For days, JD Vance has been pushing disgusting, unsupported lies about Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio city eating pets. The city manager of Springfield, Ohio, has denied this story. The Springfield police have made it clear there have been no such reports. Legal immigrants brought new life to a dying city where the population and local employers have been “ecstatic” about the influx of new, reliable workers.
But on Tuesday night, Vance’s racist claims that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of people in the area became Republican doctrine after an enraged Donald Trump snarled out the claim in the middle of a debate with presidential Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs,” Trump said. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating– they’re eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Congratulations, JD. Your racist, baseless, and dangerous lie is now Republican dogma.
Following the debate, Vance came out to be interviewed. Not only did he have the unenviable task of trying to act as if Trump had not just been utterly eviscerated by Harris, he also had to take up the mantle of being Trump’s surrogate minutes after Trump had made it clear that Vance did not speak for him.
Asked about Vance’s claim that Trump would veto a national ban on abortion, the Republican nominee completely undercut his running mate. “Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness,” Trump said. “And I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I don’t think he was speaking for me.”
Then Vance plopped into a chair next to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins following the debate to … speak for Trump.
Naturally, the pet-eating-immigrants claim was one of the first things Vance was asked to address.
Collins: He brought up this misleading, false claim that you yourself have talked about in recent days about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, abducting people’s pets and eating them, which officials there have said is not true. You yourself acknowledged that it may be false. On Twitter you told people to keep spreading it. But Trump just amplified it to tens of millions of people who were watching. Why push something that’s not true?
Vance: Well first of all, city officials have not said it’s not true. They’ve said they don’t have all the evidence–
Collins: They’ve said they have no evidence.
Vance: We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground, Kaitlan, who both first-hand and second-hand reports saying this stuff is happening. So they very clearly, meaning the people on the ground dealing with this, think that it is happening. And I think that it’s important for journalists to actually get on the ground and uncover this stuff for themselves. When you have a lot of people saying “My pets are being abducted” or “Geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us,” this is crazy stuff. And again, whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in.
The population of Springfield, Ohio, was 80,000 in 1960 but had shrunk to just 58,000 before Haitian migrants began coming into the area in 2020, attracted by a combination of affordable housing and available jobs. City officials had worked for years to attract new businesses to the area, and they had succeeded, but they were unable to find workers to fill those jobs until legal Haitian immigrants began settling in the area four years ago.
As the Daily Mail put it, “The immigrants had social security numbers and job permits, paid taxes, and lived in houses that were empty and boarded up as the town shrank.”
That’s apparently what Vance means by “devastated.” Or maybe he just means that thousands of Black people moved into his state.
There are over a million Haitian Americans according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Roughly 544,000 live in Florida alone. But suddenly, when they come into Vance’s backyard, Haitians are inhuman, pet-eating monsters.
The embrace of this overtly, deliberately racist, and utterly disgusting claim is the ultimate outcome of where Republicans have been going for years. Decades, even. It’s a mishmash of Trump’s xenophobic racism against Mexicans, the white supremacy at the heart of the Republican Party, and the vilest Nazi-inspired blood libel.
Now they own it. And have to defend it. No dogs may actually have been harmed in Springfield, but Republicans have definitely thrown away their dog whistles. And taken off their sheets.
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