Fact-checking the vice-presidential debate between Vance and Walz
In the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) proved he could match his running mate on the falsehood meter, though with a bit more verve and polish. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) misled on occasion, such as claiming Republicans supported a “registry for pregnancies.”
Here is a roundup of 21 claims that caught our attention, the majority by Vance. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios when we do a roundup of facts in debates.
“Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets, thanks to the Kamala Harris administration.”
— Vance
This is false. Vance appears to be conflating two things as he answered a question on Iran’s attack on Israel.
President Joe Biden released $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds that had been held by South Korea (payment for previous oil deliveries) — as part of a deal to win the freedom of five American detainees — but that money has not been received by Iran. The money was transferred to Qatar in September 2023 and was to be paid to humanitarian providers. But after the Hamas attack in Israel last October, the administration said it had prevented Iran from tapping the money.
Separately, Republicans have claimed that Iran has received as much as $100 billion because oil sanctions have not been effectively managed by the Biden administration — a charge the administration denies. That number appears too high.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran’s foreign currency reserves have risen from $13.8 billion in 2020 to an estimated $24.2 in 2024. An Iranian central bank official attributed the increase to the growth of oil and non-oil exports. Iran’s reserves were $122.5 billion in 2018, according to the IMF, before new sanctions were imposed after Donald Trump in 2018 pulled out of an international agreement brokered during the Obama administration to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Iran’s crude oil product has risen to 3.3 million barrels a day, as of August, which is an increase since the end of the Trump administration, but still lower than 2018. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Iran’s oil production in 2020 was just under 2 million barrels a day. The pandemic sent oil production and sales plummeting around the globe. Iran’s production in 2020 was the lowest in almost 40 years, the EIA said.
But experts say that even if Trump had been reelected, he would have had trouble keeping sanctions from eroding. In particular, China has become adept at evading U.S. sanctions by arranging for many buyers of Iranian oil to be small, semi-independent refineries known as “teapots.” Such entities accounted for about one-fifth of China’s worldwide oil imports, according to Reuters. “With their small size and limited business operations, teapots are both hard to uncover and not exposed to the U.S. financial system,” according to a report by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran.
“When Iran shot down an American aircraft in international airspace, Donald Trump tweeted, because that’s the standard diplomacy of Donald Trump. And when Iranian missiles did fall near U.S. troops and they received traumatic brain injuries, Donald Trump wrote it off as headaches.”
— Walz
This is largely accurate. Iran attacked a U.S. drone in 2019 — but Trump did not hit back. He lost his nerve at the last minute, according to various news accounts. Then Iran attacked a U.S. military base in 2020 after Trump ordered the drone killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 3, 2020. No one was killed, though more than 100 service members suffered from traumatic brain injuries.
Trump initially bragged about the fact that no one was killed, but eventually it emerged that a U.S. contractor suffered a serious eye injury and 110 troops had traumatic brain injuries while sheltering in place, with 35 being sent to Germany and the United States for treatment. Yet Trump has continued to say they suffered only from headaches — as he did again just hours before the debate.
“When was the last time that an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out? The only answer is during the four years that Donald Trump was president.”
— Vance
Vance could have given a shout-out to Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 on Tuesday.
Jimmy Carter, president from 1977 to 1981, not only never formally declared war or sought authorization to use force from Congress during his presidency, but military records show not a single soldier died in hostile action during his presidency. Eight military personnel died during the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue mission, but the military deems those as nonhostile deaths. (A helicopter collided with an aircraft.) A marine and an army soldier were also killed when a mob burned the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.
At least 65 active-duty troops died in hostile action in Trump’s presidency, the records show, as he ramped up commitments in Iraq and Syria to fight the ISIS terrorist group while also launching airstrikes on Syria as punishment for a chemical weapons attack. Trump also escalated hostilities with Iran, including the killing of Soleimani. Trump said at the time the strike was carried out in accordance with the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution of 2001.
“We’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”
— Vance
This is false. The United States in 2024 ranked 17th in the world for environmental health, according to the authoritative Environmental Performance Index, a project of Yale and Columbia Universities. It ranked 27th for air quality and 9th for water and sanitation.
“What have Kamala Harris policies actually led to? More energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business in some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world.”
— Vance
This is false. Vance has previously earned Four Pinocchios for this claim but he keeps saying it. Harris cast the deciding vote for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which was designed to foster green manufacturing jobs in the United States. The evidence shows that it’s working.
