Voters in Fox News Digital’s debate dial group had mixed reactions in real time to VP Harris’ runningmate, Gov. Tim Walz’s argument in favor of abortion during the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate against Sen. JD Vance.

When Walz was asked whether he supports abortion up until the ninth month supported as Minnesota is one of the least restrictive states for abortion, he responded, ‘That’s not what the bill says.’

While Republican voters dipped significantly as Walz spoke, independent and Democratic voters stayed mostly in the approval zone.

‘What we did is restore Roe v. Wade, we made sure that we put women in charge of their healthcare,’ Walz said.

Independents dipped slightly in approval while Democratic voters shot up during his statement. The two eventually evened out and stayed in the approval zone. 

‘This is a basic human right,’ he later said.

The independent voters stayed slightly under the Democratic approval line, as Republicans significantly disapproved.

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, faced off Tuesday night in their first and only debate, sparring over issues like foreign policy, border security, abortion and climate change and introducing themselves and their records to the American people with just five weeks to Election Day. 

Vice presidential debates are traditionally seen as second-tier, but with former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris unlikely to debate again before voters cast their ballots Nov. 5, the stakes were raised for their running mates as they attempted to tackle the most important issues facing the nation. 

CBS News anchors Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan moderated the debate in New York City Tuesday night, which was filled with more substantive policy discussion than personal jabs on a day that began with nearly 50,000 unionized dockworkers going on strike from Maine to Texas and ended with Iran launching its largest attack on Israel in history, firing nearly 250 ballistic missiles at the Jewish State. 

The first question for Walz and Vance was whether they would support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran. 

A visibly shaky Walz had a rough start to the debate, pausing and stumbling over his words as he spoke about the need for ‘steady leadership’ from the White House. Instead of answering the question, Walz took a shot at Trump. 

‘What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter,’ Walz said, pointing to Trump’s debate performance against Harris last month.  ‘It’s clear, and the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago. A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment.’ 

But Vance, in his first answer, defended Trump, saying Trump ‘delivered stability to the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence.’ 

‘People were afraid of stepping out of line,’ Vance said. ‘Donald Trump recognized that for people to fear the United States, you needed peace through strength. They needed to recognize that if they got out of line, the United States’ global leadership would put stability and peace back in the world.’ 

As for a preemptive strike, Vance said, ‘It is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe. And we should support our allies wherever they are, when they’re fighting the bad guys.’

Walz fired back. He slammed the Trump administration for pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, saying Iran is ‘closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership,’ adding Harris is providing ‘steady leadership.’ 

Vance fired back. 

‘You blame Donald Trump, but who has been the vice president for the last 3½ years? And the answer is, your running mate, not mine,’ Vance said. 

Vance, again defending Trump, said he ‘consistently made the world more secure.’ 

‘Gov. Walz can criticize Donald Trump’s tweets, but effective, smart diplomacy and peace through strength is how you bring stability back to a very broken world,’ Vance said. ‘Donald Trump has already done it once before.’ 

Vance also urged voters to ask themselves, ‘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 said. 

The debate shifted to the ongoing crisis at the southern border, a top issue for voters. 

Vance said he has already been to the border more than ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris, while touting Trump’s plan to secure the border. 

But Walz blasted Trump for his alleged efforts to get Republicans to vote against a border bill. 

‘As soon as it was getting ready to pass and actually tackle this, Donald Trump said no, told [lawmakers] to vote against it, because it gives him a campaign issue,’ Walz said. ‘What would Donald Trump talk about if we actually did some of these things?’

On the same topic, moderators asked Vance whether he and Trump would support family separation as part of Trump’s proposed ‘mass deportation’ should he be elected. 

‘We have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,’ Vance explained. ‘Some of them have been sex trafficking. Some of them, hopefully, are at homes with their families.

‘Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is, unfortunately, Kamala Harris’ wide open southern border. And I’d ask my fellow Americans to remember when she came into office, she said she was going to do this. Real leadership would be saying, ‘You know what, I screwed up. We’re going to go back to Donald Trump’s border policies.’ I wish that she would do that. It would be good for all of us.’ 

