JD Vance and former president Donald Trump have doubled down on spreading false claims of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating pets – a baseless claim first spun by Vance and highlighted by Trump during the presidential debate on Sept. 10. 

When I came across a video of Vance addressing those claims and saying if he has to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people” then that’s what he’s going to do, I was appalled. 

After watching the complete interview with CNN, he quickly appeared to save face. 

“We’re creating the American media focusing on it,” he said. 

Regardless of what exactly Vance meant in that interview, one thing is for certain: the dissemination of these unfounded claims have caused irreparable harm, and it’s not helping suffering Americans. 

In fact, it’s only caused more suffering. 

For starters, it’s not out of proportion to say Haitian immigrants and the Haitian community have suffered from increased anti-Haitian sentiment, xenophobia and racism in the fallout of Vance’s claims and its national spotlight on the debate stage. 

Wittenberg University had a shooting threat that explicitly targeted Haitian members of the community. 

Springfield at large is also being affected. Two elementary schools, a middle school, a high school, two hospitals and multiple city buildings were the victims of bomb threats following the presidential debate, causing them to be evacuated and/or sent into lockdown. 

Local authorities and Springfield’s mayor said the claims made by Vance and Trump are untrue. Ohio’s own republican governor, Mark DeWine, has too, saying “there is a lot of garbage on the internet and, you know, and this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There is no evidence of this at all.”

Despite this, Vance and Trump continue to spew these disgusting remarks with little to no regard for who it hurts. Their actions illustrate just how little they both care about the “facts” they claim to be beholden to and just how far they are willing to go for a political campaign.

It’s disgraceful that a vice presidential candidate like JD Vance only cares to spread this false claim, not quelch it – and that a presidential candidate doesn’t care to either. The spotlight on this lie has only increased suffering, not provided the help Vance claims to have wanted.