Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) admitted on Sunday that he and Donald Trump have been “creat[ing] stories” about Haitian immigrants in Ohio in order to incite anti-immigrant hatred and bring media attention to racist lies circulated by the right in recent weeks.
In an interview on CNN, Vance referred to the lies, which some have labeled as blood libel against Haitians, as “memes,” and defended his spread of the claims that are inciting hatred and violent threats in Springfield, Ohio, and beyond.
The vice presidential nominee claimed that he had to spread these falsehoods to protect Americans, strongly suggesting that he means white Americans, as the Haitians he’s spreading lies about are also Americans, who are now being subjected to threats and harassment after Trump and Vance began elevating debunked stories against them.
When asked if he could “affirmatively say” if the racist claims were true, Vance dodged the question, simply saying that the stories came from his constituents.
“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” said Vance.
“It comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents. I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” he went on, despite numerous city leaders in Springfield saying that there is no evidence to back these accounts, and multiple of these accounts being proven false; even the woman who originally created one of the posts that sparked the firestorm has said that she regrets posting it.
The statements — like Vance’s downplaying of the situation as “memes,” rather than lies causing real violent hatred against his own constituents — appear to be an acknowledgement from Vance that he is spreading the anti-Haitian lies in order to stoke hatred against immigrants.
His repeated invocation of the “suffering” caused by policies that have allowed Haitians to immigrate to the U.S. — rather than, perhaps, the relief caused by granting asylum to people escaping horrific circumstances created by Western powers — bolsters that argument.
At best, Vance’s answers in the interview serve to muddy the waters; he wants viewers to both believe that the lies are true, despite saying they’re stories he and Trump “created,” and not believe that his spreading the lies is having dangerous consequences, despite the fact that the lies are a clear incitement to violence.
At another point in the interview, Vance became incensed when the interviewer, Dana Bash, brought up the school bomb threats and other evacuations, like those of health centers, that have been sparked by the lies — a form of the stochastic terrorism that Trump and his supporters have embraced as a strategy.
“I want to start with something you said that is frankly disgusting and is more appropriate for a Democratic propagandist than it is for an American journalist. There is nothing that I have said that has led to threats against these hospitals,” he said.
This is yet another lie from Vance, as there have been numerous threats against hospitals and other facilities that were directly incited by Trump and Vance’s elevation of the racist claims; several threats to city buildings aligned with Trump’s language sparked shutdowns on Thursday, after Trump repeated the lie during the debate last week.
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