Walz pushed back, saying children have not been used as ‘drug mules’ and defending Harris, saying she was attorney general in California and ‘prosecuted transnational gangs for human trafficking and drugs.’ 

Walz also hit Vance over claims he had made about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, saying he had demonized them.

‘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,’ Vance said.

At that point, moderators tried to correct Vance, but the GOP vice presidential nominee pushed back, reminding the moderators that they said they would not be fact-checking the candidates.

The moderators said many Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, have temporary legal status. Vance jumped in to ‘say what’s actually going on.’

While explaining the process and tying it to a Harris-backed process, the moderators spoke over him, sarcastically thanking him for ‘describing the legal process’ before they cut off his microphone as Tim Walz attempted to argue with him.

‘We have so much we have to get to. Thank you so much for explaining the legal process,’ Brennan said before asking O’Donnell to ask the next question.

As for the issue of abortion, another top issue for voters this cycle, Walz maintained that he and Harris are pro-choice, while Vance said Republicans need to ‘do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue, where they, frankly, just don’t trust us.’ 

‘And I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do. I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies,’ Vance said. ‘I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options right now.’ 

Vance echoed Trump’s view of abortion, supporting the Supreme Court’s decision to return the issue of abortion to the states, while supporting exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. 

‘The proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions,’ Vance said. ‘Let the individual states make their abortion policy. And I think that’s what makes the most sense in a very big, a very diverse — and let’s be honest — sometimes, a very, very messy and divided country.’ 

Meanwhile, the moderators switched to questions of leadership, pressing Walz on whether he was actually in China for the Tiananmen Square protests as he had previously claimed. 

A visibly nervous Walz attempted to explain the discrepancy, ultimately saying he ‘misspoke’ and was not there until later that year. 

And the question for Vance was about his past criticisms of Trump. 

Vance said, at the time, he disliked Trump because he ‘believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record.’ 

‘Donald Trump delivered for the American people rising wages, rising take-home pay, an economy that worked for normal Americans, a secure southern border. A lot of things, frankly, that I didn’t think he’d be able to deliver on. And, yeah, when you screw up, when you misspeak, when you get something wrong and you change your mind, you ought to be honest with the American people about it,’ Vance said. 

Meanwhile, Vance offered his sympathies to Walz during the part of the debate focused on gun violence, when he learned Walz’s son had witnessed a shooting.

Walz said his 17-year-old son ‘witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball.’

‘I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting. I’m sorry about that. Christ, have mercy,’ Vance said.

The two spoke about school shootings and their plans to solve gun violence.

‘We have to make the doors locked better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger, and, of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers. Because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience,’ Vance said.

Walz said the conversation was a good start but had to go further.

‘Even though we have a high gun ownership rate in the country, there are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference. It’s not infringing on your Second Amendment. And the idea to have some of these weapons out there, it just doesn’t make any sense,’ he said.

Vance was pushed on past comments in which he said he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Vance fired back at the assertion that Trump could pose a ‘threat to democracy,’ saying he believes ‘we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country.’ 

‘But, unfortunately, it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship. It’s Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics. It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens,’ Vance said. 

Walz redirected the discussion to Jan. 6, 2021, blasting Trump and Republicans for allegedly denying the events of that day. 

‘I will tell you this, that when this is over, we need to shake hands this election, and the winner needs to be the winner. This has got to stop. It’s tearing our country apart,’ Walz said. 

Vance replied, saying it is ‘really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.’ 

‘As we have done for 250 years in this country, we are going to shake hands after this debate and after this election. And, of course, I hope that we win, and I think we’re going to win,’ Vance said. ‘But if Tim Walz is the next vice president, he’ll have my prayers. He’ll have my best wishes, and he’ll have my help whenever he wants it.’ 

But Vance reminded Americans that ‘for years in this country, Democrats protested the results of elections.’ 

‘Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 worth of Facebook ads. This has been going on for a long time, and if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I’m on board,’ Vance said. ‘But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had, I don’t buy that, governor.’

As the debate came to a close, Vance and Walz both promised voters a new direction for the United States. 

‘Kamala Harris is bringing us a new way forward,’ Walz said. ‘She’s bringing us a politics of joy. She’s bringing real solutions for the middle class. And she’s centering you at the heart of that, all the while asking everyone, join this movement. Make your voices heard.’

