‘Why Push Something That’s Not True?’ Vance Goes on CNN and Gets Grilled on Trump’s Regurgitation of Baseless Pet-Eating Claim
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins grilled Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance after he and former President Donald Trump repeated the false claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio are abducting and eating people’s pets.
This week, right-wing social media accounts went wild with a Fox News story about one Ohio woman who was arrested after killing and eating a cat. The story mushroomed into a narrative about Haitian migrants allegedly hunting down pets and eating them. Vance was one of the more prominent people to propagate the rumor online. During Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump repeated the claim.
“The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
Vance joined Collins in the spin room after the debate and unsurprisingly was asked about his running mate’s remarks.
“Trump just amplified to tens of millions of people who are watching,” Collins said. “Why push something that’s not true?”
“Well, first of all, city officials have not said it’s not true,” he insisted. “They’ve said they don’t have all the evidence.”
“They said they have no evidence,” Collins noted.
“We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground, Kaitlin, who, both firsthand and secondhand reports, saying this stuff is happening,” the senator insisted. “So they very clearly, meaning the people on the ground dealing with this, think that it is happening.”
Later in the interview, the host offered a counterpoint.
“I mean, if someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn’t mean they saw Bigfoot,” she said. “You have a sense of responsibility as a running mate, and he certainly does as the candidate to not promote false information, right?”
Vance acknowledged Collins “made a totally fair point, but nobody’s calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot. What they’re calling and saying is, ‘We’re seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats, and city officials aren’t doing anything about it.'”
Watch above via CNN.
