Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), Donald Trump's running mate, is sticking with the debunked story about Haitian immigrants who supposedly have been eating purloined pets in Springfield, Ohio. That tall tale provoked wide ridicule after Trump repeated it during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last week. Undaunted, Vance told CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday that he preferred "the firsthand account of my constituents who are telling me that this happened" to the denials from Springfield officials, who say there is no evidence to substantiate it.
Whether or not it is true that Haitians are dining on stolen cats and dogs, Vance said, the story has proven important in calling attention to the problems that Springfield is experiencing as a result of a migrant influx. "I've been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months," he told Bash. "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."
That attitude is consistent with what Vance said when he gave the "cat memes" a boost shortly before Trump's debate with Harris. "Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio," he wrote on X the morning of September 9. "Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where is our border czar?"
The following morning, Vance reiterated that "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." He acknowledged that "it's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false." But it is "confirmed," he said, that "local health services have been overwhelmed"; "that communicable diseases—like TB and HIV—have been on the rise"; that "local schools have struggled to keep up with newcomers who don't know English"; and that "rents have risen so fast that many Springfield families can't afford to put a roof over their head."
Vance added: "Don't let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing." Even if "all of these rumors" have no basis in reality, in other words, they are politically useful because they help bring home the problems caused by the Biden administration's lax immigration policies.
Vance reiterated that stance on Sunday, simultaneously suggesting the rumors might be true, since his constituents had shared them, and that it does not really matter, because the main point is that Americans are suffering as a result of those policies, even if that suffering does not actually include the loss of beloved pets callously consumed by hungry Haitians. Meanwhile, Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine, was appearing on ABC, where he condemned the pet-eating migrant story as "a piece of garbage that was simply not true," since "there's no evidence of this at all."
Bash got into a spat with Vance, who complained that she was determined to ignore the broader issue. Bash, by contrast, argued that Vance and Trump, by "making unsubstantiated claims" with "racist undertones," were the ones who were making it difficult to have a rational conversation about "totally legitimate" concerns raised by the migrant influx.
It seems clear that neither Trump nor Vance is interested in a rational conversation. "With this rhetoric," the Republican party is picking from the most predictable xenophobic playbook and invoking time-worn fear mongering." The idea that "immigrants 'eat pets,'" she wrote, "is meant to signify their backwardness, danger, and inferiority, " which "then justifies the Republican party's efforts to curtail immigration."
For politicians "perpetuating this false narrative," the truth has taken a back seat to the intended message: that immigrants are not 'like us' and therefore pose a threat to hard-won American lives." Trump and Vance, she said, white 'Americans' with household pets like Fluffy and Fido as members of the family" and dark-skinned immigrants who are "trouncing on that which is held dear."
Implicit racism aside, Vance is proving to be just as impervious to reality as the man he once condemned as a "total fraud" who was shockingly xenophobic, "reprehensible," "a moral disaster," and even possibly "America's Hitler." In crediting what he previously described as possibly false "rumors," Vance told Bash, he was simply "talk[ing] about what people are telling me," just as Trump said he was merely repeating what "people on television" had reported when they claimed "my dog was taken and used for food."
Suggesting that the ensuing fact checks cannot be trusted, Vance averred that "many of the things that the media says are completely baseless have since been confirmed." For example, he said, "I was told…by the American media that it was baseless that migrants were capturing the geese from the local park pond and eating them." Yet "there are 911 calls from well before this ever became a viral sensation of people complaining about that exact thing happening."
Bash noted that "the Clark County sheriff and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reviewed 11 months of 911 calls" and "only identified two instances of people alleging Haitians were taking geese out of parks." Upon investigation, she said, "they found zero evidence to substantiate those claims."
All of this is reminiscent of Trump's attitude toward claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which he was eager to accept no matter how outlandish and unsubstantiated they were. During the notorious telephone conversation in which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the votes necessary to reverse Joe Biden's victory in that state, for example, Trump mentioned a rumor that election officials had "supposedly shredded…3,000 pounds of ballots." That report, he conceded, "may or may not be true." Yet within a few sentences, Trump had persuaded himself that the allegations were reliable enough to establish "a very sad situation" crying out for correction.
Where does Vance stand on Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen through systematic fraud? He recently argued that Trump had raised concerns that were valid and troubling enough to justify "a big debate" about whether electoral votes for Biden from battleground states should have been officially recognized, although "that doesn't necessarily mean the results would have been any different." Alluding to "the problems that existed in 2020," Vance said that if he had been vice president at the time, "I would've told the states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should've fought over it from there."
Just as he refuses to definitively say whether he believes Hatians actually have been eating people's cats and dogs in Springfield, Vance has declined to explicitly endorse or reject Trump's stolen-election fantasy. In both cases, he seems to think the fact that someone made a wild allegation is enough to justify "a big debate" about whether it might be true, even when there is no evidence to support it.
You can either live in the real world or be Donald Trump's running mate. Vance has made his choice.
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