Vance also gave a message of change to the voters.

‘We need change. We need a new direction. We need a president who has already done this once before and did it well. Please vote for Donald Trump,’ Vance said. ‘And whether you vote for me or vote for Tim Walz, I just want to say I’m so proud to be doing this, and I’m rooting for you.’

Walz entered the debate with better poll numbers than Vance.

According to the latest Fox News national poll, Walz was slightly above water with a 43% favorable rating and a 40% unfavorable rating. Vance stood in negative territory, at 38%-50% favorable/unfavorable.

Heading into the debate, Vance had been talkative, sitting for scores of interviews and taking plenty of questions from reporters on the campaign trail. 

Both running mates get right back on the campaign trail Wednesday in two of the key seven battleground states that will likely determine whether Harris or Trump succeed President Biden in the White House.

Vance holds campaign events in Auburn Hills and Marne, Michigan. And Walz takes part in a campaign bus tour swing through parts of central Pennsylvania, which kicks off at the airport in Harrisburg, the state capital.

Republican lawmakers and top voices praised Ohio Sen. JD Vance for ‘spitting the cold, hard truths’ as he sparred with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in the vice presidential debate in New York City.

‘Senator JD Vance spitting the cold hard TRUTH on the debate stage,’ Trump 2024 national press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X. ‘Total domination and we are only 20 minutes in.’

The debate in New York City on CBS News was Walz and Vance’s only debate prior to the monumental election on Nov. 5.

‘Tim Walz is as radical as they come on the issue of immigration,’ Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., wrote on X. ‘As governor of Minnesota, he supported free health care, free college tuition, and driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. Innocent Americans have been assaulted & murdered because of this border crisis.’

The debate began with CBS News moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan asking the candidates about their Middle East policy after Iran attacked Israel with a massive missile barrage.

‘Tim Walz’s answer on Israel was incomprehensible. Like Kamala–Walz has no idea what he is talking about,’ Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X. ‘Kamala and Walz would make the chaos in the Middle East worse.’

‘Iran rained missiles down on Israel TODAY, 1,350 days into Kamala Harris’ tenure as Vice President, so naturally Tim Walz says it’s Donald Trump’s fault,’ Trump campaign senior adviser Tim Murtaugh wrote on X. 

‘JD knocks it out of the park with first question!!! Tim Walz implodes on first question in presentation, communication, and substance,’ Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., wrote on X. 

Republican voices highlighted the Kamala Harris campaign’s immigration policy. Immigration is a top issue for American voters this year, as a record number say the situation at the southern border is a major problem or an outright emergency, according to the latest Fox News national survey. 

‘Law enforcement has been attacked. Deadly fentanyl has taken the lives of thousands of Americans,’ Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott wrote on X. ‘Kamala Harris & Tim Walz support open border policies. They will make the border crisis WORSE.’

‘How can Tim Walz pretend Kamala is tough on the border when she allowed more than 16,000 sex offenders and 13,000 murderers to cross the border?’ Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on X. ‘A vote for Kamala and Tim Walz is a vote for open borders.’

The candidates turned their attention to abortion, with Republicans criticizing Walz’s abortion stance.

‘He is better in our toughest issues than most republicans are on our best issues. I told you so!!!’ Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X. 

‘Democrats always resort to killing babies every time they are losing. And then lie and call it ‘reproductive freedom.’ There is nothing reproductive about abortion,’ Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X. ‘Democrats view unwanted babies as a life they can throw away and call it a choice. The truth is motherhood is not something to throw away, neither are babies.’

Vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz sparred on the issue of immigration in their debate Tuesday night, and Vance called out the immigration policies of VP Kamala Harris. 

‘First of all, the gross majority of what we need to do to the southern border is just empowering law enforcement to do their job,’ Vance said during the Tuesday night debate on CBS during a discussion on the Haitian migrant surge in Springfield and immigration overall. 

‘I’ve been to the southern border more than our ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris has been. And it’s actually heartbreaking because the Border Patrol agents, they just want to be empowered to do their job.’

Vance continued by saying that, ‘of course, additional resources would help,’ but that the issue is mostly about the Biden administration not empowering law enforcement to say ‘if you try to come across the border illegally, you’ve got to stay in Mexico’ and ‘go back through proper channels.’

