In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.
Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.
Asked by the CNN host Dana Bash whether the false rumors centering on Springfield, Ohio, were “a story that you created”, Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims were rooted in “accounts from … constituents” and that he as well as the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, had spoken publicly about them to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.
Vance’s remarks drew a quick rebuke from the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who supports his party’s White House nominee in November’s election, Kamala Harris.
“Remarkable confession by JD Vance when he said he will ‘create stories’ (that is, lie) to redirect the media,” Buttigieg wrote on X. “All this to change the subject away from abortion rights, manufacturing jobs, taxation of the rich, and the other things clearly at stake in this election.”
Vance further insulted people in Springfield who are Haitian as “illegal”, though the vast majority of them are in the US legally through a temporary protected status (TPS) that has been allocated to them due to the violence and unrest in their home country in the Caribbean. The status must be renewed after 18 months.
The rumors proliferating out of Springfield have led to bomb threats aimed at local hospitals and government offices. Vance on Sunday told Bash it was “disgusting” for the media to suggest any of his remarks had led to those threats. He also used the same term to refer to the people issuing those threats, though – in a separate appearance on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press – he made it a point to blame the media for accurately reporting on them, saying it was “amplifying the worst people in the world”.
Vance ultimately defended his endorsement of the lies about Springfield as calling attention to the immigration policies at the White House while Harris has served as vice-president to Joe Biden.
“I’m not mad at Haitian migrants for wanting to have a better life,” Vance said. “We’re angry at Kamala Harris for letting this happen.”
Haitians in Springfield have been thrust under the US’s divisive political spotlight after Trump alleged that some of them were responsible for the abduction and consumption of pets during the former president’s debate with Harris on Tuesday.
Town officials have vociferously rejected the lies, and a woman who helped start the rumors on a widely circulated Facebook post acknowledged they were unfounded hearsay.
Nonetheless, Springfield has been subjected to far-right conspiracy theories.
About 15,000 immigrants began trickling into Springfield – a city of about 60,000 – in 2017 to work in local produce packaging and machining factories. They have been particularly in demand at a vegetable manufacturer and at automotive machining plants whose owners were experiencing a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week that Haitians in Springfield “are here legally”.
“What the employers tell you is, you know, we don’t know what we would do without them,” DeWine said. “They are working. And they are working very hard. And they’re fitting in.”
Nonetheless, while vulnerable with voters over their handling of reproductive rights, Republicans have helped spread the xenophobic rumors in Springfield in an attempt to capitalize on voters’ dissatisfaction with Democrats’ handling of immigration.
Vance on Sunday also sought to distance himself from a second controversy, telling the Meet the Press host Kristen Welker that he doesn’t like remarks by the far-right Trump campaign ally Laura Loomer that the White House “will smell like curry” if Harris wins the election.
Harris is of Indian and Jamaican heritage. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is of Indian heritage, too.
“I make a mean chicken curry,” he said, but “I don’t think that it’s insulting for anybody to talk about their dietary preferences or what they want to do in the White House.
“What Laura said about Kamala Harris is not what we should be focused on. We should be focused on the policy and on the issues.”
Vance has spent much of his vice-presidential run on the defensive, including over his stated belief that women who choose to pursue professional careers rather than roles as family matriarchs are miserable.