US fact checkers scrutinise claims from Vance-Walz vice-presidential debate

The Democratic and Republican vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance went head-to-head last night in their only planned televised debate of the 2024 US election.

Mr Vance, who is a senator for Ohio and Mr Trump’s running mate, and Mr Walz, who is the current governor of Minnesota and standing alongside Kamala Harris, clashed on a range of issues including the economy, abortion, immigration and healthcare. 

We have not fact checked the debate directly—our politics team’s focus today is fact checking the speeches of the leadership hopefuls at the Conservative conference in Birmingham. 

But Full Fact’s AI tools have been supporting two International Fact-Checking Network-verified fact checking organisations in the US to analyse key claims made during the debate in even more detail.

They and a number of our other fact checking colleagues in America have ruled on what both candidates got right and wrong during the debate, which was hosted by the TV network CBS in New York.

Claims that came under scrutiny include Mr Walz talking about a a “registry of pregnancies” (see Politifact, FactCheck.org), a claim by Mr Vance about Iran receiving “unfrozen assets” (CBS, CNN) and a claim from Mr Vance about the number of “illegal aliens” who are in the US (CNN, BBC Verify).

Mr Walz also said during the debate that he “misspoke” when he previously said he’d been in Hong Kong in the spring of 1989 when protests turned into a massacre in China’s Tiananmen Square.

For more on the US election, see how we covered last month’s debate between the presidential candidates and a summary of some of the online misinformation we’ve seen.

Both images courtesy of Gage Skidmore