‘Now, Gov. Walz brought up the community of Springfield, and he’s very worried about the things that I’ve said in Springfield,’ Vance said. ‘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.

‘The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border. It is a disgrace, Tim, and I actually think I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.’

Walz repeatedly made the case that Trump shut down the Senate immigration bill earlier this year that VP Harris has said she will sign in a move he believes would have made strides at the border.

‘It is law enforcement that asked for the bill,’ Walz said. ‘They helped craft it. They’re the ones that supported it. It was because they know we need to do this. Look, this issue of continuing to bring this up, of not dealing with it, of blaming migrants for everything.

‘On housing, we could talk a little bit about Wall Street speculators buying up housing and making them less affordable, but it becomes a blame. Look, this bill also gives the money necessary to adjudicate. I agree it should not take seven years for an asylum claim to be done.

‘This bill gets it done in 90 days. Then, you start to make a difference in this, and you start to adhere to what we know, American principles. I don’t talk about my faith a lot, but Matthew 25:40 talks about to the least amongst us, you do unto me. I think that’s true of most Americans. They simply want order to it. This bill does it. It’s funded. It’s supported by the people who do it, and it lets us keep our dignity about how we treat other people.’

Vance referred to the Biden-Harris record on immigration as a ‘disgrace.’

‘Look, what Tim said just doesn’t pass the smell test,’ Vance said. ‘For three years. Kamala Harris went out bragging that she was going to undo Donald Trump’s border policy. She did exactly that. We had a record number of illegal crossings. We had a record number of fentanyl coming into our country.

‘And now that she’s running for president or a few months before, she says that somehow she got religion and cares a lot about a piece of legislation. The only thing that she did when she became the vice president, when she became the appointed border czar was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border. This problem is leading to massive problems in the United States of America. Parents who can’t afford health care, schools that are overwhelmed. It’s got to stop. And it will when Donald Trump is president.’

A Harris campaign official told Fox News Digital that its focus group of undecided voters watching the debate reacted more strongly in favor of Walz’s comments.

‘Overall, Gov. Walz outperformed JD Vance in the immigration section, and the highest rating for Gov. Walz of the night so far was when he reminded viewers of Donald Trump’s failed promise to build a wall, only building 2% of it,’ the campaign said. 
 

Democrat vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was forced to answer questions about his controversial travel to China, and misstatements about those trips, during Tuesday night’s debate. 

Walz has said he was in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989. But Minnesota Public Radio and other media outlets are now reporting that Walz actually did not travel to China until August of that year. 

CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan asked Walz to explain the discrepancy. 

‘Look, I grew up in a small rural Nebraska town, a town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I’m proud of that service,’ a visibly-shaky Walz said. ‘I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms, and then I used the GI bill to become a teacher.’ 

Walz said that as a ‘passionate young teacher’ he had ‘the opportunity in the summer of ’89 to travel to China—35 years ago.’ 

‘I came back home and then started a program to take young people there. We would take basketball teams, we would take baseball teams, we would take dancers, and we would go back and forth to China,’ Walz said, noting the trips were ‘to try and learn.’ 

 ‘Look, my community knows who I am. They saw where I was at. I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community, and I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect,’ Walz continued. 

‘And I’m a knucklehead at times,’ Walz said. 

Walz said his commitment ‘from the beginning’ has been to ‘make sure that I’m there for the people.’ 

‘Many times, I will talk a lot. I will get caught up in rhetoric. But being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life, I learned a lot about China,’ Walz said. ‘I hear the critiques of this.’ 

Walz said he would ‘make the case that Donald Trump should have come on one of those trips with us.’ 

‘I guarantee you he wouldn’t be, praising XI Jinping about Covid. And I guarantee you he wouldn’t start a trade war that he ends up losing,’ Walz said. ‘So this is about trying to understand the world. It’s about trying to do the best you can for your community, and then it’s putting yourself out there and letting your folks understand what it is.’ 

He added: ‘My commitment, whether it be through teaching, which I was good at or whether it was being a good soldier or was being a good member of Congress. Those are the things that I think are the values that people care about.‘ 

But Brennan pushed back, reminding Walz of the question, and again asking him to explain the discrepancy. 

