When his opponent dismissed or downplayed concerns about Jan. 6 in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the insurrection “was not Facebook ads.”
Toward the end of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance said censorship was the biggest threat to democracy, dodging questions over Jan. 6 and Trump’s election loss in 2020. Walz said stopping violence rhetoric didn’t amount to censorship.
“This idea that there’s censorship to stop people from doing, threatening to kill someone, threatening to do something. That’s not censorship. Censorship is book banning,” Walz said.
Although the debate has had moments of agreement between the two candidates, Walz said, “This is one that we are miles apart on.”
“This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen, and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say – he is still saying he didn’t lose the election.”
Walz then turned to Vance.
“I would just ask that, did he lose the 2020 election?”
Vance said he was focused on the future, asking if Harris censored people “from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation.”
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
For more context, our partner PolitiFact is live fact-checking the debate:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/live-fact-check-vance-and-walz-meet-for-presidential-debate
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