Vice presidential candidate JD Vance on Sunday continued to push falsehoods about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, as he made the rounds on political talk shows, guaranteeing a longer shelf life for the conspiracies that are tearing the community apart.
The Republican blamed Vice President Kamala Harris for the migrants’ presence in the U.S. and defended his baseless claims that they are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, largely pointing to complaints called into his office and 911 calls claiming migrants caught and ate local geese as evidence. (CNN’s Dana Bash fact-checked him by adding that the county sheriff only identified two such calls before Vance amplified the accusations.)
But despite Vance’s goal to drive a convenient narrative that has caught fire on the right because of its focus on immigration, one of the GOP’s top issues, he also muddled the narrative when he seemed to admit the whole story is an act of political theater.
“The American unions totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance, who represents Ohio in the Senate, said on CNN. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
It’s the furthest Vance has gone in acknowledging that there’s little basis in truth in the race-based talking point, but Vance stopped short of owning that the narrative is a lie. When Bash pressed Vance on his comment, he walked it back.
“I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” Vance said.
Vance has spent the past week expanding on the topic. For days, Vance has promulgated unverifiable or debunked rumors about people eating geese and cats, claiming the Biden administration’s Temporary Protected Status policies, for which many of the migrants are reportedly eligible, are to blame. He’s also embraced and amplified a proliferation of racist memes depicting Trump protecting those animals from migrants.
Some within the Trump campaign have raised alarm bells about the conspiracy theory, but Vance has continued to justify it.
“In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” Vance posted on X on Tuesday.
During a Tuesday night interview after the debate, Vance also said that constituents have called his office with complaints, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground.”
“Again, whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged,” he said.
Of course, many of those accounts have turned out to be false and inflammatory. A woman behind an early social media post that spread a rumor about migrants eating a pet expressed regret and admitted she had no firsthand knowledge of such an incident in an NBC News interview. The mayor of Springfield — a Republican — has urged federal officials to tone down the rhetoric after his town endured a bomb threat. The father of a child Vance has pointed to as being “murdered” by a Haitian migrant made remarks at a Springfield City Commission meeting, where he pushed back on politicians weaponizing “the worst day of our lives.”
Vance has remained bullish.
“Clearly, these rumors are out there because constituents are seeing it with their own eyes,” he told Kristen Welker on NBC News.
As for whether he’s seen migrants eating pets with his own eyes, Vance told Bash he’s been to Springfield about a hundred times in his life.
But “have I been in the last four days?” he responded. “No.”
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.