‘All I said on this was, as I got there that summer and misspoke on this,’ Walz said. ‘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 in governance.‘ 

Walz’s ties to China have come under the microscope since becoming Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., launched an investigation into Walz’s alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party. 

Comer revealed that Walz has ‘engaged and partnered with’ Chinese entities, making him ‘susceptible’ to the CCP’s strategy of ‘elite capture,’ which seeks to co-opt influential figures in elite political, cultural and academic circles to ‘influence the United States to the benefit of the communist regime and the detriment of Americans.’ 

Comer has pointed to reports that Walz, while working as a teacher in the 1990s, organized a trip to China for Alliance High School students. The costs were reportedly ‘paid by the Chinese government.’ 

Comer is investigating Walz’s 1994-created private company named ‘Educational Travel Adventures, Inc.,’ which coordinated annual student trips to China until 2003 and was led by Walz. 

The company reportedly ‘dissolved four days after he took congressional office in 2007.’ 

Comer said Walz has traveled to China an estimated ’30 times.’ 

Comer has now issued a subpoena for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, compelling him to produce DHS records related to Walz’s alleged ties to the CCP. 

Walz, meanwhile, during a congressional hearing in 2016, said he had ‘been to China dozens of times.’

‘I’ve been there about 30 times,’ Walz told an agriculture-focused publication in 2016. 

However, a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson recently said to Minnesota Public Radio that the number was ‘closer to 15 times.’ 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz kicked off his debate against Ohio Sen. JD Vance on shaky footing when he was first asked about his foreign policy platform in the Middle East. 

‘Governor Walz, if you were the final voice in the Situation Room, would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?’ CBS’ Margaret Brennan asked Walz on Tuesday evening in New York City during the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate. 

Walz thanked the moderators for hosting him before delivering a halting and stammering answer while calling for ‘steady leadership.’

‘Iran, our I, Israel’s ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental. Getting its hostages back, fundamental. And ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute fundamental necessity for the United States to have to steady leadership there. You saw it experienced today where along with our Israeli partners and our coalition, able to stop the incoming attack,’ Walz responded, taking a few pauses between words. 

Earlier Tuesday, Iran launched more than 100 ballistic missiles at Israel. War broke out in Israel nearly one year ago on Oct. 7 when Hamas launched attacks on the nation.

‘What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter. It’s clear. And the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago, a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment,’ Walz continued. 

Walz continued his response by taking shots at former President Donald Trump and his former administration officials. 

‘His chief of staff, John Kelly, said that he was the most flawed human being you’d ever met. And both of his secretaries of defense and his national security advisers said he should be nowhere near the White House. Now, the person closest to them… said he’s unfit for the highest office. That was Sen. Vance,’ Walz said, referring to Vance’s previous criticisms of Trump before he was elected to the White House in 2016.

Walz summed up his first response by arguing Vice President Kamala Harris has shown ‘steady leadership’ on the world stage. 

‘What we’ve seen out of Vice President Harris is we’ve seen steady leadership. We’ve seen a calmness that is able to be able to draw on the coalitions, to bring them together understanding, that our allies matter. When our allies see Donald Trump turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness around holding the coalitions together, we will stay committed. And as the vice president said today, we will protect our forces and our allied forces, and there will be consequences,’ he continued. 

Hours before the vice presidential debate, former President Donald Trump addressed a crowd at his campaign rally in Wisconsin and bashed the Biden administration over Iran’s historic attack on Israel. 

‘A short time ago, Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles at Israel… I’ve been talking about World War III for a long time, and I don’t want to make predictions because the predictions always come true. We’re not going to make [predictions]… but they are very close to global catastrophe,’ Trump said. ‘We have a non-existent president and a non-existent vice president who should be in charge, but nobody knows what’s going on.’

Trump’s comments come after Israel said Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles at the country, marking the largest ballistic missile attack in history. 

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the attack was in retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Lebanon, in an Israeli airstrike late last week and the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, according to Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned in a statement released by Iranian state media that if Israel responds to the missile barrage, ‘it will face crushing attacks.’

Trump accused President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of weak leadership on the world stage.

