When JD Vance and Dana Bash Discovered the Real Story about Haitian Migrants in Springfield, Ohio: Why Do They Fail to Make Sense?

JD Vance almost gave the game away. In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, the Republican vice presidential candidate came close to acknowledging that rumors about Haitian migrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, are completely fabricated — and then backtracked, saying the rumors are true after all.

And Mr. Vance responded indignantly when asked about the bomb threats that have upended life in Springfield, Ohio, the city where he and Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the pets were being eaten.

Vance, Rufo, and their allies are saying two things at once: the racist rumors about Haitian migrants in Springfield may be untrue, but the fact that Springfield is being overrun with Haitian migrants is irrefutable; and also, the rumors are true because Vance’s constituents said so. This isn’t the first time Vance has tried to have it both ways. Vance previously claimed the rumor was based on calls he’d gotten from constituents before acknowledging the possibility “that all of these rumors will turn out to be false” and pivoting to what he claims is the real story the media is ignoring in Springfield.

“If I have to create stories that the American media will actually listen to, then that is what I will do,” he said. When Bash asked him if he created the story, he changed his mind. “I say that we’re creating a story meaning that we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” Vance continued. There are 20,000 illegal migrants coming in Springfield because of Ms. Harris’ policies. Her policies did that, but we created the focus.

Mr. Vance was talking on CBS about what Harris wants to do to every town. “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’s open border policies are allowed to continue.”

“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.

“I want whoever made these threats to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he told Margaret Brennan of CBS. Margaret, we don’t believe in the heckler’s veto in this country. 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.”

The question is appropriate for a Democratic propagandist than it is for a American journalist, said Mr. Vance and insisted that his and Mr. Trump’s words did not have a connection to the threats that followed them.

In an interview with CNN that took place on Sunday, the Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee stated his proof for this claim was from his own people. He defended the dissemination of the false story.

On Friday, Trump told reporters at a news conference in California that he would deport the Haitian migrants in Springfield — as well as in Aurora, Colo., which he said has been taken over by Venezuelan gangs; local Aurora police have said this is hyperbole.

The Republican candidate said that there would be the largest deportation in the country’s history. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”

The recent influx of Haitians to the area has prompted Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to send more law enforcement and health care assistance to the city.

People who are working with the Haitians say they are very hard workers, according to DeWine. “We had one person the other day saying, I wish I had 100 more working for me … Look, these are good people. The people of Springfield are friendly and good to one another.

Changing the narrative of Haitian grilling by right-wing media and right-right scalars: Christopher Rufo and the Vance/Crustlef-Vance scandal

“To be clear: this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement,” Rufo wrote. It breaks the narrative peddled by the establishment media and its Fact checkers who insisted that the idea of this happening is somehow an expression of racism. It takes only a single exception, however, to falsify a hypothesis, and the logical next step, for any honest broker, is to ask if it is happening more often, and elsewhere.”

A day before he went on CNN, Vance claimed that, despite the media’s claims that the rumors about Haitians were baseless, the story “turned out to have merit.” That supposed merit came from a post published by Manhattan Institute fellow and right-wing operative Christopher Rufo, who obtained a video that, he said, depicted African migrants grilling cats in Dayton, Ohio. The video has been disputed, and several people have noted that the animal on the grill appears to have six legs and is more likely to be three chickens than a mutated cat.

It’s worth emphasizing that all of this began with a handful of right-wing influencers’ posts on X — which were not only boosted by the platform’s algorithm and CEO but also amplified by Vance and former President Donald Trump on the debate stage. Racist internet posts about Haiti have spread out of the far-right echo chamber and are putting real people in danger.