Vance Pushed Lies About Haitians Despite His Office Knowing They Were B.S.
During a campaign event in Wisconsin on Tuesday, J.D. Vance told supporters that it’s not his job to check if a story is true before broadcasting it to his millions of supporters.
“The media has a responsibility to fact-check,” Vance said of false claims he’s spread accusing “illegal” Haitian migrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, of killing and eating local pets.
Well, members of the media did fact-check Vance. As it turns out, the Ohio senator and his vice presidential campaign knew there was no credibility to the claims hours after he first aired them publicly, but chose to keep pushing them anyway, plunging the town into chaos.
According to a Wednesday report from The Wall Street Journal, on Sept. 9 — the day Vance first posted on X claiming local cats were being eaten by Springfield’s Haitians — most of which are in the town legally — his office called local authorities to verify the claim.
A Vance staffer “asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten [true]?’” City Manager Bryan Heck told the Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
By the time that phone call took place, Vance’s post had already gone viral online. The senator did not take it down in response to the denial from Springfield officials. Instead, Vance’s office issued a statement late that night claiming that his office had “received a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield: his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them.”
“Unlike the liberal media, JD takes his constituents’ concerns seriously,” his office added.
The next day, Sept. 10, Donald Trump repeated the lie during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris — and propelled Springfield into the center of a right-wing firestorm that has residents fearing for their safety.
Vance and Trump have continued to plow forward with the false narrative. Over the weekend, Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash that he’s willing to “create stories” in service of a narrative, but behind the scenes the senator was still trying to find concrete evidence to back his claims.
Vance’s spokesperson provided the Journal with a copy of a police report made by a Springfield woman who claimed her cat had been abducted by her Haitian neighbors. But when the Journal spoke to the woman who filed the report, she clarified that the cat, Sissy, was found by the woman in her basement.
The woman added that she had apologized to her Haitian neighbors for the false accusation.
No such apology has been issued by Vance or the former president, even as dozens of bomb threats have rocked the town. Instead, Trump has promised mass deportations from Springfield and is reportedly planning an in-person visit.
Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine told PBS News on Tuesday that while the issue of immigration and border security is typically “fair game” in politics, the claims being made about Springfield’s Haitian residents have gone too far.
“If you want to talk about these individuals, these Haitians who are in our cities, our city, look, they’re legal. They came here because they want to work,” DeWine said. “So those comments are — about eating dogs and things, they’re very hurtful. They’re very hurtful for these men and women who work very, very hard. They’re obviously very hurtful for their children.”
DeWine has authorized the deployment of members of the Ohio National Guard to Springfield to help sweep schools and public buildings amidst the avalanche of threats being leveled at the city.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, also a Republican, has publicly pushed back on the line being taken by the GOP ticket. “We need to have federal leaders that are supporting communities like ours, and understand the weight of their words and what they’re saying when they’re on a stage like this — and how it can devastate and hurt communities like ours,” he told NBC News earlier this week.
When asked how he would feel about Trump coming to his town, Rue issued as polite of a rejection as he could muster. “It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” he said at a press conference Tuesday.
During his Wisconsin speech on Tuesday, Vance preached kindness towards the people in one’s community. “We want our public policy to be motivated by the wisdom of loving thy neighbor, that we want our public policy to be motivated by an understanding that family is the most important thing in this country,” he said.
It’s clear that for Vance, the “wisdom of loving thy neighbor” has a few conditions.
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