Vance’s theory, once expressed in an opinion article, is that by shifting the auto industry toward electric vehicles, the United States is going to send significant amounts of money and jobs to China. But this claim ignores what is actually in the IRA. The law was intended to help the United States catch up with China before Beijing completely takes over the EV market. The Chinese government has given huge subsidies to the EV industry in a quest to dominate it.
So the law included provisions to make sure more of the supply chain is produced in the United States, such as a consumer tax credit for EVs. The Treasury Department wrote regulations that make it harder for vehicles to qualify for the full federal EV tax credit of $7,500 if key components are sourced from China, with a grace period for some rare materials like graphite. As part of the IRA, final assembly of EV models must occur in North America to be eligible. The administration in May also imposed a 100 percent tariff on Chinese EVs.
The other problem with Vance’s critique is that he ignores that many provisions in the IRA have sparked a manufacturing boom in the United States — also designed to counter China’s dominance in the green energy arena. Besides EVs, the bill included tax incentives intended to spur manufacturing of solar modules, wind turbines, inverters, EV batteries and power storage, and the extraction and refining of critical minerals.
In the first year after passage of the IRA, according to an analysis by Goldman Sachs, 280 clean energy projects were announced across 44 states, representing $282 billion of investment that would create 175,000 jobs. “What we found was that — so far at least — the reality is living up to or even exceeding expectations,” the report said.
“As you ask about family separation right now in this country, Margaret, we have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost. Some of them have been sex trafficked. Some of them hopefully are at homes with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules.”
— Vance
This is false. Vance is referencing a number that applies to unaccompanied children who crossed the border and were placed with a sponsor, including during the last two years of Trump’s administration. An August Homeland Security Inspector General report, which tracked data from October 2018 to September 2023, said 320,000 children were never given a date to appear in immigration court or missed an appearance, providing “no assurance” that the children were not vulnerable to trafficking. About one-quarter of the cases took place under Trump. The report recommended creating an automated system, rather than a manual one, which Homeland Security said it would implement.
Until this report was issued, Trump had been using a much lower figure of 88,000 “lost children,” but this was a different metric. As part of Health and Human Service Department protocol, case managers are supposed to try three times to check on the status of a child between 30 and 37 days after release to a sponsor, preferably by having a conversation with the child in addition to the sponsor. The New York Times in 2023 calculated that in 2020-2021, 85,000 children could not be reached.
But it’s not a legal requirement for HHS to make the calls — and it’s not required that children or the sponsor answer. Trump administration officials made that point when they came under fire from Democrats for supposedly losing track of children.
Applying the same metrics to the first three years of Trump, when about 160,000 unaccompanied children were referred to HHS, we estimated that 54,000 children could not be reached. Comparable figures for the Biden-Harris administration, through last month, would be 400,000 referred and 135,000 not reached.
“Donald Trump had four years. He had four years to do this. And he promised you America how easy it would be. ‘I’ll build you a big, beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it.’ Less than 2 percent of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime.”
— Walz
The percentage is exaggerated. About 458 miles of a border barrier was built during Trump’s presidency but most of it (373 miles) was replacement for existing primary or secondary barriers that were dilapidated or outdated, according to a Jan. 22, 2021, report by Customs and Border Protection. About 52 miles was new primary wall and 33 miles was new secondary wall. Trump had promised to build 1,000 miles of barrier, so even taking the lower numbers gets Trump 8.5 percent.
Mexico did not pay for the barrier Trump erected along the southern border; American taxpayers did. The Trump Administration directed $16.4 billion in funding to barrier construction along the southern border. About $10 billion was repurposed from Defense Department projects over the objections of Congress.
“We had a record number of fentanyl coming into our country.”
— Vance
This claim lacks context. Under Biden, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics, overall drug seizures have dropped, especially for marijuana, but until this year increased substantially for fentanyl — the drug most responsible for overdose deaths. Both the decrease in marijuana seizures and the increase in fentanyl seizures reflect trends that started under Trump.
As president, Trump often touted how much seizures of drugs at the southern border had increased on his watch. This is an imperfect metric. It could mean that law enforcement is doing a better job. But more seizures also might indicate that the drug flow has increased, and that law enforcement is missing even more.
The amount of fentanyl seized at the border increased under both Biden and Trump, though so far the amount jumped by a larger percentage under Trump, CBP statistics show. In Trump’s four fiscal years, the number of pounds increased 586 percent, compared with 462 percent in the first three fiscal years under Biden.
