WASHINGTON. — Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Sunday did not back down from false claims he and Donald Trump have been making that Haitians in an Ohio community are kidnapping and eating pets, even as the state’s Republican governor and other officials insist there is no evidence of such behavior.
Vance, the Ohio senator, said Springfield residents are raising concerns with him and that at least 10 were “verifiable.” In a series of interviews on news shows, he said he was making the allegations more widely known as a way to draw attention to Democrat Kamala Harris’s lax immigration policies, adding that “anyone who has dealt with a large influx of migration knows that sometimes there are cultural practices that seem very far away to many Americans.”
Local and state officials have said the allegations are false, misrepresent the city in a negative light and have drawn unwanted and frightening negative attention since Trump mentioned it in last week’s presidential debate, when he called out Springfield by name. For two days straight, bomb threats prompted the evacuation of schools and government buildings, and some emailed threats referenced the influx of migrants into the community.
Springfield officials were not alone in denying the allegations. Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said Sunday that “there is a lot of garbage on the internet, and as you know, it is garbage that is simply not true. There is no evidence of it.”
“Let me tell you what we do know,” DeWine continued. “What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They have come to Springfield to work. Ohio is growing and Springfield has been booming with a lot of businesses coming in. These Haitians came to work for these businesses. The businesses tell us that they are very good workers. They are very happy to have them there. And frankly, that has helped the economy.”
Yet this argument has dominated Trump’s campaign messaging over the past week and has highlighted how some in the Republican Party are willing to embrace and amplify false claims as part of the incendiary, anti-immigrant rhetoric Trump has promoted throughout his campaigns.