‘That’s why Israel was under attack just a little while ago. Because they don’t respect our country anymore. The so-called enemy doesn’t respect our country any longer,’ Trump said.

Trump claimed Biden and Harris made Iran rich in a very short period of time.

‘They have $300 billion now. They’re rich. I mean, they pay 6 billion every time they have somebody that was kidnaped, it’s always $6 billion,’ Trump said.

‘Iran was on the verge of bankruptcy. They had no money left. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for Hezbollah. The people they’re fighting now, they would have been willing to make any deal. You could have made any deal. But Kamala flooded them with American cash and everything. Now, I mean, they’re flooding them with cash. It’s honestly not even believable,’ Trump continued.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the Iranian missile attack on Israel was ‘defeated and ineffective’ and that the U.S. military coordinated with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to repel the strikes. 

‘U.S. naval destroyers joined Israeli Air Defense units in firing interceptors to shoot down inbound missiles. President Biden and Vice President Harris monitored the attack and the response from the White House Situation Room, joined in person and remotely by their national security team,’ Sullivan said. 

Sullivan characterized the attack as a ‘significant escalation’ while speaking at a White House briefing on Tuesday.

Sullivan said no deaths were reported on the Israeli side, although the White House is monitoring the reported death of a Palestinian civilian in Jericho in the West Bank.

‘We do not know of any damage to aircraft or strategic military assets in Israel. In short, based on what we know at this point, this attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective. The word fog of war was invented for a situation like this. This is a fluid situation,’ he said.

Many missiles were intercepted by Israel’s missile defense systems, while others did hit the ground. 

The Pentagon says the U.S. fired approximately 12 interceptors against Iranian missiles.

Fox News’ Michael Dorgan, Stephen Sorace, Liz Friden, Nicolas Rojas, Greg Norman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Live coverage begins today at 8 p.m. ET for the .

The first rule of deciding who won a major political debate is that nobody wins a major political debate. There is no final score as the buzzer sounds, no final wink to be tiddled, it is a purely subjective matter. And that will be true of the vice-presidential debate between Republican nominee JD Vance and Democratic nominee Tim Walz.

That having been said, I’ve recently adopted a method of scoring debates from the world of pugilistics, that I think actually gives a pretty decent assessment of what most American voters see. 

My advice in picking a winner is to borrow the scoring system of a boxing match. The basic rules are relatively simple. In each round the boxer who wins the 3 minutes gets 10 points, the loser gets 9, unless there is a knockdown or it is overwhelming, in which case the round is scored 10-8. A tie is 10-10.

Obviously, a knockout ends the fight.

I first tried this approach last month with the Trump vs. Harris debate. And I wound up with Trump winning 157 to 150. It wasn’t the only reason I thought and wrote that night that Trump won the debate, despite overwhelming media insistence that girl boss Kamala had kicked ass. But it was part of it. 

And with polling showing no significant bump for Harris since their face-off and the fact that we’ve even seen some Trump swing state surge since their debate, my ostentatious declaration of a Trump victory looks a little less crazy today.  

The legacy news media, who wanted any excuse to hand Harris a W anyway, viewed the tête-à-tête as a kind of Lifetime movie in which Harris had finally spoken truth to power, but I find in most of America that narrative doesn’t have a whole lot of purchase. The voters want answers.

That’s where boxing scoring comes in. If openings, closings, and each question, are the ’rounds’ of the debate, you wind up with about 15. See what I’m saying? The incremental 10-9 or 10-8 scores of each, mirror the nuance of how swayable voters watch the event.

The basic philosophy behind boxing scoring is that the primary job is to survive the round, so if you manage that, you get an automatic 8 points, winning the round, and can only bump that up by at most 2. 

One could argue there is a fundamental unfairness here, that if I am 40 percent better at landing punches in a round than my opponent, I only get a 10 percent point advantage in scoring, but that is also the beauty of the system. Fights aren’t just about math.

This actually tracks very well with how political debates work. 

The audience, which is to say the voters, do tend to see each question or issue as one round, and if Walz can get a 10-8 on abortion, or Vance can on the border, that goes a long way towards the kind of 7 point win I gave Trump over Harris. 