The amount of fentanyl seized by border officials increased from almost 4,800 pounds seized in fiscal 2020 to roughly 27,000 pounds in fiscal 2023. There were about 700 pounds of fentanyl seized in fiscal 2016, the last full fiscal cycle before Trump took office.
“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed. You’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed. You’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”
— Vance
It’s false to say “illegal immigrants.” In Springfield, where the city of Springfield’s website says there are “12,000 to 15,000” immigrants, most of the new arrivals are from Haiti. But Vance is wrong to call them “illegal immigrants.” They are in the U.S. legally under temporary protected status (TPS), a program created in 1990 that provides deportation relief and work permits.
Conservatives argue that Biden has created expanded TPS and thus is providing a legal pathway for people who otherwise would be undocumented. But there is no question the Haitians are in the United States legally.
The New York Times reported that “Michelle Lee-Hall, executive director of Springfield’s housing authority, said that the affordability problem in Springfield had been aggravated by landlords pivoting to Haitians who were willing to pay higher rent.”
“So there’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand that is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for 10 years.”
— Vance
This is wrong. Vance suggested that the Springfield Haitians used an app which is for new arrivals at the border to claim asylum. As noted, the Haitians arrived through the TPS program.
Separately, there is a humanitarian parole program for citizens of four countries in the hemisphere — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — which requires a passport and a link with a U.S.-based sponsor. But that also does not involve the app.
“He [Trump] gave the tax cuts that predominantly went to the top guys.”
— Walz
This is exaggerated. When both the Joint Tax Committee and the Tax Policy Center looked at the impact of the 2017 tax bill, they concluded that most people would experience an overall reduction in taxes. The Tax Policy Center found that 80.4 percent of all taxpayers would have a tax cut, compared with about 5 percent experiencing a tax increase. In the middle quintile, 91 percent would get a tax cut, averaging about $1,090, with 7.3 percent facing a tax increase averaging about $910.
In fact, Harris has pledged to keep intact tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 when the tax cut expires in 2026. That would reduce revenue by $1.35 trillion, further confirming that not just the “top guys” got a tax cut.
“And what she’s actually done instead is drive the cost of food higher by 25 percent, drive the cost of housing higher by about 60 percent.”
— Vance
The housing figure is mostly false. Median sale prices of homes have risen from $355,000 in the first quarter of 2021 to $412,300 in the second quarter of 2024. That’s a gain of 16 percent. It’s also a decline of about 2 percent from a high reached the fourth quarter of 2022.
Another measure — the consumer price index for housing — shows an increase of about 22 percent since January 2021.
It’s also a bit much to say Harris is responsible. The Federal Reserve Bank pinned much of the blame for the rise in home prices on the pandemic. But there are other factors as well, such as seniors staying in their homes, reducing supply, and real estate investors snapping up fixer-uppers for rental and resale.
The consumer price index for food shows an increase of 22 percent since January 2021. But, again, the pandemic played a role — as did factors beyond an administration’s control. In 48 states, nearly 101 million “wild aquatic birds, commercial poultry and backyard or hobbyist flocks” have been infected with bird flu since January 2022, according to the CDC. That has sent the price of eggs soaring.
“It [the tax bill] was passed in 2017, and you saw an American economic boom, unlike we’ve seen in a generation in this country.”
— Vance
This is false. The tax cut was not responsible for a once-in-a-generation “American boom.” Trump inherited a growing economy from Barack Obama, which the tax cut may have extended a bit, but it was already running out of steam when the pandemic struck in 2020. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, manufacturing went into a mild recession.
Bill Clinton was president only 16 years before Trump. The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, under Clinton, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively.
“Donald Trump was the guy who created the largest trade deficit in American history with China.”
— Walz
This is true. The U.S. trade deficit with China hit a peak 0f $377.7 billion in 2018, when Trump was president. In 2023, it was $252 billion, the lowest in 14 years, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
“All I said on this is I got there this summer and misspoke on this. So I will just — that’s what I’ve said. So I was in Hong Kong and China, during the democracy protests, went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”
— Walz
Walz repeats the misstatement. After saying he misspoke about when he arrived in China in 1989 on a teaching assignment, Walz repeats it. Minnesota Public Radio this week reported that Walz did not arrive in China until August. But the protests in Tiananmen Square were ended by the Chinese military on June 3-4, making it impossible for him to be there “during the democracy protests.”
“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies. It’s going to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access, to infertility treatments.”
