2020 vice presidential debate

Vice President Mike Pence faced an unlikely challenger for the spotlight during Wednesday night’s debate when a common house fly landed on his head as he and Democratic opponent Sen. Kamala Harris sparred over their visions for America’s next four years.

The fly, which sat on Pence’s head for an impressive two minutes, drew a surge of tweets from debate viewers, including Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who tweeted a photo of himself with a fly swatter and the caption: “Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly.” Later, within an hour of the debate ending, the Biden campaign started selling a "truth over flies" fly swatter.

The Democratic National Committee similarly leveraged the trending fly moment by tweeting the URL “Flywillvote.com,” which redirects to the DNC’s voter registration website. 

After the debate, CNN’s Jake Tapper quipped: “There were times during the debate that I thought the most effective being on that state to go after Vice President Pence was that fly that landed on his head.”

During tonight's debate, Vice President Mike Pence said Kamala Harris had previously supported a ban on fracking. 

“You yourself said on multiple occasions when you were running for president that you would ban fracking,” he claimed.   

Facts First: It’s true Harris voiced support for a ban on fracking during her primary run, starting with public lands.  

During a CNN town hall in September 2019, Harris was asked if she would “commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking your first day in office.”  

“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said. “So yes. And starting with what we can do on day one around public lands. And then there has to be legislation.”  

The Biden campaign’s written plan, however, proposes “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters,” and does not include a full ban on fracking.  

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When asked about the future of American health care at the debate, Vice President Mike Pence said, “President Trump and I have a plan to improve health care and to protect pre-existing conditions for every American.” 

Facts First: This is false. The Trump administration, along with Republicans in Congress, have long promised a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act and that they would also protect people with pre-existing conditions. However, the President has yet to put forth a concrete plan that will provide the same strong provisions that currently exist under the ACA. 

In fact, the President is supporting a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican attorneys general that could topple the landmark health reform law and its provisions that ban insurers from denying coverage or charging higher premiums based on consumers’ pre-existing conditions. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Nov. 10, a week after the election. 

In late September, Trump signed an executive order that stated that it’s US policy that people who suffer from pre-existing conditions will be protected. However, this is not actually a plan. 

Later in the debate, when asked directly to explain the administration's health care plan, Pence switched topics. 

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The pandemic has devastated the American economy. Sen. Kamala Harris said “1 in 5 businesses closed.”

Facts First: This needs context. Harris is correct based on a June survey from the US Chamber of Commerce, but there's little real-time data on small business closures and it's hard to tell how many have permanently shuttered because of the pandemic.

The MetLife & US Chamber of Commerce Small Business Coronavirus Impact Poll from June found that 1 in 5 small businesses were closed, with 19% of them shuttered temporarily and only 1% closed permanently. Most businesses said then that they believe it will take some time to return to normal operations but that they will reopen. 

In July, the same poll found that 86% of small business reported that they were fully or partially open. At the same time, 58% of respondents to the survey worried that their businesses would have to permanently close due to the impact of the pandemic.

A Washington Post analysis of a survey by researchers at Harvard, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago said that 100,000 small businesses had permanently shut from March to May.

Kamala Harris said during tonight's debate that President Trump knew about the threat of the coronavirus weeks before it took hold in the United States, noting that “on January 28th, the vice president and the President were informed about the nature of this pandemic.” 

Facts First: This is true. Trump told journalist Bob Woodward how deadly the virus was in a Feb. 7 interview, and Woodward reported that the President had been briefed on the serious threat the virus posed on January 28.  

Woodward reported that Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, told the President in a classified briefing that coronavirus would be the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. Trump’s head “popped up,” Woodward reported. Pence told Fox News he was also at the Jan. 28 national security briefing.

Trump later told Woodward that he purposely downplayed the threat of the virus. The President said in a March 19 interview, "I wanted to always play it down." 

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Vice President Mike Pence gave Americans hope that there would be a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year.

“The reality is, we will have a vaccine, we believe, before the end of this year, and it will have the capacity to save countless American lives and your continuous undermining of confidence in a vaccine is just unacceptable,” Pence said. 

Facts First: This needs context.

Though there are several vaccine candidates in different phases of testing, there is no guarantee that the US Food and Drug Administration will have approved a vaccine by the end of the year. And even once one is approved, it will likely still be many months before it's widely available across the US. 

In interviews in September, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, made it clear that vaccine timeline projections are just that — projections — and it will take until next year before vaccines are widely distributed. 

“By the time you mobilize the distribution of the vaccinations, and you get the majority, or more, of the population vaccinated and protected, that’s likely not going to happen to the mid or end of 2021,” Fauci told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. 

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At the end of tonight’s debate, Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris ended up with nearly the same amount of speaking time, differing by just a few seconds.

Kamala Harris proclaimed defiantly she will not "be lectured by the vice president” during a back-and-forth on criminal justice where she called the killing of George Floyd “torture.” 

Vice President Mike Pence, responding to Harris’ assertion that there is systemic racism in this country and that Black people don’t feel as though they have the full rights in the system, said, “I must tell you this presumption that you hear consistently from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, that America is systemically racist.”

Harris shot back at Pence, saying, “I will not sit here and be lectured by the vice president, on what it means to enforce the laws of our country. I’m the only one on this stage who has personally prosecuted everything from child sexual assault to homicide,” and went on to describe her record. 

Pence hit her back, parroting the arrest rate for Black men during her tenure as district attorney of San Francisco, along with other accusations.

Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris used the death of Breonna Taylor to discuss the issue of police violence plaguing the US.

Taylor was a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician and aspiring nurse in Louisville, Kentucky, who was killed by police on March 13.

Harris called Taylor "a beautiful young woman" whose life was taken "unjustifiably."

She then vowed to immediately ban chokeholds if she and Joe Biden are elected.

"Bad cops are bad for good cops. We need reform of policing in America and our criminal justice system. That's why Joe and I will immediately ban chokeholds and carotid holds," Harris said.

Pence said Taylor's family had his "sympathies." He also referenced the upswell of anti-police sentiment that has blanked the country following the deaths of Taylor and other Black Americans.

Watch the moment: