Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) speaks with reporters before departing Pitt-Greenville Airport following a campaign rally in Greenville, NC, on Saturday.
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Senator JD Vance stuck to his false claim that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio – an unsubstantiated story that former President Donald Trump also repeated on the debate stage and on social media.
In an interview on CNN on Sunday, the Ohio senator and Republican candidate for vice president said: said his evidence for this claim was “the first-hand accounts of my constituents.” He then defended spreading this false story.
“The American media completely ignored this issue until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Senator Vance said. “If I have to make up stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I will do.”
Vance argues that the media does not pay enough attention to uncontrolled immigration and its impact on smaller towns. Springfield, which 60,000 inhabitants, has taken in about 15,000 to 20,000 migrants in the last four years, many of them from Haiti.
Since Trump and Vance made these claims, there have been numerous bomb threats in the Ohio city.
On Friday, Trump told reporters at a press conference in California that he would deport Haitian migrants from Springfield – as well as from Aurora, Colorado, which he said had been taken over by Venezuelan gangs. Local Aurora police said this was an exaggeration.
“We are going to see the largest deportation in the history of our country,” said the Republican presidential candidate. “And we will start with Springfield and Aurora.”
In response to the recent influx of about 15,000 Haitians into Springfield, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) plans to send additional police forces to the city and provide $2.5 million in medical assistance.
In an interview with NPR Morning editionDeWine said there was “no credible evidence” to support the stories about Haitian migrants eating pets.
“If you talk to people, especially people who work with the Haitians, they will tell you they work very hard,” DeWine said. “Someone said to us the other day, ‘I wish I had 100 more people working for me… Look, these are good people. The people in Springfield are good people.'”
