Citing the importance of listening to local concerns, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, says the claims by Springfield, Ohio, residents that Haitian migrants are eating their pets should be investigated.
Former President Donald Trump raised the issue during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, causing ABC News debate moderator David Muir to contest the claims by providing a statement from the Springfield city manager denying the reports.
Vance, who is running with Trump to win the White House in November, told CNN that journalists have a duty to investigate what is going on in Springfield, which he says has been "ravaged" by the addition of 20,000 migrants.
"This is what Kamala Harris' border policies have done," Vance told network host Kaitlan Collins after the debate. "And I think it's interesting, Kaitlan, that the media didn't care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats, and that speaks to the media's failure to care about what's going on in these communities. If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we're going to keep on doing it because the media should care about what's going on."
Responding to Collins' question about whether the Trump-Vance ticket has a responsibility to not promote false information, the Ohio senator said people should be taken "seriously" when they talk about how the "migrant crisis" has impacted them.
"And again, if every single thing that the media says about this story is false, the verifiable facts are that this community has had their lives destroyed by 20,000 migrants coming in and uprooting life," Vance said.
On Tuesday, Vance wrote on the social media platform X that his office had fielded a number of calls from Springfield residents who said their pets or local wildlife had been "abducted by Haitian migrants."
"It's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false," he said. "Do you know what's confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here. That local health services have been overwhelmed. That communicable diseases — like TB and HIV — have been on the rise. That local schools have struggled to keep up with newcomers who don't know English. That rents have risen so fast that many Springfield families can't afford to put a roof over their head."
Vance also reposted a video shared by tech billionaire and X owner Elon Musk that showed a Springfield resident dressing down members of the city commission for what he described as their lack of response to resident concerns about the Haitians. The vice presidential hopeful called the footage "an extraordinary testimonial of how illegal immigration affects the lives of American citizens."