DEMOCRATIC vice presidential nominee Tim Walz appeared to mistake Iran and Israel while his Republican counterpart J.D. Vance had his mic cut off in a fiery debate.
The Minnesota Governor and Ohio Senator clashed on issues including the border and abortion in heated exchanges during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate on CBS
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It follows reports Walz wrongly claimed he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when Chinese authorities brutally crushed pro-democracy protesters.
This despite the fact that publicly available evidence suggests Walz was not in Hong Kong or Mainland China at the time.
The first question from hosts Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell during Tuesday’s debate concerned the Middle East, in the wake of Iran’s missile strikes against Israel.
Walz appeared to confuse Iran and Israel twice in his first answer, at one point referring to “Israel and its proxies,” and instead launched personal attacks on Trump and Vance.
He praised what he said would be Kamala Harris’ “steady leadership,” drawing a contrast with the presidential debate when a “nearly 80-year-old Trump talking about crowd sizes.”
For his part, Vance said Trump had brought peace to the Middle East, and was the only president to have no major war during his presidency.
The two also sparred about immigration and the contentious subject of the southern border.
Walz accused President Trump of killing a bipartisan bill to solve the border crisis.
In an early flashpoint, the two clashed over Haitian migration to Springfield, Ohio, with the hosts eventually cutting both candidates’ microphones after they continued to argue after their allotted time.
The candidates got into a heated back-and-forth over an immigration parole program allowing Haitian immigrants to be in the US legally.
As the moderators tried to move onto the question, Vance spoke out about the legality of the program, and as Walz interjected, the pair had their mics cut.
Vance was questioned about his previous description of Trump as “America’s Hitler,” saying he had got it wrong and had been “misled” by the media.
It comes just hours after Walz was accused of “lying” about being in Hong Kong at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Earlier on Tuesday, CNN shared a 2019 radio interview in which Walz stated he was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, the day that China’s military opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing following seven weeks of demonstrators.
The massacre left more than 500 people dead.
Walz claimed in the past that he visited China more than 30 times, although his campaign later admitted the true number was “closer to 15.”
In 2014, Walz also made a statement during a hearing that he was in the then-British colony of Hong Kong in May 1989.
During the hearing marking 25 years since the massacre, Walz testified: “As a young man I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong province and was in Hong Kong in May 1989.
“As the events were unfolding, several of us went in. I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.
“There was a large number of people – especially Europeans, I think – very angry that we would still go after what had happened.”
He went on: “But it was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels, certainly people to people, and the opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important.”
On Monday, Minnesota Public Radio contradicted those claims by saying that he appears to have been in Nebraska instead.
He went to China later that year through WorldTeach, a nonprofit based at Harvard University.
Walz made similar claims during a 2009 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China to mark 20 years since the deaths.
He was questioned about the claims during the debate and the discrepancies.
Admitting he was a “knucklehead” and “not perfect,” he didn’t address the accusations head-on, instead talking about his upbringing in rural Nebraska.
He instead said he “misspoke” when he made the claims.
The comments have been seized on by Republicans as part of what AP News described as a “broader pattern of inaccuracies.”
Walz has previously been accused of misrepresenting elements of his past, including the type of infertility treatment his family received, and his rank in the National Guard.
The Walz campaign has also faced claims of giving conflicting accounts of his drunk driving arrest in 1995.
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