking Walz with this claim, debunked by PolitiFact, so don’t be surprised if Vance brings a version of this: “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, do you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him.”
Debate prep: The Walz debate camp is in Harbor Springs, a town in northern Michigan. Vance is not doing that kind of formal prep.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is playing Vance at the practice sessions.
The Walz prep team also includes attorney Zayn Siddique, who helped Biden and Harris prepare for their Trump debates; Liz Allen, Walz’s campaign chief of staff; longtime Walz adviser Chris Schmitter; and Harris-Walz communications director Michael Tyler.
On the Vance side, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, is portraying Walz, who he’s known for years.
Emmer told ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday, “I’ve known Tim probably since he was first elected almost 20 years ago, and I worked with him directly for four years, I spent the last month just going back, all of his old stuff, to get his phrases down, his mannerisms, that sort of thing,” Emmer said. “My job was to be able to play Tim Walz so JD Vance knows what he’s going to see.”