— Walz
This is false. Project 2025 does not say this. (Project 2025 is not an official campaign document. It’s a Heritage Foundation report called “Mandate for Leadership,” a 922-page manifesto filled with detailed conservative proposals that is popularly labeled Project 2025. But there are definitely Trump connections.)
Instead the document calls for better statistical tracking of abortions across the country. Claiming that liberal states have become “sanctuaries for abortion tourism,” the report says the Department of Health and Human Services “should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.”
Walz’s state already does, leading a Heritage Foundation official to ask whether Walz is a “miscarriage monitor” after Harris made a similar claim in her debate with Trump.
“I never supported a national ban. I did during when I was running for Senate in 2020 to talk about setting some minimum national standard.”
— Vance
Vance is being disingenuous here. He backed a law that would impose a nationwide limit of 15 weeks for when women could get an abortion — which would overturn the laws of many liberal states. In 2022 Vance said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” Moreover, last year he urged the Justice Department to enforce the Comstock Act, the 151-year-old federal law that bans the mailing of abortion-related materials. The Biden administration has not invoked the law, but a more conservative one could, thus limiting abortion rights even without any new laws.
“The gross majority, close to 90 percent in some of the statistics I’ve seen, of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms.”
— Vance
This is wrong. Vance made this comment during a discussion on mass shootings at schools. In a 2022 study, the National Institute of Justice, a research unit of the Justice Department, found that of the known mass shooting cases, the vast majority of shooters — 77 percent — bought at least some of their weapons legally. Illegal purchases were made by 13 percent of those committing mass shootings.
“Prescription drugs fell in 2018 for the first time in a very long time.”
— Vance
Vance overstates what happened to the consumer price index for prescription drugs. It fell by 0.6 percent for the 12 months ending in December 2018, the first time in 46 years. But there are other 12-month periods with index declines, including one as recently as 2013. Prices rose 3 percent in the 12-month period ending in December 2019, and then kept rising after that — until the pandemic. Then, the index fell almost every month of 2021, the first year of Biden’s presidency.
“But when Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”
— Vance
This is false. Trump consistently tried to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, either though legislation or regulation, and he acted in a highly partisan manner. In fact, when campaigning in 2020, he falsely bragged that he had in effect killed the ACA by eliminating, in his tax bill that passed with no Democratic votes, a mandate to purchase health insurance.
Then, with the mandate effectively gone, GOP state attorneys general argued that Congress meant to have an Affordable Care Act with an individual mandate or not at all. Trump’s Justice Department, in a brief signed by Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco, agreed that “the entire ACA … must fall.”
Nearly 100 million Americans with preexisting conditions could have been denied coverage by insurers or charged prohibitively high prices as a result, and Trump had no plan to replace ACA provisions such as coverage for preexisting conditions. Then Attorney General William P. Barr, according to CNN, tried to get the White House to back off from pursuing a full rollback of the Affordable Care Act but was unsuccessful. The Supreme Court, in 2021, dismissed the case.
The Trump administration also issued new rules that promote the use of low-quality, short-term plans that were prohibited under Obamacare. These plans typically didn’t have the same protections for people with existing health conditions, allowing insurance companies to deny coverage or charge higher prices. (A number of states, mainly Democratic-leaning, acted to prohibit or limit these Trump plans.)
Finally, Trump threw his support behind House and Senate bills that would have allowed states to seek waivers and consider a person’s health status when writing policies in the individual market. The theory was that removing sicker people from the markets and allowing policies with skimpier options would result in lower overall premiums.
But the Congressional Budget Office concluded that states that took advantage of these provisions could, perversely, blow up their insurance markets, leaving people with preexisting conditions with spiraling costs. About one-sixth of the U.S. population was estimated to live in states that would face this problem.
“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 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully and on January the 20th, what happened? Joe Biden became the president.”
— Vance
This is a whitewash of Trump’s actions. Trump encouraged a crowd of supporters to appear on Jan. 6 and then condemned his vice president when Mike Pence refused to halt the ceremonial counting of electoral votes. When the crowd attacked the Capitol, as documented in the House select committee report on the Jan. 6 attack and other reporting, Trump was reluctant to take action to calm the situation, even as his staff pleaded with him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol. Trump’s tweets were so inadequate, in the view of staff members, that many resolved to resign. Even his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. found the tweets to be inappropriate. Nearly three hours passed before Trump finally told the rioters to “go home.”
Vance did not mention that, in a break with tradition, Trump refused to attend Biden’s inauguration.
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