Sen. JD Vance (R) repeatedly justified on Sunday spreading the widely debunked racist lie that Haitian immigrants are stealing local pets for food in Springfield, Ohio ― at one point admitting that he consciously decided to “create stories” about the unsubstantiated issue so that American media pays more attention to it.
The Republican vice presidential candidate faced aggressive fact-checking while appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press,” related to fearmongering by the senator and former President Donald Trump over the city’s increased Haitian population.
“Clearly these rumors are out there because constituents are seeing it with their own eyes, and some of them are talking about it,” Vance told NBC’s Kristen Welker, repeating his claim that the so-called evidence to support the conspiracy theory comes from 911 calls he says he’s received from Springfield residents who are presumably not immigrants. He has also suggested that…