CBS News will air the only debate between 2024 presidential candidates on Tuesday. Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz will face Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) at 6 p.m. PT.
The candidates will be questioned by “CBS Evening News” anchors Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, who question powerful people in Washington each week on their Sunday public affairs show “Face the Nation.” The event at the CBS Broadcast Center on Manhattan’s West Side will mark the first time two women will moderate a presidential or vice presidential debate in a general election.
CBS is making the debate available on all cable news channels and major broadcast networks. It will also air on streaming platforms such as Paramount+ and the division’s free service CBS News 24/7. The 90-minute debate will include two 4-minute commercial breaks. Like the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump, there will be no live audience.
Unlike the Sept. 10 presidential debate on ABC, the moderators will not fact-check the vice presidential candidates during Tuesday’s proceedings. The moderator gives candidates a chance to fact-check each other. CBS News also provides real-time fact checking on our live blog and social media.
The moderator is a veteran journalist who has covered national politics for many years. O’Donnell spent her entire career in the Beltway, where she and Brennan served as CBS’ White House correspondents. They both travel around the world and also cover international stories for the network.
The 2020 vice presidential debate between Harris and incumbent Mike Pence averaged 57.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen. This became the second most high-profile meeting of running mates in history.
Here’s what else you need to know about moderators:
O’Donnell, 50, was mentored by the late “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert. After working at the newspaper Roll Call, she worked as a correspondent for NBC in its Washington bureau, reporting to Russert, who was its bureau chief. She said she researched Capitol Hill sources on her phone in her car before entering the newsroom each day. Because I thought that if I met him, he would ask me, “What do you know?”
She appeared on her first television show when she was 10 years old. O’Donnell’s father served as a military doctor, and her family lived in several countries where her father was stationed. While in South Korea, she hosted a program to teach English to local people.
She will take on a new role after the election. After the election, O’Donnell will step down from his role as anchor at CBS Evening News and become a senior correspondent, focusing on long-form interviews and features. O’Donnell will be replaced by John Dickerson and Maurice Dubois, a local anchor at WCBS in New York.
Her big scoop: She’s the first American television journalist to do a sit-down interview with the Pope. Her meeting with Pope Francis was aired on CBS in May.
Her husband is a top chef. O’Donnell is married to Jeff Tracy and owns two restaurants in downtown Washington, D.C., and one in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The two met at the food court after meeting in the cafeteria line while students at Georgetown University. They married in 2001 and have three children.
Brennan, 44, started out as a business reporter. The Connecticut native and University of Virginia graduate’s first job was at CNBC, where she produced a show hosted by financial news commentator Louis Rukeyser. She spent six years covering global financial markets for Bloomberg News before joining CBS’ Washington bureau in 2012.
Her life changed in 2018. Brennan was named the new host of “Face the Nation,” replacing Dickerson on the venerable Washington-based show, shortly after she learned she was pregnant with her first child.
Her big scoop: Brennan first reported in 2021 that former President Trump’s cabinet was discussing invoking the 25th Amendment in the wake of the Jan. 6 siege at the U.S. Capitol.
She knows Arabic. Brennan was a Fulbright-Hays Scholar and studied Arabic at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan. As a college intern at CNN, she translated videotaped messages from Osama bin Laden. She is raising bilingual children with her Syrian-American husband, Yad Yaqub, who is a deputy judge in the Marines.