Vice presidential debate - live fact checking
11:12 p.m. Mike Pence says Hillary Clinton wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment.
PENCE STATEMENT: “Hillary Clinton wants to repeal the longstanding provision in the law where we said we wouldn’t use taxpayer dollars to fund abortion,” Pence claimed, and he told Kaine, “I have appreciated the fact that you have supported the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of tax-payer funding for abortion, in the past.”
FACT CHECK: Clinton said earlier this year that she supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, which, as Pence pointed out, prevents the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. When she accepted Planned Parenthood’s endorsement on January 10, 2016, Clinton called for the repeal of the 40-year-old amendment.
When Clinton accepted the Planned Parenthood endorsement, she said, “Any right that requires you to take extraordinary measures to access it is no right at all -- not when patients and providers have to endure harassment and intimidation just to walk into a health center…And not as long as we have laws on the book like the Hyde Amendment making it harder for low-income women to exercise their full rights.”
The Democratic party also included the call for repeal of Hyde in the platform for the first time. On CNN on July 29, 2016, Kaine said, “I have been for the Hyde Amendment. And I have not changed my position on that.” In response to that comment, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted, “But he has also promised to carry out Hillary Clinton’s agenda, regardless of his personal position on Hyde.”
--CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan
11:10 p.m. Tim Kaine accuss Donald Trump of wanting to punish women for having an abortion.
KAINE STATEMENT: “We don’t think that women should be punished as Donald Trump said they should for making the decision to have an abortion.” (Pence replied with this: “Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that punished women who made the heartbreaking choice to end a pregnancy.”)
FACT CHECK: Kaine is correct that Trump has said he would punish women for having an abortion. In a March town hall with MSNBC, Trump had this testy exchange with Chris Matthews:
“Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle?” the MSNBC host asked.
“The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment,” Trump replied.
“For the woman?” Matthews asked.
Trump replied: “Yeah, there has to be some form.”
When Matthews pressed Trump on what sort of punishment he would enact (“Ten cents? Ten years? What?”), Trump said only, “I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know.”
But after the town hall, Trump’s campaign worked to clarify the initial statement, saying that the GOP nominee would instead keep the current laws as they are today and would not inflict a punishment for women. He later added that any changes he would enact on abortion laws would make a “doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman.”
--CBS News’ Maggie Dore and Sopan Deb
10:58 p.m. Tim Kaine says both Trump and Pence have called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “great leader.”
KAINE STATEMENT: “Donald Trump and Mike Pence have said he’s a great leader—” (Pence responded, “No we haven’t.”)
FACT CHECK: The two pols on the Republican ticket may not have specifically used the word “great,” but both Trump and Pence have spoken positively of Putin’s “strong” or “powerful” leadership in Russia.
“I think that he’s a strong leader. He’s a powerful leader, he’s represented his country,” Trump told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in December 2015. Trump also said during NBC’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum” in early September that he wuld have a “very, very good relationship” with Putin, praising him for his “strong control” over his country. “In terms of leadership, he’s getting an ‘A,’” Trump continued.
Pence does not frequently offer up that same level of praise for Putin on the campaign trail, but he has defended Trump’s remarks, saying in an interview with CNN last month that “it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama.” (However, he also added that “that’s going to change the day Donald Trump becomes president of the United States of America.”)
--CBS News’ DJ Judd
10:51 p.m. Tim Kaine claims that Trump owes about $650 million to banks, including the Bank of China.
KAINE STATEMENT: “Donald Trump owes about 650 million dollars to banks including the Bank of China. I’m not sure he could stand up so tough to the people that have loaned him money.”
FACT CHECK: This assertion by Kaine may have come from an investigation done by the New York Times, which found that “companies [Trump] owns have at least $650 million in debt—twice the amount than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House,” according to the Aug. 21, 2016 report.
The report pointed out that one Manhattan building that Trump partly owns “carries a $950 million loan,” and the lenders on that loan include the Bank of China and Goldman Sachs. But it goes on to point out that real estate projects “often involve complex ownership and mortgage structures,” and given his decades-long career in real estate, “it is safe to say that no previous major party presidential nominee has had finances nearly as complicated.”
