The vice president made the bizarre claims once again during an interview with The New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast(Image: Pod Force One)
Vice President JD Vance doubled down on a debunked conspiracy theory, previously deemed racist, about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets. The most recent comments were quick to spark outrage among social media users.
The vice president made the bizarre claims once again during an interview with The New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, where he denounced the Biden administration’s decision to provide humanitarian parole to the group.
“If you remember the big controversy about all of the migrants who came in from Haiti. 20,000 Haitian migrants in a town of 40,000 people. So you blink your eye in Springfield, Ohio, and you wake up, and literally a third of the population of your town is now Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs,” Vance said.
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Social media users rapidly denounced Vance’s recent comments, reminding him that the claims were false(Image: AP)
Social media users rapidly denounced Vance’s recent comments, reminding him that the claims were false.
“An admitted serial liar, during a CNN interview in September 2024, Vance defended his repeated use of unsubstantiated rumours about Haitian migrants,” one user noted. “He said: ‘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.’”
“This has nothing to do with people coming here illegally; this is all about seeing a certain culture and race as trash,” another one commented. “This is racism at its finest.”
“Racism is their entire brand. They bring nothing to the table besides unfettered, unabashed racism,” a third one said.
The claims came from different sources, which turned random instances into a cohesive yet baseless theory. Last August, a Springfield resident who described himself as a social media influencer launched a speech against Haitian migrants. He gave a long list of grievances, including that they were slaughtering ducks for food, though he provided no evidence.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks to Pod Force One podcast(Image: Pod Force One)
Another claim made on Facebook said a Haitian migrant killed a cat. Separately, in another Ohio city, Canton, about 170 miles away from Springfield, a police body cam footage showed a woman being arrested for killing and eating a cat. However, that woman was a U.S. citizen.
Vance, then a Republican nominee for vice president and senator representing Ohio, was one of the most prominent voices to share the wild claims last year during the 2024 presidential election. Local authorities and experts, including other Republicans, quickly deemed the conspiracy theories fake.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, told news outlets last year that the claims were fabricated and that they were hurting the town.
“People’s pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio,” Rue told the BBC at the time. “We reached out to JD Vance Campaign to let them know that we do not have any evidence that has happened, and I’ve made it known in multiple interviews that this is absolutely not true.”
“We need folks to understand, especially those that have a microphone that’s being listened to around the world, they need to understand the weight of their words and how it can negatively affect communities,” he added.
President Trump also adopted the claims, giving them attention during his singular debate with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield [Ohio], they are eating the dogs,” Trump said at the debate stage. “They’re eating— they are eating the pets of the people that live there.”
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