Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said Sunday that he stood by the debunked claims he and former President Donald Trump have spread suggesting Haitian migrants were eating pets, saying he was willing “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”
Vance responded indignantly when asked about the bomb threats that have upended life in Springfield, Ohio, the city where he and Trump claimed the pets were being eaten.
“I’ve been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,” Vance said on CNN, referring to strains he said that a large influx of Haitian migrants had placed on the city’s public services. He went on: “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. 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.”
When the CNN host, Dana Bash, noted that he had used the word “creating,” Vance replied, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”
Even as Vance was standing by the claims in a series of news show interviews, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, was rebutting them. DeWine said the claim that migrants were eating pets was “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.” And the governor said that while there had been some “challenges” involved in accommodating thousands of migrants, they were there legally and had benefited Springfield economically.
He went on to say: “Let me tell you what we do know, though. What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And, frankly, that’s helped the economy.”
But as much as DeWine condemned the false claims about Haitians in Springfield, he stopped short of criticizing Trump and Vance for spreading those claims, saying the problems on the border are “legitimate” and ones where “the vast majority” of the American people “agree with Donald Trump.” But, he concluded, “what’s going on in Springfield is just fundamentally different. These people are here legally. They came to work. … These are hardworking people.”
A representative for Vance had no immediate comment about DeWine’s rejection of the claims.
DOMINATING NARRATIVE
Still, the narrative has dominated Trump’s campaign messaging over the past week and is highlighting how some in the Republican Party are willing to amplify false claims as part of the anti-immigrant rhetoric Trump has promoted throughout his campaigns.
Last week, the mayor of Springfield said a bomb threat Thursday that led to the evacuation of City Hall and other buildings “used hateful language toward immigrants and Haitians in our community.” More bomb threats and evacuations followed Friday.
On Saturday, when reporters asked Trump about them, he said he didn’t know what had happened with the bomb threats, but he asserted that the city was being “taken over” by migrants, even though most of the Haitians are there on legal visas. “Springfield was this beautiful town, and now they’re going through hell. It’s a sad thing. Not going to happen with me,” Trump told reporters.
If elected, Trump said Friday, he would effect “large deportations in Springfield. We’re going to get these people out,” and then indicated that he would send the Haitians to Venezuela. He inflated the number of migrants living there and accused them of destroying the town.
Vance said constituents in Springfield are bringing concerns to him and that at least 10 were “verifiable.” In a series of news show interviews, he said he was amplifying the claims as a way to draw attention to Vice President Kamala Harris’ migration policies, which he said are lax, while adding, “Everybody who has dealt with a large influx of migration knows that sometimes there are cultural practices that seem very far out there to a lot of Americans.”
Vance said that the claims — which have been debunked by city officials in Springfield, and which resemble smears that have been lodged against migrants for decades — had come from “firsthand” accounts from his constituents. He called one of his interviewers a “Democratic propagandist” for connecting his words and Trump’s to the bomb threats, and told another that she should “ignore” the threats and focus on his claims instead.
And he demeaned migrants in vivid terms, saying they spread diseases, and claimed that Democrats wanted to “overwhelm” cities and towns with them.
“This is what Kamala Harris wants to do to every town in this country,” Vance said on CBS. “Overwhelm them with migration, stress their municipal budgets, see communicable diseases on the rise. What is happening in Springfield is coming to every town and city in this country if Kamala Harris’ open-border policies are allowed to continue.
“Whatever some local mayor said about this case, I am hearing from dozens of constituents who are concerned about these issues,” Vance said.
He added: “I think it’s important to say we’re not mad at Haitian migrants wanting to have a better life. We’re angry at Kamala Harris for letting this happen to a small Ohio town, and thank God Donald Trump has called attention to it and would fight back against these policies for the American people.”
IN SPRINGFIELD LEGALLY
Roughly 15,000 migrants have arrived in the past few years to the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000 just over an hour west of Columbus.
Springfield also says the Haitian migrants are in the United States legally under a federal program that allows them to remain in the country temporarily. Last month the Biden administration granted eligibility for temporary legal status to about 300,000 Haitians already in the United States, citing conditions in Haiti that are considered unsafe for them to return. Haiti’s government has extended a state of emergency to the entire country because of endemic gang violence.
Vance’s interviewers Sunday noted that Springfield city officials had asked national figures including him and Trump to stop demonizing the migrants, who are mostly in the country legally under a temporary authorization program for people whose homelands are in crisis.
“All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it,” the mayor, Rob Rue, told WSYX, a local news station in Ohio.
But Vance expressed no regret about any of his statements and responded testily to mentions of the bomb threats.
“I want whoever made these threats to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he said.
He added: “I think that we should ignore these ridiculous psychopaths who are threatening violence on a small Ohio town and focus on the fact that we have a vice president who’s not doing her job in protecting that small Ohio town.”
On CNN, Bash asked what Vance, as a senator from Ohio, had done to help Springfield. “Instead of saying things that are wrong and actually causing the hospitals, the schools, the government buildings to be evacuated because of bomb threats because of the cats and dogs thing, why not actually be constructive in helping to better integrate them into the community?” she said.
Vance called the question “more appropriate for a Democratic propagandist than it is for an American journalist” and denied that his and Trump’s words had any connection to the threats that immediately followed them.