--CBS News’ Allyson Ross Taylor and Sopan Deb
10:48 p.m. Mike Pence says half of Hillary Clinton’s private meetings at the State Department were with Clinton Foundation donors.
PENCE STATEMENT: “We found thanks to the good work of the Associated Press that half of her private meetings when she was Secretary of State were given to major donors of the Clinton Foundation.”
FACT CHECK: The AP did in fact report that 85 of the 154 in-person and phone meetings Clinton held during the first half of her tenure as Secretary of State were with donors to the Clinton Foundation. However, they excluded her meetings with federal employees and foreign government representatives. The AP ended up deleting a tweet that promoted the story.
At the time, Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon called the story a “distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation.”
--CBS News’ Carrie Rabin
10:31 p.m. Tim Kaine says Donald Trump wants to get rid of NATO.
KAINE STATEMENT: That’s why Donald trump’s claim that he wants…that NATO is obsolete and that we need to get rid of NATO is so dangerous—“ (Pence replied,” That’s not his plan.”)
FACT CHECK: Trump has had some harsh words for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), calling it “obsolete” in a March interview with “This Week” and saying the U.S. should reevaluate its participation in the major strategic and military alliance.
At a town hall in March, Trump said NATO is “costing us too much money.” Then, in a July 20 interview with the New York Times, Trump suggested that he might not immediately defend other NATO countries if they were attacked and could set conditions for U.S. military aid. Asked whether NATO allies could “count on” the U.S., Trump replied: “Have they fulfilled their obligations to us? If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”
However, Trump appears to have changed his tone toward NATO more recently. In an address on foreign policy in August, Trump said the U.S. would “work closely with NATO” to defeat ISIS. “I had previously said that NATO was obsolete because it failed to deal adequately with terrorism; since my comments, they have changed their policy and now have a new division focused on terror threats.”
--CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan
10:26 p.m. Mike Pence claims that Hillary Clinton’s private server was used to email classified information about drone strikes.
PENCE STATEMENT: “Hillary Clinton had a private server in her home that had classified information on it about drone strikes, emails from the president of the United States of America were on there, her private server was subject to being hacked by foreign powers.”
FACT CHECK: Pence is correct that some of the emails contained classified information. The FBI reviewed 30,000 emails that were on Clinton’s server, and found that 113 contained classified information when they were sent or received. Just three had markers on them to indicate the material was classified. The FBI noted in its interview with Clinton that the agency discussed her use of the personal email system to discuss potential drone strikes.
--CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan
10:20 p.m. Tim Kaine claims Trump and Pence want to get rid of birthright citizenship.
KAINE STATEMENT: “Both Donald Trump and Mike Pence want to get rid of birthright citizenship. So if you’re born here, but your parents don’t have documents, they want to eliminate that -- that’s another four and a half million people.”
FACT CHECK: At the second Republican primary debate on Sept. 16, 2015, Trump said that only the U.S. was “stupid enough” to have birthright citizenship.
”A woman gets pregnant. She’s nine months, she walks across the border, she has the baby in the United States, and we take care of the baby for 85 years,” he said. “I don’t think so,” adding, “and by the way, Mexico and almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn’t have that. We’re the only ones dumb enough, stupid enough to have it.” Medium noted that Trump was correct on the point -- “only 30 of the world’s 194 countries” offer birthright citizenship or its equivalent.
And Pence, in 2009—as a congressman—introduced legislation to end birthright citizenship, although the bill never was never voted on. He recently said he accepts it as settled law, however.
“I think the law is very settled on that question for generations of natural-born American citizens,” the Indiana governor said in early September in an interview that aired on CNN. But he seemed to stand behind a Trump proposal to establish “a new commission that will look at all of our immigration laws, including the whole question of ‘anchor babies.’”
--CBS News’ Maggie Dore
10:19 p.m. Mike Pence slams Kaine’s record as Virginia governor while touting his own as the chief executive of Indiana.
