When CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed the Democratic presidential ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in August, we had 30 questions that we thought Bash should ask. Ultimately, she would only ask five, two of which—why he claimed to carry a weapon “in war” when he never did and why he said his wife used IV when she did not—were directed to Walz. Additionally, Bash asked him about misrepresenting his 1995 drunk driving incident during his 2006 Congressional campaign. With the vice presidential debate between Walz and JD Vance set for Tuesday, here are 27 additional questions CBS’s Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell should ask Walz as well as three questions they should ask Vance.
For Walz
- How can you accuse Republicans of attacking your service when your own former National Guard superior accuses you of going around him because there was a chance he wouldn’t approve your retirement request?
- Why did you start your political career calling yourself a retired sergeant major when you retired as a master sergeant?
- Why did you sign a law that ended the requirement that babies who survived abortions be given life-saving medical care?
- Why did you repeal laws against coercing women to obtain abortions?
- Why is Kamala Harris repeating a ProPublica story about pro-life laws killing two Georgia women despite there being nothing in state law that justified denying them life-saving treatment after complications from the abortion pill?
- Why are fearmongering about Project 2025 proposing that all pregnant women register with the federal government?
- Why did you mention on your 2006 campaign website that you won an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce when you had not?
- Why did you associate with a pro-Hamas, Hitler-sympathizing imam?
- Why did you spread fake news about your attendance at a 2004 Bush rally to create your political origin story?
- Do you really believe China has a system where “everyone shares”?
- Are you concerned that people who work for elected Democrats keep getting arrested for being alleged Chinese spies?
- Is resisting Chinese power and influence more important than working with Beijing on climate change?
- You’ve made a big deal about calling your opponents “weird,” but is it weird to force religious Minnesotans to renounce their religious beliefs on homosexuality and transgenderism if they want to be teachers in your state?
- Is it weird to equate not giving children gender-changing hormones to abuse and abandonment?
- Is it weird to join in on the spread of a fake news joke about your opponent having sex with a couch?
- President Joe Biden has said the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel “too often veers into anti-Semitism,” so was it a mistake for the University of Minnesota to cave to anti-Israel protesters’ demand that divestment be brought before the Board of Regents, among other concessions?
- Did the anti-Israel, and often anti-Semitic, campus protests violate Title VI?
- Why did you wait three days to activate the National Guard to stop rioting in Minnesota in 2020?
- Was it a mistake for Kamala Harris to endorse the Minnesota Freedom Fund?
- As someone who has leaned heavily on your past as a high school football coach, do you believe Title IX prohibits men who identify as women from competing in women’s sports?
- Do you and Kamala Harris support adding justices to the Supreme Court?
- How is only ending the Senate filibuster to codify Roe not “one set of rules for things I like and another for things I don’t” and how can voters trust her not to expand this supposed exception to other areas?
- How can voters trust you and Harris on the economy when even liberal Washington Post columnists are attacking her price control plan?
- Since the last debate it was reported that interest payments on the debt topped $1 trillion per year for the first time. How do you and Harris plan to tackle the national debt without serious spending reforms?
- Do you agree with what Kamala Harris said in 2020 about America being a systemically racist country?
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Brian Lozenski, your choice to create an “ethnic studies” curriculum for all K-12 schools in Minnesota, says America is “irreversibly racist,” so “it must be overthrown…the United States needs to be deconstructed, period.” Is that your view of teaching, and would you support that as federal education policy?
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You have not agreed to an TV interview with a journalist since you were picked for VP, even though you appeared ten times in the days leading up to that. What are you afraid of now?
For Vance
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Unlike the Republican party’s platform in 2016, the text does not include backing for a 20-week federal limit on abortions. Why would you and Donald Trump offer less protection to unborn children than before?
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Kamala Harris told Volodymyr Zelensky that some Americans would force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory, demand that Ukraine accept neutrality, and require Ukraine to forego all security relationships with other nations. Is that a fair description of what Trump-Vance advocates?
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You hailed Lina Khan, Biden’s head of the Federal Trade Commission, as “one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.” So as a Republican, would you endorse Biden’s claim that “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism, it’s exploitation”?
