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Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator JD Vance continues to stoke outrage against foreign-born members of his own constituency, sharing video footage with his 1.9 million social media followers that he claimed showed African migrants in Dayton, Ohio “eating cats” — but instead appears to show nothing more than poultry cooking on an outdoor grill.
“Kamala Harris and her media apparatchiks should be ashamed of themselves,” Vance posted Saturday on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. “Another ‘debunked’ story that turned out to have merit.”
Vance has claimed, falsely, in recent days that Haitians — who are not Africans — living in Springfield — a town of 58,000 which is not Dayton — were stealing, killing, and consuming their neighbors’ pets.
The video was originally posted by the right-wing Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, who offered a $5,000 bounty to anyone that could provide “proof” of cat-eating immigrants in Ohio. The footage was filmed last year in Dayton, Rufo wrote in a companion article published Saturday on his personal website. He said he spoke with the person who shot the video, and that this person said the cat-eaters were “some Africans that stay right next door to my kid’s mother,” according to Rufo’s piece, which insists the claims were verified by “multiple witnesses and visual cross-references.”
“One can make the case for migration, but one cannot, at the same time, deny that it comes with costs — which, in this case, seem to include a pair of flayed cats on a blue barbeque in Dayton, Ohio,” the article concludes.
Backlash was swift, with replies ranging from, “I find it strange that a self-professed ‘hillbilly’ doesn’t know what whole chickens look like,” to, “HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT CHICKENS LOOK LIKE WITH THEIR LEGS ATTACHED YOU F****ING DIPSHIT.” Oliver Alexander, an open-source intelligence analyst, weighed in, sharing images of plucked chickens looking remarkably similar to whatever was being grilled in the video. “Clearly chicken you weirdo. Dude’s never seen chicken that wasn’t dino-nugget shaped,” he wrote.
Rufo did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday. The Vance campaign declined to comment on the record. An expert at the National Chicken Council did not reply to inquiries. However, a source close to Vance told The Independent that they do not believe the carcasses seen on the grill are chickens. A visual comparison of skinned cats prepared for laboratory use and whole-plucked chickens suggested the animals in the video are almost certainly not feline.
Saturday’s repost by Vance, a Yale-educated lawyer who represents the State of Ohio, marks yet another escalation in the anti-immigrant narrative he publicly launched less than a week ago. On Monday, Vance claimed, falsely, that newly-arrived Haitians in Springfield were feasting on their neighbors’ domestic animals, prompting national outrage by the right. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz gleefully stirred the pot, posting a photo that same day of a cat with a single line of text reading, “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.”
As the concocted tale picked up steam, it was swiftly debunked by Springfield officials, who said they had no information to support Vance’s allegations. However, that didn’t stop the Trump-Vance campaign from sending out a press release accusing “unvetted” Haitians of consuming not only domestic animals, but local wildlife such as ducks and geese, too. On Tuesday night, during the first (and likely only) presidential debate between Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Kamala Harris, the former president seized the opportunity to ratchet tensions up even further.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump insisted at the Tuesday evening event. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Since then, members of the Haitian community have become targets, many of them scared to leave their homes for fear of being attacked by angry residents.
“It’s creating so much panic in the community,” Springfield resident and local leader Viles Dorsainvil told The Independent. “… The words that come out of their mouths matter. They are looking for the highest office in America. They have the obligation to do better, because words are powerful.”
He said Haitians in Springfield have been calling the nonprofit Haitian Community Help and Support Center, which Dorsainvil founded last year, to ask if it is safe for them to go outside.
“And we let them know, when they are going out, to be careful,” Dorsainvil said.
On Thursday morning, multiple schools and government offices in Springfield were evacuated following bomb threats, followed by a repeat of the situation on Friday, which forced evacuations at two elementary schools and a middle school. No explosives were found at any of the locations listed in the threat, Springfield authorities said in a news release.
Still, a day later, Vance was back at it.
As one dismayed X user wrote, “It does feel like these guys won’t be satisfied until someone is hurt or killed.”