PENCE STATEMENT: “I’m very proud. I come from a state that works. The state of Indiana has balanced budgets. We cut taxes, we made record investments in education and infrastructure. And I finished my term with $2 million in the bank … When Sen. Kaine was governor here in Virginia, he actually tried to raise taxes by about $4 billion dollars. He left his state about $2 billion dollars in the hole. In the state of Indiana we’ve cut unemployment in half. Unemployment doubled when he was governor.”
FACT CHECK: Pence is correct in saying that unemployment increased under Kaine in Virginia, but the state’s unemployment rates still tracked below the national average. When Kaine left office in January of 2010, the state had a 7.4 percent unemployment rate, according to a CNBC analysis. That was up from 3.2 percent when Kaine took office four years earlier. Compare that, however, to the national average, which when from 4.7 percent in January 2006 to 10 percent about four years later.
By comparison, under Pence’s leadership in Indiana, unemployment was reduced by 3.4 percentage points since January of 2013. But that tracked with the national average, which dropped 3.3 percentage points during that same time.
Pence also exaggerated the difficulties Virginia’s budget faced under Kaine’s governorship. While there was a $4.2 billion gap in the 2010-2012 budget, Kaine also submitted a balanced budget proposal days before leaving office, as required by law. (According to FactCheck.org, the last budget Kaine signed into law actually ended with a surplus. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia also lauded Kaine for his “tough cuts” in state spending, which helped the state end fiscal year 2010 with a $403 million surplus.)
As for Indiana’s budget under Pence, the state is legally required to balance the budget. Pence is correct that he ended fiscal year 2015 with a $210 million surplus.
--CBS News’ Maggie Dore
10:12 p.m. Tim Kaine claims Trump wants more countries to have nuclear weapons.
KAINE STATEMENT: “Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. He said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, Korea should get them.”
FACT CHECK: Trump has fallen on both sides of this question—even within the same interview—but Kaine’s claim is largely true. Trump said during a CNN Town Hall on March 30, 2016, that “we’re better off if Japan protects itself” against a potential nuclear North Korea. When pressed on whether he would also be in favor of South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia having nuclear weapons capabilities, Trump said “it’s going to happen anyway,” and asked: “Wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? And they do have them.”
--CBS News’ DJ Judd
10:00 p.m. Tim Kaine claims Clinton eliminated the Iranian nuclear weapons program and that Russia was expanding its nuclear weapons stockpile when she became secretary of state.
KAINE STATEMENT: Kaine addressed Pence about Clinton’s record as secretary of state, saying, “Did you know that Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon and Russia was expanding its stockpile? Under Secretary Clinton’s leadership, she was part of the national team -- public safety team that went after and revived the dormant hunt against bin Laden and wiped him off the face of the earth. She worked to deal with the Russians to reduce their chemical weapons stockpile, she worked a tough negotiation with nations around the world to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, absolutely without firing a shot.”
FACT CHECK: CBS News’ Margaret Brennan has pointed out that the Iran nuclear deal just freezes the Iranian nuclear program -- it doesn’t eliminate it entirely.
Meanwhile, Kaine said “chemical weapons stockpile” when referring to Russia. Assuming he meant “nuclear weapons,” since this was the context of his statement, Clinton helped negotiate the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), signed in 2010, which limited and called for the reduction of some nuclear weapons. But Russia had already begun reducing its stockpiles, and they had also already been meeting the reduction targets.
--CBS News’ Carrie Rabin
9:57 p.m. Tim Kaine says Trump and Pence want to privatize Social Security.
KAINE STATEMENT: “We will never, ever engage in a risky scheme to privatize Social Security. Donald Trump wrote a book and he said Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and privatization would be good for all of us and when Congressman Pence was in office he was the chief cheerleader for the privatization of Social Security even after President Bush stopped pushing for it. Congressman Pence kept pushing for it.”
FACT CHECK: In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, Trump follows a long discussion of Social Security with this: “The truth is undeniable. The workers of America have been forced to invest a sixth of our wages into a huge Ponzi scheme.” Later, he discusses a plan by Democratic Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bob Kerrey to cut payroll taxes and shift the tax revenue into individual wealth accounts owned by the beneficiaries.
