Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has accepted an invitation from CBS News to participate in a vice presidential debate against Senator JD Vance of Ohio on October 1, NBC News reports.
Walz responded to the network’s proposal in a post on X, confirming his willingness to face off against Vance onstage just 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… 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,” Vance told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
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: September 17, September 24, October 1 and October 8.
“We look forward to their responses,” the network said.
This news comes after former President Donald Trump stated last week that his campaign had agreed to participate in a vice presidential debate on CBS News, praising Vance as “doing a fantastic job.”
While Trump didn’t specify a date for that debate, he and Vice President Kamala Harris have already agreed to debate on ABC News on September 10.
