Walz Hammers Vance Over Revolt Chapter: ‘Jan. 6 There were no Facebook Ads

• Governor Tim Walz and Senator JD Vance had a heated exchange regarding the January 6, 2021 riot.
• Walz criticized former President Trump for his efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory.
• Vance declined to say whether Trump lost the 2020 race and brought up Facebook, which Trump has repeatedly criticized.

During Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance defended their running mate on everything from climate change to inflation. And while tech companies were hardly mentioned during the mostly cordial debate, there was one notable exception: Facebook.

An exchange between Walz and Vance regarding the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot was particularly notable for bringing back into contention the tumult of the 2020 presidential election — a contest that former President Donald Trump lost. The former president is facing legal action over what prosecutors say were his efforts to overturn the election in his final weeks in the White House.

Vance said last month that if he had been vice president in January 2021 — and not Mike Pence — he would have had key swing states “present alternate lists of voters” to allow the country to have a debate on the election. At the time, Trump and a group of GOP lawmakers claimed — without evidence — that there were voting irregularities in states like Arizona and Pennsylvania and cast doubt on incumbent President Joe Biden’s victory.

During the debate, Walz was incredulous after Vance refused to say Trump lost the 2020 election.

“A president’s words matter,” the governor said of Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, 2021.

Vance responded: “It’s very rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy.”

The Ohio House then sought to criticize Democrats for their complaints about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election via Facebook.

It was a remark Walz pushed back against while debating his GOP counterpart — and it led to one of Tuesday night’s most memorable moments.

“There were no Facebook ads on January 6,” the governor said. “And I think a revisionist history in that sense. Look, I don’t understand how we got to this point, but the problem was that it happened. And we’re all saying there’s no place for that. It has massive repercussions.”

Walz’s Facebook reference was a direct response to Vance’s claim that Democrats did not accept the results of the 2016 presidential election — when Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — because of Russian disinformation that came from Facebook ads.

The governor then said the Jan. 6 issue was one where he and Vance are “miles apart.”

Walz said the “unprecedented threat to our democracy” came from Trump, who “still says he didn’t lose the election.”

For more than three years, Democrats and Republicans have fought over January 6, 2021, and what it means to the American public.

The debate conversation then turned to the social network Meta-run, which was criticized by many Democratic and GOP officials alike.

Trump previously threatened to jail Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who, in a letter to House Republicans in August, said Facebook was wrong to pull some COVID-related content from the platform.

During the debate, Vance moved from Jan. 6 to criticize what he said was Harris’ censorship of online misinformation.

Zuckerberg has tried to recast himself as a libertarian and steer clear of politics, according to a September New York Times report.