When is the Walz-Vance vice presidential debate? Here’s how to watch in Australia and what to look out for

The men who want to become America’s vice president are preparing for their first and probably only televised campaign debate.

It’s another important moment in the US election campaign, which polls show is still an incredibly close fight. Tim Waltz And JD Vance are both relatively low-profile politicians who haven’t spent much time on the national stage – so many voters don’t know all that much about them.

The debate will be moderated by CBS News at the network’s broadcast center in New York City.

Who are the candidates for vice president?

On the Democratic side, Kamala Harris is Vice President Tim Waltza former high school teacher and American football coach.

Walz, 60, was first elected to the National Congress in 2006, representing a rural district in Minnesota. He left Congress in 2019 to become the state’s governor.

For the Republicans, Donald Trump is the vice presidential candidate JD Vancethe author of Hillbilly Elegy, a bestseller about life in impoverished rural Ohio.

Vance, 40, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022 after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and working as a venture capitalist.

When is the vice president debate?

The debate starts at Tuesday, 9 p.m., local timewhat is 11am Wednesday, AEST.

How can I watch the vice president debate?

In Australia you can watch the debate on the ABC News Channel.

We will also be live-blogging the debate here on the ABC News website.

American host broadcaster CBS will also stream the debate on its website and YouTube channel.

What are the rules for the vice president debate?

The rules agreed upon by both campaigns are similar to those of previous presidential debates.

• The debate will continue 90 minuteswith two commercial breaks of 4 minutes.

• CBS journalists Norah O’Donnell And Margaret Brennan will ask the questions and moderate the debate.

• After he is asked a question, he receives it 2 minutes to replyand your opponent will then get 2 minutes to reply. Each candidate is then given one minute to present further counterarguments. At the discretion of the moderators, candidates may each be given an additional minute to continue the discussion.

• become candidates no questions are asked or topics in advance.

• It will be no audience.

• No props are allowed.

• No pre-written notes are permitted, but candidates are provided with a pen and paper.

Something that had proven controversial in previous presidential debates was the decision to mute the candidates’ microphones when it was not their turn. In this debate, CBS says it “reserves the right” to mute microphonesbut they could stay hot all the time. Therefore, there could be more back-and-forth discussions or chaotic interjections in this debate than in the presidential debates.

Six things to pay attention to:

Midwest Dad vibes

Both Walz and Vance were chosen as vice presidential candidates, at least in part, to appeal to certain groups of voters.

Both men shared their backstories about rising from humble beginnings and embracing the role of “Midwest Dad.”

Their respective campaigns hope to appeal to middle America, a far cry from Harris’s progressive home state of California and Trump’s world of Manhattan real estate and luxury resort living in Florida.

But each will portray the other as extremists. Vance called Walz “one of the most left-wing radicals in the entire United States government at any level.” Walz is known for criticizing Vance and Trump as “weird” and “creepy as hell.”

Questions about Walz’s military history

Both Vance and Walz served in the military, but neither in combat.

Vance served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, including about six months in Iraq in 2005 as a military journalist.

Walz served in the National Guard – part of the U.S. Army Reserve – for 24 years but retired in May 2005. That was three months after he filed to run for Congress and two months after his artillery unit was told it could be deployed to Iraq.

This has become one of the things Vance attacks Walz with most often. He described Walz’s decision to retire shortly before a possible deployment as “shameful.”

He also criticized Walz over a 2018 video shared by the Harris campaign in which Walz said he carried guns “in war.”

The Harris campaign later said Walz “misspoke” when he said he carried guns in the war. Vance accused Walz of “stolen bravery.”

Vance’s views on Project 2025

A central part of the Democratic Party’s strategy is linking Trump and Vance to the controversial Project 2025. The “Presidential Transition Project,” launched by the conservative Heritage Foundation, includes controversial policies such as banning abortion, eliminating climate change programs and the Dissolution of the Ministry of Education. It also proposes filling the civil service with loyalists and expanding the power of the president.

While some of Trump’s allies and former staffers helped craft the plan, Trump has insisted he had “nothing to do with it.” But Vance is close to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and even wrote the foreword to his upcoming book, noting that “these ideas are an essential weapon in the struggles ahead.”

These claims about cats

The most talked-about moment of the recent Trump-Harris debate was Trump’s claim that Haitian migrants were “eating the pets” in the city of Springfield, Ohio.

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City and state officials, including Ohio’s Republican governor, claim there is no evidence of this. Shortly after the debate, Vance acknowledged that it might be untrue — but he still defended the claim and even encouraged social media users to share favorite memes.

Vance told CNN he has been “trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months” and “if I have to make up stories so that the American media will actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then I will do it.” “.

It’s not the only pet-related claim Vance has had to defend. His comments in 2021 about the Democratic Party being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies unhappy with their own lives” sparked a lot of backlash, including from Taylor Swift, who adopted the label, when she endorsed the Harris-Walz tick after the last debate.

Vance has argued that he was being sarcastic and trying to make the point that the Democratic Party is “anti-family and anti-children.”

Walz’s response to unrest in Minnesota

Vance regularly attacks Walz over his record in Minnesota, including his handling of unrest in its largest city, Minneapolis, in 2020. The unrest following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 caused $500 million in property damage.

Critics say Walz should have activated the National Guard sooner. Vance said Walz “allowed the rioters to burn down Minneapolis.”

Trump, then president, praised Walz at the time. A recording of a phone call shows Trump telling a group of governors: “I completely agree with the way he’s doing it [Walz] I’ve been taking care of this for the last few days.” Trump’s campaign said Trump praised the governor only after he called in the National Guard.

Another approach to fact checking

During the two presidential debates, we saw two different approaches to fact-checking the candidates.

In the first conversation between Trump and President Joe Biden, CNN anchors did not fact-check the candidates in real time. But the network’s official fact-checkers later found that Trump had made 30 false claims – far more than Biden.

In the second debate between Trump and Harris, ABC’s hosts conducted a live fact check. Trump and many of his supporters accused the moderators of bias because they addressed him multiple times and failed to catch Harris.

CBS says its hosts won’t be fact-checking live — but a QR code on the CBS broadcast will direct viewers to an online fact-checking service.