In a stunning admission, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said he’s willing to “create stories” on the campaign trail while defending false, racist rumors about pet kidnappings and eating in his home state. Ohio.
Vance’s remarks came during an appearance Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need to “create stories so that … the media will really pay attention to the suffering of the American people.”
Asked by CNN host Dana Bash if the false rumors centered on Springfield, Ohio were “a thing you made up,” Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims stemmed from “constituent accounts” and that he and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had spoken about them publicly to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.
Vance’s remarks quickly drew a rebuke from U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who supports his party’s White House nominee in November’s election, Kamala Harris.
“Remarkable admission by JD Vance when he said he is ‘making up stories’ (ie lying) to redirect the media,” Buttigieg wrote in X. “All of this is changing the subject away from abortion rights, manufacturing jobs, taxation, the rich, and other issues that are clearly at stake in this election.”
In Springfield, Vance continued to insult Haitian people as “illegals”, even though most of them are legally in the United States through Temporary Protected Status (TPS), granted to them because of the violence and unrest in their homeland. In the Caribbean. The status must be renewed after 18 months.
Rumors spreading out of Springfield have led to bomb threats against local hospitals and government offices. Vance told Bash on Sunday that it was “disgusting” for the media to suggest that his remarks led to these threats. He also used the same term to refer to the people making those threats, though — in a separate appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press — he pressed the media to report them accurately, saying it “reinforced the threat. The worst people in the world.”
In the end, Vance defended his support of the lies about Springfield while drawing attention to White House immigration policy, while Harris has served as Joe Biden’s running mate.
“I’m not mad at the Haitian immigrants because they want a better life,” Vance said. “We are angry with Kamala Harris for allowing this to happen.”
Springfield’s Haitians have come under the divisive political spotlight in the United States after Trump claimed some of them were responsible for abducting and consuming pets during the former president’s conversation with Harris on Tuesday.
City officials have vehemently denied the lies, and the woman who helped start the rumors in a widely circulated Facebook post admitted they were baseless hearsay.
Nevertheless, Springfield has become the target of far-right conspiracy theories.
About 15,000 immigrants began pouring into Springfield — a city of about 60,000 — in 2017 to work in local product packaging and machining factories. They have been in particular demand at vegetable manufacturers and automotive machining plants, whose owners have had a labor shortage as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said Sunday on ABC’s This Week that Springfield’s Haitians “are here legally.”
“Employers will tell you we don’t know what we’d do without them,” DeWine said. “They work. And they work hard. And they fit in.”
Nevertheless, Republicans, while vulnerable in their handling of voters’ reproductive rights, have helped spread xenophobic rumors in Springfield in an attempt to capitalize on voter dissatisfaction with Democrats’ handling of immigration.
Vance also tried to distance himself from another controversy on Sunday, telling Meet the Press host Kristen Welker that he didn’t like comments by far-right Trump campaign ally Laura Loomer that the White House would “reek of curry” if Harris wins the election.
Harris is of Indian and Jamaican heritage. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is also of Indian heritage.
“I make a mean chicken curry,” he said, but “I don’t think it’s offensive for anyone to talk about their diet or what they want to do in the White House.
“What Laura said about Kamala Harris is not what we should be focusing on. We should focus on politics and issues.”
Vance has spent much of her term as vice president on the defensive, including her statement that women who choose to pursue professional careers instead of family matriarchal roles are happy.
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