MSimilar to the 2024 presidential candidates, former President Donald Trump and his Vice President Kamala Harris, it is unclear whether the Republican running mate from Ohio, Senator JD Vance, and the Democratic running mate from Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz, will actually debate each other – although the networks that have proposed hosting such events have already put specific dates in their calendars.
On Wednesday, August 14, CBS News posted on X that Vance and Walz had been invited to a debate in New York City, with four dates to choose from before the November 5 election: September 17, September 24, October 1, and October 8.
Walz reposted the invitation, adding, “See you October 1st, JD.”
However, Vance has not yet publicly committed to participating in the debate moderated by CBS.
“We just heard about this thing three hours ago, so we’re going to talk to them and figure out when we can debate,” Vance said on Fox News Wednesday night, adding that he wants to do more than one debate but not without first looking at the conditions. “We want to look at the moderators, talk a little bit about the rules,” he said. “I strongly suspect we’ll be there on October 1st, but we’re not going to do one of those mock debates where there’s no real audience,” Vance said, echoing Trump’s call for a live audience that was absent from the first 2024 debate between Trump and then-President Joe Biden.
“We’re not going to get into a debate where fake news media is spouting garbage,” Vance said. “We’re going to have a real debate, and if CBS agrees to that, then we’ll definitely do that.”
In mid-May, CBS News confirmed that the Biden team had accepted an offer for Harris to participate in a vice presidential debate on either July 23 or August 13. Meanwhile, the Trump team, which had not yet selected a running mate, accepted an invitation from Fox News to participate in a vice presidential debate on the same dates.
However, when Vance was introduced as Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention in mid-July, the Trump team announced that it would not be able to participate in any vice presidential debates before the Democratic National Convention in mid-August because the Democratic Party had not yet finalized its slate of candidates.
“We don’t know who the Democratic vice presidential nominee will be, so we can’t set a date before their convention. Doing so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer or whoever Kamala Harris chooses as her running mate,” the Trump campaign said in a statement at the time, referring to rumors and pressure that Biden would drop out of the race, which he did on July 21.
Harris ultimately chose Walz as her running mate, who had emerged as one of the favorites for the position after popularizing a campaign that called the Republican program and platform “weird.” During his first rally as the Democratic vice presidential candidate on August 6, Walz said that he “can’t wait to debate the guy,” meaning Vance. “That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
Vance, who had previously said he was upset that he would not get the chance to debate Harris himself after Biden’s dropout, said at an Aug. 7 rally that he was willing to debate Harris but he would not commit to a debate with Walz because he could not be sure the Democratic ticket was set. “We’ll see if the Democrats lay out another bait and switch Tim Walz or Kamala Harris, like they did with Joe Biden,” Vance said. (Harris and Walz were officially confirmed as the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees after a “virtual roll call” vote of delegates that ended Aug. 6.)
In an interview with CNN on August 11, Vance stressed that he “of course” wanted to debate Walz, adding: “We believe in talking to the media. We believe in answering questions. We believe in debates.”
