Reply to the comment by Sen. JD Vance on immigration smears in Springfield, Ohio, when Mayor Mike DeWine criticized the attack
Sen. JD Vance stood by his false claim that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — an unsupported story that former President Donald Trump has also echoed on the debate stage and on social media.
Mr. Vance said that the claims — which have been debunked by city officials in Springfield, and which resemble smears that have been lodged against immigrants for decades — had come from “firsthand” accounts from his constituents. He called one of his interviewers a “Democratic propagandist” for connecting his words and Mr. Trump’s to the bomb threats, and told another that she should “ignore” the threats and focus on Vice President Kamala Harris’s immigration policies instead.
Even as Mr. Vance was standing by the claims in interviews on CNN, CBS News and NBC News, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, was rebutting them in an interview on ABC News. Mr. DeWine said the claim that migrants were eating pets was “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.” And the governor said that while there had been some “challenges” involved in accommodating thousands of migrants, they were there legally and had benefited Springfield economically.
When the CNN host, Dana Bash, noted that he had used the word “creating,” Mr. Vance replied, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”
Mr. Vance’s interviewers on Sunday noted that Springfield city officials had asked national figures like him and Mr. Trump to stop demonizing the migrants, who are mostly in the country legally under a temporary authorization program for people whose homelands are in crisis.
“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.
He told Margaret Brennan he wanted those who made the threats prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We don’t believe in a 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.”
Mr. Vance called the question “more appropriate for a Democratic propagandist than it is for an American journalist” and denied that his and Mr. Trump’s words had any connection to the threats that immediately followed them.
During an interview with CNN, the Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee said his evidence for this claim was first-hand accounts of his voters. He then went on to defend the dissemination of this false story.
On Friday, Trump told reporters at a news conference he would deport the Haitians in Springfield, and that the Aurora, Colo., area was taken over by Venezuela gangs, but the Aurora police said this was hyperbole.
“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” the Republican presidential nominee said. We’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.
In response to the recent influx of around 15,000 Haitians to Springfield, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) plans to send additional law enforcement to the city and $2.5 million in health care aid.
“If you talk to people who are working with the Haitians, you will probably learn that they are very hard workers,” DeWine said. “We had one person the other day saying, I wish I had 100 more working for me … Look, these are good people. The people in Springfield are kind.