JD Vance started the lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats. His presidential running mate, Donald Trump, spread it far and wide, and a proud Ohio city is paying the price.
Springfield, Ohio — populations 58,102 and the seat of Clark County — deserves better than this from elected officials.
Sadly, there are politicians who will say anything — no matter how false, no matter how outrageous, no matter how incendiary — if they believe it will advance their cause and/or career.
And, also sadly, Vance, Ohio’s junior senator, who is running for vice president with Donald Trump, is one of those politicians.
The 58,000 people of Springfield, Ohio — his constituents — are paying the price for his reckless and unfounded claims that the city’s approximately 15,000 Haitian immigrants are eating dogs and cats and even stealing geese out of the city’s park for food.
The result has been a city that is in a state of siege, with countless daily bomb threats to city offices, to hospitals, and schools.
Six elementary and middle schools were forced to close because of threats of violence. The two colleges in Springfield — Wittenberg University and Clark County Community College — have had to shut down in-person classes.
RELATED: State troopers to patrol Springfield schools, DeWine again denounces Haitian rumors
Every day, right-wing extremists — many of them openly carrying assault rifles — are walking the streets of the city. Hate groups like the KKK and the Proud Boys have descended on the small city.
People are rightly afraid, Haitians and non-Haitians alike.
All so Trump, Vance and a host of Ohio Republican politicians can score political points with MAGA voters who, for the most part, likely couldn’t find Springfield, Ohio, on a map.
Vance’s response so far has been to double-down on the accusations, as he makes the rounds of TV talk shows to amplify the false scenario about Springfield’s Haitian population.
“I’m hearing terrible things from my constituents about what’s going on in Springfield,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash. “Kamala Harris’ open border policies have caused this problem.”
Vance went so far as to post on social media a shaky, grainy video that purports to be someone barbecuing a cat on an outside grill in Dayton — 30 miles from Springfield. The person is apparently African.
Someone needs to explain to Vance that Haiti is not in Africa. That Dayton is not Springfield.
Ohio Republican politicians like Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and attorney general Dave Yost have joined the Trump-Vance chorus sliming the Haitians of Springfield.
Vance as much as said he created this story about Haitians capturing and eating pets out of whole cloth.
“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, Dana,” Vance said (the exchange takes place about 11 minutes into the interview).
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, is a Republican who, with his wife Fran, founded and funded a school for impoverished kids in Haiti that was named for their late daughter, Becky, who was killed in an auto accident in 1993.
He was clearly appalled by the claims from Vance, Trump and others that the Haitian immigrants of Springfield are snatching pet dogs and cats and eating them.
RELATED: Vance defends spreading claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets
“This is a piece of garbage that was simply not true,’’ DeWine said Sunday on the ABC This Week program. “There’s no evidence of this at all.”
Tuesday, Mike and Fran DeWine went to an elementary school in Springfield and reported that the kids they met seemed to be doing fine.
“But the teachers told me the students had a really rough day yesterday,” DeWine.
The governor said the daily security sweeps of Springfield schools by state police would continue.
“Our goal is to get back to normal as soon as possible,’’ DeWine said.
On Monday, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said the city continues to suffer because of politicians’ rhetoric.
“All the federal politicians that have negatively spun our city — they need to know that they are hurting our city and it was their words that did it,’’ Rue, a registered Republican, said.
After Trump hinted that he might go to Springfield, Rue begged candidates on both presidential tickets to just stay away, saying it would only put more strain on a city stretched nearly to the breaking point.
Trump says he would include the 15,000 Haitians in his mass deportation of millions of “illegal immigrants” should he return to the White House.
RELATED: Republican U.S. Senate candidate Moreno backs deporting legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio
The problem with this is that the Haitians in Springfield are not illegal immigrants at all.
About 15,000 Haitians have settled in Springfield in recent years to escape the violence and extreme poverty of their native land.
They were admitted to the U.S. through the federal government’s Temporary Protective Status program, which allows migrants from 16 nations to legally live and work here.
Most of the Haitians in Springfield came via Florida.
Springfield was a town that had been in decline since the mid-1980s, when the city’s biggest employer, an International Harvester truck plant, shut down for good.
The city had been bouncing back, with new businesses and new jobs, until Springfield found itself thrust unwillingly smack dab in the middle of an increasingly ugly presidential election.
Through no fault of its own.
Has the influx of 15,000 Haitians caused problems for the city in recent years?
Absolutely.
The influx of legal immigrants has put a strain on the city’s infrastructure; and on the schools.
There are language barriers that are making communication difficult — the native language of the immigrants is Haitian Creole; many speak no English.
RELATED: Harris calls Trump's remarks about Haitian immigrants in Springfield a 'crying shame'
But do you know who is not complaining about the presence of Haitian immigrants? The employers who have hired them to good paying jobs with good benefits. They — and most of the people in Springfield — see them as solid, taxpaying neighbors, who, as Mike DeWine said, “came here to work.”
Springfield knows the pet-eating image being perpetrated by Vance, Trump and other Republican politicians is a bold-faced lie.
A lie that needs to stop before innocent people get hurt.
