Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday accepted an invitation from CBS News for a vice presidential debate against Sen. JD Vance of Ohio on Oct. 1.
Walz responded to the network’s proposal in a post on X for the two candidates to face off onstage weeks before Election Day.
“See you on October 1, JD,” Walz wrote in his own post seven minutes after the CBS News tweet.
A Harris campaign official followed up in a statement saying the campaign had “accepted CBS’ invitation to a Vice Presidential Candidate Debate on October 1. Governor Walz looks forward to debating JD Vance — if he shows up.”
Vance said during a Fox News interview Wednesday night that he planned to debate Walz, but did not commit to a specific date.
“We’re certainly going to debate Tim Walz. We just heard about this thing three hours ago, so we’re going to talk to them and figure out when we can debate,” Vance told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“I strongly suspect we’re going to be there on October the first, but we’re not going to do one of these fake debates, Laura, where they don’t actually have an audience there.”The debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden on June 27 was in a venue without any audience members.
“In other words, we’re not going to walk into a fake news media garbage debate,” Vance added. “We’re going to do a real debate, and if CBS agrees to it, then certainly we’ll do it.”
CBS News said Wednesday that it had invited the two vice presidential candidates to debate and that it proposed four dates as options: Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1 and Oct. 8. “We look forward to their responses,” the network said.
A spokesperson for CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Vance had responded to the network.
Trump said last week that his campaign had agreed to participate in a vice presidential debate on CBS News, adding that Vance “has really stepped up. He’s doing a fantastic job.” No debate date was specified.
Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have agreed to a Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News.
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