“Let them talk about me, even if it’s bad.” Donald Trump’s campaign is very clear about this advertising principle and applies it to the hilt. This Sunday, the “number two” of the Republican presidential candidate, JD Vance, has again repeated on national television the hoax, spread by his boss in the presidential debate last Tuesday ―and denied again and again― that Haitian immigrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, eat their neighbors’ pets. And he has made it clear that he will continue to do so; that spreading it is part of an electoral strategy and that he is getting the results he seeks.
“The American media had paid absolutely no attention to this issue until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories to get the American media to pay attention to the suffering of the American people, that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance, also a senator from Ohio, said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Trump and his vice presidential nominee had spread the rumors on their social media accounts earlier this week. Vance himself admitted in his comments that they might not be true, but urged his followers to spread them. The former president further made them famous when he repeated them, as if they were true, during his televised debate against his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.
Since then, several schools and hospitals in Springfield, a small city of 60,000 people in southern Ohio, have received a series of bomb threats that have forced them to halt their activities. On Saturday, the local university in Wittenberg received an anonymous call warning of a possible shooting on Sunday, in a message specifically addressed to Haitian members of the community.
Pressed by host Dana Bash, who pointed out that “you just said you created this story,” the Republican vice presidential hopeful defended that he had received the information from “first-hand accounts from my constituents.”
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“I say we are creating a story, and I mean we are creating a focus for the American media. I did not create that 20,000 illegal immigrants came to Springfield because of Kamala Harris’ policies. It was her policies that did that. But yes, we have created the focus that has allowed Americans to talk about this story, and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’ policies.”
By spreading the hoax and forcing the media to cover it, even if only to debunk it, the Republican strategy is to focus the public debate on immigration, an issue that favors the Republicans in the November 5 elections. At the same time, other issues in the campaign that favor the Democrats, such as abortion rights, are no longer discussed. And Trump’s intervention in the presidential debate last Tuesday, which most voters believe he lost, is relegated to the background: an Ipsos poll for ABC found that 58% declared Harris the winner, compared to 36% who believe the Republican performed better.
In another interview also on Sunday, Vance again dug in his heels. “I’m not repeating [los rumores] because I made them up out of my hat. I am repeating them because my voters say that these things are happening.”
Between 12,000 and 15,000 Haitian immigrants are legally settled in Springfield, as part of a reception program that grants them temporary work permits while their country is in crisis.
Local authorities have vehemently denied the allegations spread by Vance and Trump. They have asked both to stop repeating these hoaxes and instead contribute to better integration of these workers. An investigation of the calls to the Springfield emergency number has only found two related to the mysterious disappearance of animals, about the capture of geese in the local pond, but local police say that even those two allegations have not been corroborated.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, insisted that there was “absolutely” no evidence that Haitian immigrants were eating pets. The debate over the issue, he said, “has to end.” He said extremist groups had already appeared in Springfield as a result of the controversy. “The Haitians who are in Springfield are here legally. They have come to Springfield to work. Ohio is making progress. And Springfield is having a great resurgence,” he stressed.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, meanwhile, told NBC that “the community and the very real people who are dealing with some very unpleasant things right now, like bomb threats, are being hurt as part of a campaign strategy that wants to talk about anything but its real program and its real management.”
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