Just about every part of Sen. JD Vance\u2019s efforts on Sunday to defend his relentless fearmongering about Haitian immigrants was dishonest.<\/p>\n
To hear Vance (R-Ohio) tell it \u2014 as he told CNN\u2019s Dana Bash and NBC\u2019s Kristen Welker in separate news show appearances \u2014 the senator and running mate to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was simply highlighting long-standing concerns that had been ignored by the media. But those concerns hadn\u2019t been ignored, and his focus on the Ohio city of Springfield and its population that came from Haiti was demonstrably a function of the presidential campaign. Which, Vance admitted to Bash, was the point.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,\u201d Vance said, \u201cthen that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bash noted that Vance had just admitted that he \u201ccreated\u201d these stories, ones asserting (without reliable evidence) that the immigrants were eating people\u2019s pets in an echo of long-standing racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric.<\/p>\n
\u201cI say that we\u2019re creating a story, meaning we\u2019re creating the American media focusing on it,\u201d Vance insisted. But, again, that\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n
Over and over, to both Bash and Welker, Vance insisted that it was necessary for him to talk about Springfield because no one else was. Two weeks ago, though, the New York Times ran a front-page story about Springfield and the challenges posed by the increase in population from Haitian immigrants. The story noted that Vance had mentioned housing shortages in Springfield during a July Senate hearing, a complaint prompted by a letter the city manager sent to his senators.<\/p>\n
Less than a week later, a right-wing social media account shared a screenshot of a post to a Springfield-based Facebook group from a woman who alleged that her neighbor\u2019s daughter\u2019s friend lost a cat, and that immigrants from Haiti had been preparing to eat it. It was paired with a photo of a man in Columbus carrying a goose on a city street and, later, purportedly bolstered by other dubious or unrelated stories of alleged animal-eating.<\/p>\n
The story caught fire on pro-Trump social media platforms, with various images generated by artificial intelligence showing Trump saving cats and ducks from people with dark skin. By the time Vance first weighed in, the story was already rampant.<\/p>\n
His social media post noted that he\u2019d mentioned Springfield at that hearing, coupling the claim with the update that \u201c[r]eports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn\u2019t be in this country.\u201d Vance had not mentioned Springfield on X (formerly Twitter) before his post piggybacking on the pet-eating claim.<\/p>\n
The woman and her neighbor who drove that initial frenzy subsequently admitted that they had no evidence that the story was true. Based on the evolution of the story since the first flurry of claims, it seems clear that rumors about pet-eating \u2014 again, a long-standing bit of anti-immigrant rhetoric \u2014 were just rumors, ones circulating throughout the small city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy have I talked about some of the things that I have been talking about?\u201d Vance told Bash. \u201cLet me just say this. My constituents have brought approximately a dozen separate concerns to me. Ten of them are verifiable and confirmable\u201d \u2014 though, of course, he never mentioned them until his allies focused on making stolen pets a vehicle for casting immigrants as dangerous.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t articulate what the 10 verifiable (though not verified) stories were, instead pointing to other stories that were circulating in the right-wing media bubble, including one from conservative activist Chris Rufo. As with the initial stories of pets being taken in Springfield, Rufo\u2019s story, which allegedly occurred in a different city, was flatly rejected by law enforcement.<\/p>\n
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson articulated the value of these false claims succinctly during recent comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all,\u201d Carlson said, \u201cit makes all the right people mad.\u201d Later, he added a second positive effect: \u201cNow we\u2019re talking about eating pets.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is precisely Vance\u2019s approach. When his initial comments about Springfield were met with pushback, he insisted that his allies \u201ckeep the cat memes flowing\u201d \u2014 rejecting the \u201ccrybabies\u201d in the media who insisted on pointing out that his elevation of the stories was dishonest and baseless, if not dangerous.<\/p>\n
The danger caused by the stories soon manifested. Bomb threats were made against city facilities and schools in Springfield. The Proud Boys showed up, though somewhat belatedly; neo-Nazis had shown up in the city and made baseless claims about pets back in August. On Monday, the city announced that it was canceling an annual festival out of concern over the onslaught of threats.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump is the only person who brought Springfield to national attention,\u201d Vance insisted to Welker, \u201cand he\u2019s the only president who\u2019s going to fight for the residents, not just their right to live safely in their communities, but for their right to complain about what\u2019s going on in their own community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, who once disparaged Haiti with an expletive during a meeting with legislators, and Vance are apparently not concerned about all residents of Springfield living safely in the community. They are, however, very concerned that anyone interested in complaining about immigrants should have those complaints heard loudly, however valid they happen to be.<\/p>\n
Particularly when, to Carlson\u2019s point, it drowns out other topics of conversation during the campaign. If the media is \u201cletting Harris coast,\u201d in Vance\u2019s estimation, he\u2019ll need to \u201ccreate a story\u201d for them to talk about instead.<\/p>\n
Better to have the nation debating whether Black immigrants are or are not semi-human killers than to have it focusing on areas where Harris might have an advantage. So keep those \u201ccat memes\u201d flowing, Trump supporters, whatever the cost to those immigrants and to a community that Vance represents.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Just about every part of Sen. JD Vance\u2019s efforts on Sunday to defend his relentless fearmongering about Haitian immigrants was dishonest. To hear Vance (R-Ohio) tell it \u2014 as he told CNN\u2019s Dana Bash and NBC\u2019s Kristen Welker in separate news show appearances \u2014 the senator and running mate to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}