Another way to think of this is that 90 percent of Americans likely already know who they are voting for, only 10 percent can be swayed, and boxing’s unique scoring system almost perfectly corresponds to this. 

Eighty to 90 percent we are just scoring as a wash.

There is, of course, the chance of a knockout, but these days, that chance seems remote. Back when Reagan said ‘There you go again,’ or Obama, in retrospect wrongly, told Romney the 1980s wanted their foreign policy back over fears regarding Russia, the possibility of something near consensus on the question existed.

Those days are no longer with us, if they aren’t over forever.

Nobody really wins a debate, but we can still score them, we can still pay close attention to who is and isn’t actually answering the questions, and that has a lot of value. 

So give a shot, grab a pad and paper, if you still have those, and just jot down your score for each question, 10-10, 10-9 or 10-8. Like a Ouija board your political leanings might push the pen a bit, but even so, you might be surprised by the results.

As Mike Tyson once put it, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Let’s keep a close eye on the flying rhetorical hands of Tim Walz and JD Vance.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed legislation banning local governments from requiring voters to present an ID at the ballot box in order to cast a vote – a move which sparked backlash from Elon Musk, who branded Newsom as ‘The Joker.’

‘Wow, it is now illegal to require voter ID in California! They just made PREVENTING voter fraud against the law,’ Musk wrote on X late Monday. ‘The Joker is in charge.’

The bill was passed by the California Assembly in August after being introduced earlier in the year by state Sen. David Min, a Democrat. Newsom signed the bill into law on Thursday. 

The new law was in response to the beachside city of Huntington Beach passing a voter ID amendment, Measure A, in March with the support of a majority of residents which would allow the city to require voter identification, increase in-person voting sites, and monitor ballot drop boxes in local elections. The measure won at the polls in March with 53.4% approval, county election data shows.

But Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber challenged Huntington Beach’s voter ID law, which would have amended the city’s charter to allow voter ID requirements by 2026.

In their lawsuit, Bonta and Weber argued that the city’s voter ID law ‘unlawfully conflicts and is preempted by state law.’ 

California is one of 14 states that does not require voter ID at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

‘The right to freely cast your vote is the foundation of our democracy and Huntington Beach’s voter ID policy flies in the face of this principle,’ Bonta said in a statement earlier this year. 

He argued that state elections already contain ‘robust voter ID requirements with strong protections to prevent voter fraud.’ He said the new requirements would disproportionately burden ‘low-income voters, voters of color, young or elderly voters, and people with disabilities.’ 

While that lawsuit made its way through the courts state, Min introduced Senate Bill No. 1174. It passed out of the State Assembly in a 57-16 vote and in the State Senate in a 30-8 vote.

The Huntington Beach City Council placed the voter ID measure on the March ballot after taking a series of hotly contested decisions on topics ranging from flag flying to the removal of books from the public library’s children’s section over concerns about the appropriateness of materials. The moves were initiated by a politically conservative council majority, which took office in 2022, and have drawn scores of residents on all sides of issues to city meetings.

Huntington City Attorney Michael Gates said in March that the passage of the amendment approved by voters was ‘not only permissible’ but backed by the state constitution. 

Last week he vowed to continue to enforce Measure A. 

‘That bill means nothing to the city of Huntington Beach,’ Michael Gates said, per OrangeCountyLawyers.com. ‘The city is going to proceed with its voter ID laws because it has a constitutional right to do so.’

Musk’s outburst is not the first time he has sparred with Newsom.

Musk last month encouraged his 198 million X users to share an AI-doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris after Newsom signed a bill into law banning digitally altered political ‘deepfakes.’

Musk said he also plans to move the California headquarters for SpaceX to Texas after Newsom signed a bill into law that will bar school districts from notifying parents if their child uses different pronouns or identifies as a gender that’s different from what’s on school records.

The Space X owner has also said Democratic states are gaining an unfair advantage over red states in elections as a result of illegal immigration since the census is based on a simple headcount of all residents, both legal and illegal. He said congressional representation and electoral votes are apportioned based on all residents instead of just focusing on citizens.

Musk has often weighed in on voter integrity and immigration matters, writing on X in March that ‘failure to require photo ID to vote obviously makes it impossible to prove voter fraud. That is why the far left refuses to require photo ID to vote.’

Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.