“When Democrats talk about tax cuts, it’s our national duty to jump in line behind them. Let me be the first in line. Privatization would be good for all of us,” the book reads. “…Directing Social Security funds into personal accounts invested in real assets would swell national savings, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into jobs and the economy.” Nowadays, however, Trump has promised not to cut Social Security but has not released any plans on how to preserve it.
While in Congress, Pence and other fiscal conservatives backed a plan that would have allowed workers to place some of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts. It would have begun faster than President Bush’s plan and allowed workers to put a larger sum of their money into private accounts.
--CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan
9:52 p.m. Tim Kaine asserts that Trump and Pence want to eliminate federal minimum wage.
KAINE STATEMENT: “Both Donald Trump and Mike Pence think we ought to eliminate the federal minimum wage. Mike Pence, when he was in Congress, voted against raising the minimum wage above $5.15 per hour and he has been a one-man bulwark against minimum wage increases in Indiana.”
FACT CHECK: At a July news conference in Doral, Fla., Trump said: “The minimum wage has to go up. At least $10, but it has to go up. Federal. I think states should really call the shots.”
But Trump has also said that “wages are too high,” including during a GOP primary debate on Nov. 10, 2015, and in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the following morning, the Washington Post has noted.
Pence has voted against minimum wage hikes in the past. In 2007, when he was in Congress and the minimum wage was still $5.15 per hour, Pence voted down a bill that would have raised the federal rate to $7.25 per hour. And as recently as 2014, Pence expressed little openness to a spike in that minimum. When asked by Fox News if he would be in favor of lifting the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, Pence said what while states “certainly have the ability” to do so, they should instead lift “the burden on businesses small and large.”
In 2013, as governor of Indiana, Pence signed a bill into law that prohibits local governments from requiring that businesses pay workers a higher minimum wage than the one mandated by state or federal law, according to nwitimes.com.
--CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan
9:49 p.m. Mike Pence claims that Hillary Clinton, when she served as secretary of state, had her philanthropic foundation accept contributions from foreign governments.
PENCE STATEMENT: “When she was secretary of state, Senator come on, she had a Clinton Foundation accepting contributions from foreign governments … the Clinton Foundation accepted foreign contributions from foreign governments and foreign donors while she was Secretary of State.”
FACT CHECK: Pence’s statement is true. The Clinton Foundation agreed to accept donations only from a list of pre-approved nations following Clinton’s joining of the Obama administration as secretary of state. But as the Washington Post first reported, Algeria -- one of the nations listed as in violation of human rights laws—made an unsolicited donation for Haitian earthquake relief in 2010.
Officials from the Clinton Foundation acknowledged to the Post that they should have sought the administration’s approval before accepting the $500,000 donation from the Algerian government. Other countries, including Saudi Arabia, continued to donate during Clinton’s tenure in the State department, though all fell under the pre-approved list of permitted donors.
--CBS News’ DJ Judd
9:46 p.m. Mike Pence says President Obama and Hillary Clinton are responsible for the slowest recovery “since the Great Depression.”
PENCE STATEMENT: “We’re in the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression … millions more people living in poverty today than the day Barack Obama with Hillary at his side stepped into the Oval Office.”
FACT CHECK: There are two parts to this: gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates, and overall length of continuous economic expansion. According to the Washington Post, Pence is right that the current GDP growth rate is lower than it has been in decades: in the second quarter of 2016 the GDP growth was 1.2 percent, and the annual average growth rate of the economic recovery has been 2.1 percent. That’s the weakest pace of economic expansion since at least 1949.
However, it is also the fourth longest period of consecutive economic expansion since 1949, and the longest expansion under just one president’s tenure.
--CBS News’ Allyson Ross Taylor
8:30 p.m. The first and only vice-presidential debate is just half an hour away: tonight, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence will take the stage for what is undoubtedly the highest-profile event of either of their political careers thus far.
The candidates are at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., for a showdown moderated by “CBS Weekend News” anchor, CBSN anchor and CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano. The 90-minute debate will begin at 9 p.m. ET, and will consist of nine separate 10-minute segments.
CBS News’ team of fact-checkers are listening closely to both candidates and will be posting here when their statements need additional scrutiny.
Check back here for updates throughout the debate.
